Tony Guo’s paintings explore sentiments of a queer emotional landscape. More in depth, he questions how absurd narratives in painting informs a deconstructive methodology against the binary ways of thinking that fundamentally reject queerness.
Roots, 2022, oil on canvas, 600x900mm
From highly rendered details to expressive mark-making, Guo examines how the emotional gesture of oil painting integrates from its physicality into a sublime force. Continuing on from his Master’s project, his current body of work reflects on when he came out to his parents on his 23rd birthday. Coming-out does not necessarily assure relief. It simply shifts the form of burden.
The Pipe, 2022, oil on canvas, 1000x1200mm
Traversing through new horizons with painting, Guo entertains the trauma of coming-out from a Chinese queer context while exploring the boundary between safety and fear, humour and discomfort. These contradictions are at the core of his coming-out experience as well as the sentiments in his paintings, rendered in a child-like radiance and countered by a whimsical violence. Statuesque forms woven together with a muted cold colour palette in a series of absurd narratives, Guo questions, with the potential of painting, what it feels like to rejoice in a dilemma that leads to nowhere and to evoke empathy amongst people like him.
The Puddle, 2021-22, oil on canvas, 1800x2700mm
Tony Guo was born in 1999 in Aotearoa and grew up in China. He completed a Master of Visual Arts at AUT in 2022 and is working as a part time painting lecturer for the Bachelor of Visual Arts degree, AUT.
The Shape of Our Scar, 2021, oil on canvas, 1200x1450mm
Congratulations to Digital Design Major graduate Varvara Solovyeva whose animated film ‘USO’ has been selected in competition for the International Programme at the Melbourne International Animation Festival (MIAF 2023).
‘USO’ was Varvara’s graduating film for her Bachelor of Design in 2022. Varvara is currently undertaking her Master of Design studies at the School of Art and Design.
The ninthWavesound project, produced for Laura Marsh’s doctoral thesis, fuses feminist activism and a DJ practice to generate an installation and participatory art practice aimed at corporeal, low-frequency, sound-oriented experiences.