Artereal Gallery is excited to announce that we are now representing Melbourne-based emerging artist Jiaxin Nong. To celebrate this milestone, Artereal is pleased to present an online exhibition of Nong’s works on paper alongside a series of small and intimate paintings.
(To view & purchase artworks from this series scroll to the end of this online exhibition page).
Known for her evocative and gestural abstract paintings, Jiaxin Nong’s ethereal paintings are abstract documentations of her personal experiences as she makes her way through the ever changing conditions and stages of life.
Like many other immigrants, the conflict of cultural awareness is an important factor influencing Jiaxin’s artistic practice. This is not only a conversation between Eastern and Western contemporary art concepts, methods, and techniques; but a response to the impact brought about by changes in lifestyle and her lived experiences of two cultures.
Defined by strong gestural mark making and a finely attuned sense of colour, Nong’s paintings, with their whimsical and poetic titles, act as outlets for the artist to express and explore her memories, feelings, thoughts and daydreams.
“The pronunciation of 2-0-2-0 in Mandarin is extremely close to ‘Ai-ni, Ai-ni’ which means ‘love you, love you’. Therefore, in Chinese Cyber culture 2020 is a symbol that represents love. No doubt, somewhere on the earth it was expected that 2020 was going to be a year full of romance. But this year, 2020 has had its own enigmatic power. We have been forced to operate in new and creative ways. This has included a new interpretation of romance and love.
We have been forced to re-think what is most important to us and realistically wonder: What can I do about this? Believe it or not the only answer is to do what you can.
Due to the Melbourne Corona virus epidemic and subsequent lock down, I have recently spent a long time going through my past works. Whilst reminiscing about the stupid and smart things that I have done over the years, I have caught ahold of some emergent thoughts.
Notably that it is a kind of romance to do what you love and believe in, especially when facing uncontrollable and at times overwhelming global matters.
2020 reminds us that sometimes we can only exert a small personal force in the world. For me, to continue to paint in the face of all this, feels like the right thing to do. There is a sense of strength to be found in the act of painting, it is a defiant romanticism for the survival of the spirit.
My work has changed from large to small scale paintings this year. The change has come not because this year makes me feel little or powerless, but because my living room studio has been gradually encroached upon by my one-year-old son to become his play territory.
This work has emerged from adaption to motherhood, it is an adaption for love, this is an act of love. They are what I can do for the people and art that I hold most dear.
2020, love you love you.”
Jiaxin Nong
Artist Statement, September 2020
Artist Biography
Jiaxin Nong, born in Guangzhou, China in 1988, studied at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and immigrated to Australia in 2009. She graduated with a diploma of Visual Arts from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2012, and received a bachelor degree from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2015. She has exhibited with Tristan Koenig Gallery in Melbourne and in 2019 was invited to create a collection with ethical Australian fashion brand The Social Collective. Nong is currently working and living in Melbourne.
Peter rabbit has a birthday party, but you have’t been invited
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