Solo Exhibitions

Offerings – Phei Phei
Ceramics Installation 
18 April – 17 June 2018
Australia-China Institute for Arts and Culture Gallery, Building EA.G.03, Parramatta South Campus, 
Western Sydney University
https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/aciac/exhibitions2/offerings_phei_phei
http://www.chinaqw.com/hqhr/2018/05-03/188307.shtml#cyhd
https://www.xuehua.us/2018/05/03/华裔艺术家陈生利陶瓷作品悉尼展出-缤纷色彩呈现/
http://www.myactimes.com/actimes/plus/view.php?aid=1448211

http://www.argentong.com/article-117307-1.html

Heritage - Peranakan
To be opened by Claudia Chan Shaw
Chrissie Cotter Gallery
14 - 25 February 2018
https://www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au/art-events/arts-and-culture/chrissie-cotter-gallery
https://www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au/news-hot-topics/media/media-releases/heritage-peranakan-exhibition-at-chrissie-cotter-gallery
http://www.leichhardt.nsw.gov.au/community/arts-and-culture/create-enews/livingartsnews-february-2018

https://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/indonesian/en/audiotrack/pameran-heritage-peranakan-jayanto-damanik-tan

 JOURNEY - MERANTAU, Kensington Contemporary, Sydney
Opened by Merran Esson and Nicky Gainsburg (Director of Kensington Contemporary)

High Tea - Ceramic, 22x32x22cm

https://whatson.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/events/journeys-merantau

http://chippendalecreative.com/exhibitions/jayanto-damanik-tan-journeys/

https://www.theurbanlist.com/sydney/a-list/5-awesome-things-to-do-in-sydney-this-week3

Untitled tea bags (strange fruit)

28th September - 18th October 2014
tea bags, robe and cotton string
slot a window at the edge of Sydney's gallery precinct

Photo by Tony Twigg

Jayanto's tea bags hang with beauty, delicately stained by dried tannin into a kind of exoticism that we are quick to think of as Asian. Jayanto is Indonesian. But he's just as quick to point out that the tea bag was invented somewhere in America sometime in the 70's and that tea is of course Chinese. Indeed this artwork reaches across cultures - it's an artefact of the perverse colonialism that is the modern world.
On the day Jayanto installed this piece, and over yet another cup of tea, his conversation turned to Indonesia's famous Black May Race Riots that occurred in May 1998, triggered by food shortages and mass unemployment that eventually led to the resignation of Indonesia's President Suharto and the fall of his government. The main targets of the violence were the ethic Chinese, however, most of the people who died in the riots were the Indonesian looters who had targeted the Chinese owned shops. Jayanto plucked the title of Bessie Smith's immortal song of racial intolerance Strange Fruit to sum up his piece.
Jayanto's fruit dangles for us; artfully melodious in their arrangement they await our mediation as whispers.

 

detail of Untitled tea bags (strange fruit)

http://slotgallery.blogspot.com.au/

Tea bags Exhibition
"Conversations"
NG ART POP-UP GALLERY
BRAND X – L3 Central Park, Central
11TH FEB - 1ST MAR 

Conversations 1 and 2, used tea bags and glue, 240x90cm each



Opened by Founding Director of Cultural Partnerships Australia, Catherine Croll

  and  Director NG Art Gallery, Nicky Ginsberg 

 

Rainbow Tea Bag Cake 2014, used tea bags, resin and acrylic, 32x17x32cm

Tea Bag Cake 2014, used tea bags, wax and found object, 32x17x32cm

 http://exhibitionfootnotes.org/?p=578#!prettyPhoto[pp_946]/4/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/exhibitionfootnotes/

http://www.cicak2.com.au/index.php?r=event/view&id=756

http://jamesobrien.id.au/2014/02/11/gallery-tuesday/

http://www.ngart.com.au/exhibitions.html

http://www.ngart.com.au/news/050214_Enews_NGArt_Mission.html

http://www.brandx.org.au/whatson/

http://www.artshub.com.au/whats-on/new-south-wales/visual-art-and-exhibitions/jayanto-damanik-exhibition-conversations-146858

http://sydney.indywatch.org/resources/sydney.html

after successful at BRAND X

“Conversations”
moved to newly space NG ART POP-UP GALLERY
Ground Central Park, Central
26^th February – 10^th March 2014

Conversations with Mother - Light (front) and In the Conversations (back)

used tea bags and wax 

Conversations with Moses – Jalan jalan 2014, used tea bags, wax, resin and oil paint on canvas 30x40cm 

Conversations with Fabio  – Playground 2014, used tea bags, sunflower seed shells and found objects 47x37x15cm

Conversations with Mother – Light 2014 (detail) used tea bags, steel and cotton thread 200x40x40cm

In the Conversations 2014 (detail) 50 Square of used tea bags and wax 12x12cm each

NG Art Gallery presents

JAYANTO DAMANIK

CONVERSATIONS

Pop-Up Gallery Central, Central Park

Exhibition from 11th February - 10th March

 

Conversations

Artist Statement

This is my first solo exhibition; it is dedicated to my family. I have spent most of my life far from family in a foreign country. After 17 years living in Australia, I am exploring the significance of my family and my roots. I recently visited family in Indonesia, and also began to explore my family’s cultural roots in China. This led to contemplation of cultural differences, and of the importance of trying to understand such differences. It also encouraged me to investigate further my cultural origins and my family.

As an artist, I am interested in merging cultural past and present. I am deeply influenced by folk art and craft works, and also by Art Brut (Outsider Art). I would like to think of my work as delicately transforming theirs, using waste materials. My practice centres on exploiting the possibilities of discarded materials, which I reconstruct into meaningful organic forms.

This project, Conversations, is created out of used tea bags, which I began collecting in 1997. Tea has a special place for my family and I. Tea can also be served in ceremonies praying to The Universe, and as an offering for reconnecting with The Dead in the spiritual realm.

During my recent residency at Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, I went searching for a place where my grandfather once lived, but sadly I was unable to find it. The linked and knotted tea bags in this exhibition are my meditation on this. They represent my spiritual journey as I have attempted to connect again with my cultural past. I embrace their history and intertwine it with my own.

Reflections on my own childhood fantasies lie at the core of this artistic project, conjuring feelings of desolation and abandonment. The project also reflects my heritage, which is memory fading like wallpaper saturated with time.

Acknowledgements:

Jayanto Damanik would like to thank: Nicky Ginsberg for her generous support, Tessa Dorman, NG Art Pop-Up Gallery, Catherine Croll, Fabio Araujo de Andrade, Charlie Sheard, Kate Anderson, Yoshiko Ito, Vienna Del Rosario Parreno, Jumaadi, Kevin and Faye Nikitaras, Jules Francoise and the late Moses Kamau and Ursula Prunster.



Generously supported by

three little queen street chippendale nsw 2008 | tel/fax. (02) 9318 2992 | ng@ngart.com.au | www.ngart.com.au

  

 

The Ways to Heaven 2005, Oil on Canvas 51x41cm

 Solitude 2005, Oil on Canvas 61x51cm

Door Between Memories and Dream 2003, Oil on Canvas, 38x44cm

 

Atrocities 2003, Oil on Canvas,Oil on Canvas, 38x44cm