Why and how does art engage with contentious histories? Hear from artist John Young, joined by Shuxia Chen, Sophie Loy-Wilson and Olivier Krischer, as they discuss the distinct ways art can forge affective relationships to the past in the present.
John Young’s etching series Time’s Slow Passing (2023) is a meticulous reproduction of the diary of nineteenth century Chinese migrant Jong Ah Siug/Sing, who spent the last decades of his life in a Victorian mental asylum following an altercation on the goldfields. Currently displayed alongside the rarely seen original in Chau Chak Wing Museum’s exhibition The trace is not a presence…, this recent project extends the concerns of Young’s fifteen-year cycle of works titled 'The History Projects'. These developed what Young has called ‘an ethical relationship to history’, and are the subject of a major new edited book published by Power Publications.
In this panel, the artist will discuss his intentions and methods in addressing Chinese Australian histories, joined by Dr. Shuxia Chen, curator of The Trace is not a presence…, Dr. Olivier Krischer, editor of John Young: The History Projects, as well as University of Sydney historian, Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson, one of the book’s contributing authors.
John Young Zerunge AM is a Hong Kong-born Australian artist known for his discursive and scholarly approach to art practice with an aesthetic and ethical commitment. His work draws on transcultural art history to explore the impacts of technology, migratory dislocation, and plural notions of time, resonance, and melancholia. Known primarily for his early Double Ground Series of paintings (1995-2005), over the past two decades, Young has focused on two major bodies of work: The History Projects, which evolved from examining violence and benevolence in world historical events to visually re-imagining events in Chinese Australian history since 1840; and Abstract Paintings, a reassessment of technology’s devastating impact on bodily skills. Young has also played a key role in regional cultural development, representing Australia in numerous exhibitions across Northeast and Southeast Asia, Germany and North America since 1992.
Dr. Shuxia Chen is a historian and curator of Chinese art and photography. She is the editor and author of Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan, 1950s–1980s, A Home for Photography Learning: The Friday Salon, 1977–1980 (2024) and Chinese Toggles: Culture in Miniature (2024). Her curatorial projects include ‘The Trace is Not a Presence …’ (2024) and ‘Sentient Paper’ (2022). Chen was the inaugural curator of the China Gallery and East Asian Collections at the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum. She is a Senior Lecturer at UNSW School of Art & Design.
Dr. Olivier Krischer is a historian and curator of art from East Asia and the Asian Australian diaspora, whose research concerns modern and contemporary transcultural art, photography and intermedia practices. His curatorial projects include ‘Assembly’ (2023), featuring eight Hong Kong-born artists, ‘Wayfaring: Photography in 1970s–80s Taiwan’ (2021) and ‘Between: Picturing 1950–1960s Taiwan’ (2016). His recent publications include Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan, 1950s–1980s, John Young: The History Projects (2025), and Zhang Peili: From Painting to Video (2019). Krischer is a Lecturer at UNSW School of Art & Design.
Dr. Sophie Loy-Wilson is a Senior Lecturer in Australia History at the University of Sydney where she specialises in the history of Chinese Australian communities. She is the author of Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in a Treaty Port China (Routledge, 2017), and is currently working on her new book project, Chinese Business Economic and Social Survival in White Australia, 1870–1940.
Header image: John Young, Time’s Slow Passing #4, etching and lithography on archive rag paper, 2023. Courtesy of the artist. Image: Australian Print Workshop.
