Louise Zhang and Jessica Bradford: See You in Hell
Dec 16, 2023 to Feb 25, 2024
Image: Louise Zhang, Map of Diyu 2023
About
See You in Hell presents a collection of playful and subversive works by artists Louise Zhang and Jess Bradford exploring Chinese concepts of the Afterlife. Diyu, the Chinese Buddhist concept of Hell, is both a starting point and a meeting place for the artists to explore personal experiences and complex relationships to their shared Chinese cultural heritage as ‘third culture kids’. The exhibition is a bridge between these two practices and includes individual series and collaborative works. Audiences will journey through the exhibition space encountering various Hellscapes and mythology presented in painting, sculptural installation and video.
Jess Bradford:
Jess Bradford is a Singaporean-born and Sydney-based artist, working across painting, ceramics, video and installation. Her work explores her mixed-race identity and Chinese heritage by questioning representations of cultural or national identity. Her current work focuses on a Chinese cultural theme park in Singapore called the Haw Par Villa / Tiger Balm Gardens. Having frequented the park as a child, Bradford uses the site to explore her ambivalent connection to Singaporean-Chinese culture; and concepts of collective memory and cultural inheritance.
Louise Zhang:
Louise Zhang 张露茜 is a Chinese-Australian multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture and installation. Zhang explores the dynamics of aesthetics, contrasting the attractive and repulsive in order to navigate the senses of fear, anxiety and a sense of otherness reflecting her identity. Her work is inspired by horror cinema, Chinese mythology and botany, adopting and placing symbols and motifs in compositions of harmonic dissonance.
This exhibition is supported by CreateNSW
