NATURAL HISTORY & LANDSCAPES
ALL MONSTERS ARE REAL - 2023
Acrylic paint on an abandoned skateboard
Winner - Reused / Recycled Materials Award - Reimagine Art Prize 2023
Exhibited at Wallarobba Arts and Cultural Centre, Hornsby, 18 May - 4 June 2023
Finalist - National Emerging Art Prize 2023
Exhibited at Michael Reid Art Bar, Pyrmont, 1 November - 13 November 2023
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Finalist - North Sydney Art Prize 2024
Exhibited at The Coal Loader Centre for Sustainability, Waverton, 11 May - 2 June 2024
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I turned a beat-up skateboard scavenged from a council clean-up into an imitation of a silk painting. My work is loosely based on a hanging scroll by Ming Dynasty master Qiu Ying (Fording the Stream, After Liu Songnian).
I wanted to connect with my identity as a Chinese-Australian artist and found Ying’s work in a 1989 magazine, also in a council clean up. The monsters I added refer to the destructive forces around us that are so familiar they are part of the landscape.
To me, a monster is excessive consumerism that thrives on cold indifference to the fact that many of the things we buy are slave-made. The waste generated when these things are discarded - that’s another monster.
Tantalisingly cheap online stores and their next-day deliveries seem like wonderlands, but they are wastelands that create landfill. If we are curious about waste, it will be harder for monsters to hide.
SPECIMENS 2024
Acrylic paint on wooden offcuts
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People's Choice Winner -Sustainable Waste to Art Prize 2024
Exhibited at See Street Gallery, Meadowbank, 6-19 September 2024
‘Specimens’ showcases the beauty of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) - as well as that of used or unwanted objects (all surfaces used are discards, offcuts or second hand). The insects are laid out A-Z by scientific name and have been illustrated to a scientific level of detail, inspired by the Scott sisters who were artists/entomologists. Lepidoptera add colour and life to our landscapes, but also play an important role in the pollination of crops. Like Lepidoptera lovers Don Herbison-Evans and Stella Crossley, I believe the destruction of the habitats of moths and butterflies to be equivalent to throwing jewels away.
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THE WINGED TREASURES SERIES - 2024
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Top Row: PEACOCK BUTTERFLY and EMERALD SWALLOWTAIL BUTTERFLY (Sold)
Second Row: POSTMAN BUTTERFLY and BLUE MORPHO BUTTERFLY
Acrylic on cradled wood panels​
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Exhibited at ELEVATE, a Wet Paint Collective show hosted by Cobden Hayson Balmain.
Peacock Butterfly exhibited at 'Ceramics & Still Life', Project Gallery 90, 12 - 25 September 2024
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The Winged Treasures series is inspired the joy of digging through dusty antique shops and my love of natural history and entomology. Craftsmanship was a focus so all sides are painted cinnabar red and everything has been varnished to a satin finish.
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The four paintings in the series are:
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PEACOCK BUTTERFLY (Aglais Io) - Available through Project Gallery 90.
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EMERALD SWALLLOWTAIL BUTTERFLY (Papilio palinurus)
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POSTMAN BUTTERFLY (Heliconius melpomene)
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BLUE MORPHO BUTTERFLY (Morpho peleides)
THE CINNABAR MOTH - 2024
Acrylic paint on wooden board
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Sold
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Exhibited at 'Lexicon' , the Wet Paint Collective’s November 2024 show at the Balmain Watch House
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After a photograph by Juliette Gillies. This work references a lifelong love of Lepidoptera as well as carved cinnabar lacquer from China and the symmetry of art deco design.
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A PREVENTABLE EXTINCTION - 2023
Acrylic paint on bovine scrap leather
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Finalist - Reimagine Art Prize 2024
Exhibited at Wallarobba Arts and Cultural Centre, Hornsby, 10-26 May 2024
On average, Australians dispose of 93 per cent of the textiles they purchase each year; only seven per cent is recycled. With this in mind, the awful popularity of cheap, exploitative garments and accessories can only cause dismay. At the crossroads of consumption, we must ask: how much more can the planet take? Bovine scrap leather has been painted on to show the beauty of off-cuts from the wasteful textile industry. This painting depicts the most recently extinct Australian mammal, the Christmas Island pipistrelle (Pipistrellus murrayi), and urges the viewer to consider – if we are so eager to overconsume at the expense of humans and animals, will the next extinction be our own? The Pipistrelle died out in 2009 and the insets reference iconic events of that year, which feel fresh in the memory – far more so than the preventable death of the last of a little-known bat. Special thanks to Dr Lindy Lumsden.
CRADLE MOUNTAIN THROUGH LEXI'S EYES - 2023
Acrylic paint on plywood framed in Tasmanian blackwood
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Sold
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Exhibited at:
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Lifeline Art Show North Sydney, at the Fred Hutley Hall, April 2025
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UPLIFT, the Wet Paint Collective’s March 2024 show at the Balmain Watch House
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ONWARD, the Wet Paint Collective’s March 2024 show at Art Gallery on Darling, Balmain
Lexi is a close friend, a snowboarder, a traveller, an art director and an ace photographer. She loves wild places, abandoned places, crisply cold places and nostalgic places. At the time I painted this, I had a pneumothorax and could not fly, so Tasmania was out of reach for me. But as Lexi provided her superb shot of Cradle Mountain for me to paint from, I could see Tasmania through her eyes, I could almost touch it, I could feel as though I was standing where she stood, taking it all in.
GRACE AND THE LITTLE BIRD - 2023
Acrylic paint on wooden board
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Sold
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Exhibited at UPLIFT, the Wet Paint Collective’s March 2024 show at the Balmain Watch House
Based on a real photograph taken by a friend, a young girl cradles a bird found struggling by the side of the road on a hot day. It symbolises the need to show care to the vulnerable and reminds us that children carry the future in their soft, gentle hands.
THE LIGHT IN DARK PLACES - 2022
Acrylic paint on scrap leather
This painting, held in a private collection in Vancouver, depicts a death’s-head hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos). It deliberately includes the marks made by the leather’s previous user; they are a feature, not a flaw. The texture of the leather exaggerates the texture of the moth.
