Introduction
In September 2017, The Contemporary Austin presents The day to day accumulation of hope, failure and ecstasy, three newly commissioned, site-specific outdoor sculptures by Ryan Gander. Taking the form of a ballet dancer, a model of a school, and an architectural tetrapod, these large-scale key chains are part of an ongoing series of works based on those used by Earnest Hawker, noted above. Three Rendered in cast bronze, the sentimental, hand-held forms have been enlarged, then suspended improbably from the trees of the museum’s sculpture park at Laguna Gloria, near the contemplative site of the historic wishing well. These oversized sculptures realize what the imaginary protagonist could not: while Hawker (who is an imagined version of Gander in the future) had failed to produce anything at this scale, in this parallel narrative these projects have finally manifested.