Abdul-Rahman Abdullah’s intricately carved and painted wooden sculptures confront our complex relationship with life, death and the afterlife, and our sometimes-uncomfortable relationship with (and responsibility to) the natural world.
Undying: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah takes inspiration from the Museum’s collections of natural history and antiquity to present a story of curiosity, inter-relationship, and perpetuity.
After working as an illustrator, model maker and zoo designer, Abdul-Rahman Abdullah developed a sculptural practice grounded in storytelling. Here in Undying, his intricately carved and painted works tell a story of our complex relationship with life, death and the afterlife, and of our connection with (and responsibility to) the natural world. Each sculpture is accompanied by a text by Abdullah, in which he reflects on the animal he has depicted. This storytelling extends to a family activity in the exhibition where children are invited to write to their favourite animal.
Visitor advice: This exhibition includes realistic sculptures of animals, including a large spider, which some visitors may find confronting.
Abdul-Rahman Abdullah (born 1977, Port Kembla, NSW) lives on a cattle farm on Bindjareb Nyoongar Country, Western Australia. Shaped by formative experiences as a "Muslim kid with mixed heritage", on his father's side he is a seventh-generation Australian descended from convict arrival in 1815, and on his mother's side, from Bugis and Minangkabau royalty in Malaysia. Abdullah's earliest influences growing up in inner-city Perth included comic books, fantasy novels, skateboarding, hip hop, a haunted family home, Sufism, boxing, and grunge, and "living a very grass-roots existence as a lo-fi creative kid in the 1980s and 1990s."
Katrina Liberou
Luke Parker & Mikhaela Rodwell
7 February - 26 July 2026.
Power Gallery, Level 1
Chau Chak Wing Museum
Free
Header image: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Endling, 2026, painted wood, carpet, 23.0 x 70.0 x 45.0 cm, © the artist.
Commissioned by the Chau Chak Wing Museum, The University of Sydney, and supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
Phone: +61 2 93512812
Email: ccwm.info@sydney.edu.au
Chau Chak Wing Museum
University Place
Camperdown NSW 2050
