Opening Night: Ancestor Spirits & In the Half Light
- Friday 9 October from 6pm to 8pm
Join us on Friday 9 October, 6–8pm, for the opening of Andy Ewing: Ancestor Spirits , alongside Kirthana Selvaraj: In the Half Light by the inaugural recipient of the Andy Ewing Fellowship.
Ancestor Spirits is the first major posthumous survey of Vietnamese-Australian artist and curator Andrew (Andy) Hau Ewing (1964–2021), bringing together artworks, drawings, archival material and ephemera from across his career.
A pioneering queer Vietnamese-Australian artist, Ewing challenged racist stereotypes and the fetishisation of Asian male bodies while exploring cultural heritage and hybridity, queerness and body politics, and experiences of health, illness and perseverance. The exhibition includes early illustrations for the Sydney Star Observer, Reinscribing Skin (1997), Chronic Manageable Conditions (2015–16), and works created during the final years of his life.
Presented in dialogue with Ewing’s work, Kirthana Selvaraj: In the Half Light is a newly commissioned body of work developed through the inaugural Andy Ewing Fellowship. Over the past year, Selvaraj has researched Ewing’s practice and legacy, including through the Australian Queer Archives, bringing his explorations of identity, illness and the body into a new generation and perspective.
Selvaraj’s practice explores diasporic identity through gender and sexuality. In 'In the Half Light', she works with light, shadow and the space between them, embracing a slower, more intuitive process of applying, removing and reworking paint over time.
Established by the Estate of Andrew Ewing and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, the Andy Ewing Fellowship supports emerging queer-identifying artists of Asian heritage to develop new work in dialogue with Ewing’s artistic legacy.