Jason Phu’s multi-disciplinary practice brings together a wide range of references, including traditional ink paintings, calligraphy, readymade objects, everyday vernacular, ancient folklore, personal narratives and historical events. Working across drawing, installation, painting, performance and film, Phu frequently uses humour as a device to address identity and cultural dislocation within an Australian context. Often employing stories of ghosts, spirits, demons and gods from Chinese culture as a personification of these concepts, Phu’s playful, deliberately naïve style and tongue-in-cheek subject matter convey a sense of connection to today’s world while being simultaneously timeless.

Phu won the prestigious Sir John Sulman Prize in 2015, and the Freedman Foundation Travelling Art Scholarship, also in 2015. He has been a finalist in the Sulman Prize (2022, 2019, 2018), the Ramsay Art Prize, Australia’s premier prize for emerging artists (2017), the NSW Emerging Visual Arts Fellowship (2017), the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship (2016), and the Archibald Prize (2015, 2014). In 2017, Phu was awarded the West Space commission, presenting the significant solo exhibition My parents met at the fish market. In 2019 he was awarded the inaugural Art Assembly commission for the Sydney Opera House, in 2021 he was awarded the ACMI X Mordant Family Moving Image Commission for Young Australian Artists. Significant group exhibitions include the annual curated exhibition Primavera 2018: Young Australian Artists, at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions, at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne.

In the summer holidays you get so bored you go insane / in the summer heat I have a nap and have a terrible dream?

Swimming in ant piss
screen print

The pain I have is deeper than my bones, but not as deep as an ocean of flowers
etching

Poem 1 & 2
etching

Got No Eyes

Be Nice
Etching

One King, A God, Intense Pressure, Mother Earth, A Small Fart
etching

Thunda, Bunda Gawd & Sunny Cunny Gawd
etching, diptych

Fuk Off
Etching

Get Out
Etching

Love with Your Guts
Etching

Suite of 15 works
etching

Suite of 8 works
lithograph

Fermented smokes & vinegar beer
Lithograph

Only the stars know my secrets (Large)
lithograph

Feed Me The Sun
lithograph