Rising Australian artist Nabilah Nordin learnt an entirely new skill for her latest exhibition
Nabilah Nordin made her name with her bold, playful sculptures. After relocating to Los Angeles, her newest – and most profound – body of work sees her move in a different direction.
A year ago, sculptor Nabilah Nordin and her partner, painter Nick Modrzewski, packed up their lives in Melbourne and moved to Los Angeles. They were approaching 10 years since graduating with masters degrees from the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) and over that time, Nordin had already made her mark: an installation of her teetering, towering sculptures at the entrance of the Art Gallery of New South Wales at 2023’s The National, an appearance at the Singapore Biennale in 2019, and a public art commission for a bright orange abstract caricature of a figure on its way to work called The Tie and the Undercoat (2023) that now stands proudly in the grounds of the Australian Embassy in Washington, DC. “We knew that we needed to begin a new chapter and explore,” says Nordin. “Be in conversation with other artists that we’ve admired from afar.”
In LA, opportunity presented itself in the form of a downtown studio drenched in light, with windows surveying the sprawling city. They set up one corner for Modrzewski’s acrylics and charcoals, and another with Nordin’s welding gear. And it was there that, for the past few weeks, Nordin put the finishing touches on the seven works to be exhibited as part of Scripts, her latest solo exhibition opening this month in Melbourne. Yesterday, she carefully packed them up to slowly make their way to her gallery Neon Parc in Brunswick. “I’m feeling really relieved that it’s all done,” she admits. “But I’m pretty exhausted.”
The 33-year-old artist made her name with materially focused works; bold and playful sculptures in every colour of the neon rainbow that defied gravity as they bulged and undulated. Early in her career, Nordin’s obsession was texture: she worked with everything from sticks of bread, slick with resin, to cement, mounds of clay and panes of glass. These sculptures had a bountiful, more-is-more energy that was joyful to behold as well as a reverence for their materials and whatever sensorial direction they might take her. But the seven works that comprise Scripts are more gestural, lyrical forms fashioned from steel rods welded together with a flat, matt finish. “I really want people to not be distracted,” Nordin explains. “I want people to be able to step back and read them as a spatial drawing.” It makes sense: all of the works started life as drawings, inspired by her family’s history with calligraphy. As a child growing up between Singapore, Jakarta and Melbourne, she often gazed upon her late grandfather’s Arabic calligraphy, carved into blocks of wood that adorned doorways and mantelpieces. When she was older, she learned to write Arabic script and, when sketching the drawings that inspired these works, her muscle memory kicked in.
In Scripts, lines bend without breaking and curve without ending, their tendrils unfurling like branches on a tree. “I love looking at the characteristics or the personality of lines,” Nordin reflects. “Some can be really choppy and sharp, and some can be like lace and intertwined. There are moments of pause, or there are moments of busyness and complexity.” Take Variation (2024), for example, a tall orange structure composed of lines that appear to spring from each other the way words tumble out onto the page. “Lines crisscross and overlap, creating clusters of shapes and symbols that gesture at language, at meaning and communication, without fully committing to a singular message,” Nordin explains. “My intention was to suspend these works in states of ambiguity, where our perception of their forms flutters in and out of focus.”
Variation is at once two- and three-dimensional, both flat and curved. Her hope is these works will question “how sculpture might be able to deepen our collective understanding of looking at, and moving through, the physical world”. When these seven sculptures are seen together, it is like watching a conversation unfold. “Each of them has their own kind of expression, but I hope that people see a harmony within the seven works,” says Nordin. And there is as much to see as there is to not see, peering through the gaps that emerge between the shape of a line as it bends and folds. “This negative space really emerges, because they’re really thin forms, which is different for me,” she reflects. “The negative space becomes a form in the work as well, because you see other shapes that are framed within it.” The conversation is ongoing.
Many of her previous works were made using a wooden framework as a base, but for Scripts, Nordin learned how to weld, and this new skill made the soaring, yet sturdy scale of these pieces possible. First, she cut and cleaned the steel rods, a process that could take hours and “can be quite meditative”. Then, using her original drawings as a guide, the welding would begin. “I’m always responding to materials and, with welding, I’m responding to the way the metal might bend or curve,” she reflects. It is an organic process, because “what might work in a drawing might not work in reality”, and a good reminder of what it means to be an artist. “As an artist, I’m not in control. It is a lot about submitting to what’s happening. I’m just responding.”
Nordin is also finding fresh inspiration in her new surroundings in LA. “I’ve been looking a lot at the freeways, and I’ve been getting a lot of ideas,” she smiles. “And also the light, the sunset. Even the way I’m seeing artworks feels different because of the light.” The whole act of moving was one of seeking out new perspectives. “We questioned everything. It put us in this place where we weren’t just on autopilot. Because it wasn’t comfortable to move,” Nordin admits. “Which I think is really good for making art, because you are forced to think deeper about things and you get that fresh perspective. For me, it definitely helped push my work forward.”
Most days, Nordin can be found in her studio alongside Modrzewski. “We inform each other constantly,” she says. “We’re looking at each other’s works, which plays a huge part in how I make the sculptures, or how Nick makes the paintings, because we’re constantly analysing it and thinking about how to push it further.” The couple met while studying at VCA and have been together for a decade. There is emotional support when sharing a life with a fellow artist who understands intimately the highs and lows of the vocation – and there is practical support, too. “Sometimes Nick helps me hold something so it doesn’t fall,” Nordin laughs.
“I used to have to get some tables together, and push it, or I would get a mop or something, so that’s really helpful.”
She can trace her artistic pull back to one thing. “I love to feel things,” she smiles. For her, everything is sensorially led: the smell of slow-cooking curry, the feel of her mother’s clothes, the colour of a make-up palette, the perfect dome of an egg. “Things that are very physical, visually arresting and captivating, and make you feel things that you can’t explain, because of the power of senses,” she explains. That sensation has never left her. Alongside this is Nordin’s boundless curiosity. (For example: “Sometimes I wish that cars were transparent so I could see what people are wearing.”) The desire to touch and feel things, her inquisitiveness about the world and all the people in it, this is what links Nordin to the drive to create art.
“I really see art as a spiritual practice,” she begins, “and a way to connect with the unexplained. Where do our ideas come from? How do we then interpret that?”
She reflects on the decade since she graduated from VCA. “I feel like I can take more risks. And I know that I can get back on my feet,” she says. “I don’t feel as afraid.” The challenges of an artist’s life also fuel her. “And there is no end point,” she stresses. “The purpose feels deeper and deeper as time goes on, and I think my drive, and my desire to make work, just keeps growing, because the more you commit to it, the more it rewards you.”
Scripts is on display at Neon Parc until April 5.
This story is from the March issue of Vogue Australia, on sale now.
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