JOHN YOUNG

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JOHN YOUNG AM is one of Australia’s foremost senior contemporary artists, noted for his discursive and deeply scholarly approach that combines innovative contemporary visual art practice with intellectual rigour. John Young incorporates elements of Post-modernist philosophy, aesthetic theory and trans-cultural art history to consider the sociological impacts of technology; the culture surrounding globalisation and migratory dislocation; as well as academic and social concepts of time, resonance and melancholia. In the past decade or so, he has concentrated on two main projects: The History Projects, which developed a visual history of the Chinese in Australia since 1840 - focussing on the history of violence and benevolence, and Abstract Paintings, a reassessment of technology’s devastation to bodily skills.

Born in Hong Kong and since his first exhibition in 1979, John Young has had more than 80 solo exhibitions, and four survey exhibitions (including Tarrawarra Museum of Art and Drill Hall Gallery, ANU). John Young’s works have been shown in major exhibitions both in Australia and abroad, including at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and collected by the M+ Museum, Hong Kong. He has devoted a large part of his four-decade career towards regional development in Asia, and has represented Australia in many travelling exhibitions in North East and South East Asia. Young has frequent solo exhibitions nationwide, and exhibits regularly in Berlin, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

John Young was seminal in establishing the Asian Australian Artists’ Association in 1995, now the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney - a centre for the promotion of Asian philanthropy and the nurturing of Australasian artists and curators. In 2012, he was awarded the Australian Visual Arts Fellowship. John Young was also made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2020 for significant service to the Visual Arts as a contemporary artist and painter. Young is now a Trustee at the McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, Victoria.

In 2021, Diaspora, Psyche, the most comprehensive presentation of John Young’s practice since 2005 was exhibited at Bunjil Place. The exhibition brought into dialogue two of Young’s most significant bodies of work: the History Projects (2008-2019) and the celebrated Double Ground Paintings (1995-2005). This pairing contextualised Young’s recent focus on the history of the Chinese in Australia since 1840 within his four-decades long investigation into the condition of diaspora and the negotiation of bicultural ethics and perspectives.

In 2019, The Lives of Celestials, a comprehensive survey exhibition of three recent History Projects by John Young was exhibited at the Town Hall Gallery, Boroondara. In 2005-06, a survey exhibition covering 27 years of works was held at the TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria, curated by Maudie Palmer. The Bridge and the Fruit Tree, a survey exhibition covering works from 2000-2012 was exhibited in February-March 2013 at Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, Canberra, curated by Anthony Oates and Terence Maloon.

Four monographs have been written on John Young’s works, including the forthcoming John Young: History Projects published by the Power Institute of the University of Sydney. In 2017, Young released a new publication of The Macau Days with novelist Brian Castro, supported by the J.M Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice. John Young’s work features in prominent museum collections in Australia and internationally, and recently has been acquired in depth by M+ Museum, Hong Kong.

For more information, please visit John Young's website here.