Assembled from fragments, Chin's large-scale oil paintings reframe landscape conventions to explore place, identity, and belonging. While Chin's paintings have connected distant lands for years, his new exhibition is inspired by unprecedented sea-change and tree-change.
Last year Australia witnessed the largest internal migration away from capital cities in twenty years. Kevin explains, "I've been influenced by the greater fluidity between metropolitan, regional and rural Australia, as more people have been working - and daydreaming - remotely from home. I've always been interested in how migration has sparked hybrid ways of seeing geography, and now that's even more relevant on a wider scale. I think this feeling of being somehow in between places is now something we can all directly relate to."
These atmospheric paintings intersperse farmland with open ocean, suburban homes with waterfalls, Western Australian rocks with Victorian barnyard haystacks, and Queensland tropical rainforest. Elements from all over Australia are mixed together with other parts of the world, to remind us that our sense of belonging begins in our imagination. Through a meticulous process of building up oil glazes, they evolve into shimmering dreamscapes.
Press release courtesy THIS IS NO FANTASY.
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