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 subject matter convey a sense of connection to today’s world while being simultaneously timeless.

Phu has exhibited extensively in Australia in solo and group shows, with significant exhibitions including Everyone is dead, except for me, again, Home Of The Arts, Sunshine Coast (2024); Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2022); and Primavera 2018: Young Australian Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2018). In 2017, Phu was awarded the West Space, Melbourne, commission, presenting the significant solo exhibition My parents met at the fish market. Phu has also been the recipient of many highly acclaimed awards, including Moving Image Commission for Young Australian Artists, Australian Centre for the Moving Image X Mordant Family (2021); Art Assembly Commission, Sydney Opera House (2019); Sir John Sulman Prize (2015); and the Freedman Foundation Travelling Art Scholarship (2015). He has been a finalist in the Sulman Prize (2022, 2019, 2018); the Ramsay Art Prize (2017); the New South Wales Emerging Visual Arts Fellowship (2017); the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship (2016); and the Archibald Prize (2015, 2014).

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