This artwork is part of EMPIRE exhibition

EMPIRE draws into focus sovereignty, and brings together key works in porcelain, lithography, sculpture, and installation. With everything from highly detailed drawing to riot-bricks, and the collected mass of 25,000 jellybeans, Robert Hague mixes humour with the grandeur of antiquity, and an often-biting commentary on the modern world.

Following on from the Melbourne Now 2023, NGV commission, EMPIRE includes two new folding-fan prints: Victoria and 2018. Glorious and yet grotesque, two prominent statues suffer a sudden gorilla recontextualisation. A single NGV Venus is also included.

Slip-cast bricks, posing as vases replete with dried flowers, beg to riot. Enormous decorative plates in porcelain and gold, such as Cooks’ Landing and King & Queen, hang with a Mine Yours which gently repeats in Warhol colours.

Hague says that “within the deceit of pattern and decoration, there lies a darker truth” and in 99%, a coma-inducing bowl of blood-red jellybeans, he aligns the deceit of decoration with that opiate of the masses, sugar, and the passive crowd - the powerless 99%.

Robert Hague’s lithographic prints bring together the feel and grandeur of antiquity with an often-biting commentary on the modern world. By embracing classical techniques, he manages to make the bitter into the sweet and shows us that contemporary art can be timeless. His fan series employs the metaphor of the decorative folding-fan, a decorative object that speaks of the politics and culture of the collector, decoration as meaning, pattern as ownership and our desire for a cultural belonging.

All the fans depicted are broken and of this Hague says that “within the deceit of pattern and decoration, there lays a darker, broken truth.”

From his studio in Melbourne, Hague prints his own work directly from limestone slabs, on a 1940’s Charles Brand lithography press. He has exhibited widely and is represented in major public collections such as the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria. In 2019 his work was the subject of a retrospective at the Casula Powerhouse (Sydney). Recent exhibitions include ‘Melbourne Now 2023’, NGV Australia, ‘New Prints’ at IPC New York, ‘Common Ground’ at NGV International, ‘The Megalo International Print Prize’ (Canberra), ‘Porcelaine’ at Turner Galleries (Perth), the Blake Prize (awarded the Blake Residency), 'CRUSH' at Fehily Contemporary, the ‘Wynne Prize’ at AGNSW and 'Inaugural' at Nicholas Projects.

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