Title

Nathan Beard.

Venues

Art Gallery of Western Australia. (1 April 2017 – 28 May 2017)

Date

(2017)

Summary

Single-artist exhibition. Located: Australia (WA). Collage

Curator

Jenepher Duncan, Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Countries of context

Australia | Thailand

Abstract

Nathan Beard is a young Western Australian artist whose work deals with the fluid nature of personal and cultural identities. Often based in an exploration of his own Thai-Australian background, his practice is conceptually and materially hybrid as he combines sumptuously rendered sculpture, photography and drawing to produce thoughtful, provocative and elusive experiences. Central to his WA Focus display is Beard’s suite of mixed media photographic works titled Ad Matres. This work features manipulated images of found photographs depicting deceased relatives from his mother’s abandoned home in Nakhon Nayak, Thailand. Beard has meticulously decorated these portraits with intricate crystal patterns combining influences from various death masks and runway fashions with traditional Thai culture. Nathan Beard graduated from Curtin University in 2010 and has exhibited in public and private gallery spaces in Perth, and in Melbourne at the National Gallery of Victoria with two other Western Australian artists as part of the 2012 Next Wave Festival, as well as in Sydney at Artereal and Bangkok. He has had artist’s residencies in China, Thailand and at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Royal Pavilion, Brighton, England. [Gallery media]