Agus Wijaya: Artist Statement & Bio

Wijaya’s practice questions the construction of both the personal and cultural self through 3D abstraction, experimental sculpture and new media.

He draws on the beliefs and elements from his home country as he seeks to reconnect with the cultural heritage – that he stayed away from, but came to realise – that despite everything, helps explain his perception of things.

His recent works are a multi-medium exploration of identification and dis-identification, of personal and cultural histories, of the bridges and glitches between ways of knowing and seeing.

Born in Cianjur, a small town in West Java, Agus Wijaya is an Indonesian artist of Chinese background who now lives in Australia. He embraces what are seen as separate cultures and disciplines, for they all have a part in his identity construction and practice. His works make similar connections, serving as his place of reconciliation.

Wijaya has been selected as a finalist in the Grace Cossington Smith, North Sydney Art Prize, Fisher’s Ghost, Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize and the churchie at the Institute of Modern Art. He will next present his work at Pari and Sydney Contemporary 2023, and is one of the four artists commissioned as part of the expansion project by Newcastle Art Gallery. 

Agus Wijaya: CV September, 2023 Download

Jackson Farley: Artist Statement & Bio

I guess this feeling was the inspo for the show – after a few years of editing and re-jigging concepts/finished works, it was a nice feeling to just draw a fuckin hill and call it a day. So, I went and got a studio (the first time ever) to pursue this new found form of artistry. I decided I would become a painter + I went to the art store (somewhere where I never go) and stocked up on Canvas’ + paints. I entered my studio wide eyed and ready to accept this new fate. But there was only one problem. I’m a fuckin shit painter omg they were so bad. Lockdown blues came back and it was all a bit cooked… I was in the studio staring at my shit paintings (one was actually not so bad and is above my bed now) and I felt my lil self-care pencils calling out to me - jackson… redefine the art cannon with subversive self-care pencil paintings made with your subversive self-care pencil pack. Obviously, this was too big of a burden to accept so instead I just decided to draw some very nice drawings.

Jackson Farley is a multidisciplinary artist living and working on unceded Gadigal land. His practice intertwines narrative and humour to point out the absurdities and pointlessness of fine art definitions and power structures. Using digital media, biro pens and ‘self-care’ pencils, Farley’s work is as sentimental as it is a parody, pondering naïvely on categories of art, material, and painting process.

Jackson completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts with First Class Honours at the Sydney College of the Arts in 2017 and was awarded the University Awards for Drawing and Printmedia. He has also studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, USA and was awarded the China Cultural Centre residency in Chengdu, China in 2017. In 2019, he was selected as a finalist in the Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Artists Travel Scholarship Exhibition and in 2018, was selected for the Blake Prize, The Churchie and for Hatched. 

Jackson Farley: CV February, 2023 Download

Jacquie Meng: Artist Statement & Bio

These paintings explore representations of personal and cultural diasporic identity, through ways of grounding and ungrounding lived experiences and embedded cultural practices.  In doing so, images in forming identity are self-conceptualised and in-flux. Meng’s paintings draws together lived experiences of cultural difference with historical references to narrative and landscape painting, such as flattening of perspective and discoordination of interior and exterior spaces in Chinese silkscreen and Japanese woodblock prints.  She makes reference to an array of cultural practices and artefacts, landscapes, and daily scenes- both real and imagined.  For example, Playing Fake Basketball Near the Town Hall// Claire and Genie watch me dive into Dickson Pool (diptych) incorporates the landscape of Meng’s local pool with friends, but with the inserted imagery of fictional grass hills and hedges in the shape of Chinese stamps and mythology, invented cultural artefacts, door knockers, and candles.  Much like the diasporic experience, the migration of humans and artefacts from one culture to another is a phenomenon that we may use to reconsider structures of power. These elements and styles are arranged in a way that reveals the influence of fragmentation from online culture and aesthetics.  Through reference to real and invented ritual, these paintings consider the significance of spiritual and embedded cultural practices in determining how self-identity is formed. 

Jacquie Meng (b.1998, Hangzhou) works with painting, sound, and installation. Her work redefines diasporic cultural identity beyond national and geographical specificities, rather seeing it as unfixed. Through consideration of posthumanism, performativity, and the migration of objects and imagery between cultures, Meng breaks down binaries of “East”/”West”, real/imagined, and human/non-human. This often involves a fusing of mythology and folklore with memories, fictions, and contemporary aesthetics. Meng was recently awarded the Brett Whitely travelling scholarship, is a finalist in the churchie Emerging Art Prize at the Institute of Modern Art, and was a part of Perth Institute of Contemporary Art's Hatched: National Graduate Show in 2022. She has held solo and collaborative exhibitions at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Gaffa Gallery, and Tributary Projects.

Jacquie Meng: CV February, 2023 Download