ROYCE NG

Royce Ng works in digital media and performance, dealing with the intersections of modern Asian history, trans-national trade, drugs, political economy and aesthetics. From 2013–2016 he was artist-in-residence at the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich with the anthropologist Daisy Bisenieks where they produced the exhibitions on the economic relationship between Africa and Asia ‘A Season in Shell’ (2014) and ‘Mutual Aid’ (2016).

In 2015, working with Bisenieks in the collective Zheng Mahler, they were selected to represent Australia at the Pavillion Without Borders for PERFORMA biennale in New York City. In 2013, his solo exhibition ‘Somali Peace Band’ took place at Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne, Australia curated by Alexie Glass. In 2012, he was selected to participate in the 9th Gwangju Biennale and the Busan Biennale’s in South Korea. His performance Kishi the Vampire had its European premiere at the Zurcher Theatre Spektakel in 2016 where he was nominated for the ZKB acknowledgement prize. In 2017, his performance ‘Ghost of Showa’ had its world premiere at the Theatre der Welt festival in Hamburg, Germany and its Asian premiere at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of South Korea (MMCA) in late 2017. He is currently engaged in a trilogy of performances entitled ‘The Opium Museum’ which look at the role of opium and the development of the modern Asian state, the second part of which ‘Queen Zomia’ debuted in Hong Kong in 2018, with the material forming the basis of an intervention in the opium collection at the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford University. Two new large scale Zheng Mahler commissions were featured in the 2019 exhibition ‘Phantom Plane: Cyberpunk in the Year of the Future’ at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong and in 2020, he will have his first solo presentation in Japan with ‘The Death of Manchuria...’ at ASAKUSA in Tokyo. In 2021, a series of Zheng Mahler’s work will feature in the Shanghai Biennale XIII.