Name John Young Role Artist | Education University of Sydney | |
In Conversation with John Zerunge Young: The Macau Days 2012
John Young (Young Zerunge, born 1956) is a Hong Kong-born Australian artist.
Contents
- In Conversation with John Zerunge Young The Macau Days 2012
- Early life
- Career
- Personal life
- Selected Exhibitions
- Publications
- References
Early life
Born in Hong Kong in 1956, John Young Zerunge moved to Australia in 1967 during China’s Cultural Revolution. He studied Philosophy of Science and Aesthetics at the University of Sydney, then studied sculpture and painting at Sydney College of the Arts with postmodernist artist Imants Tillers. In 1981, he left Australia on pilgrimage to Europe; whilst there, he received the Power Foundation Scholarship from the University of Sydney, enabling him to live in London and Paris.
Career
Young’s first solo exhibition was a one-minute show held in a hamlet in the fishing village of Rosroe, Connemara, on the west coast of Ireland. Since the mid-1980s, Young has produced three major cycles of work, the Silhouette Paintings (1986–89), the Polychrome Paintings (1989–93) and the Double Ground Paintings (1993–present), which explore the relationship between Euramerican models of culture and experience and other modes of visuality, being and the cultural object. More recently, Young has produced two series of abstract paintings, Naïve and Sentimental Paintings and The Day After Tomorrow. Since 2008, Young’s projects have focussed on transcultural humanitarianism, culminating in the projects Bonhoeffer in Harlem (Berlin, 2009) and Safety Zone (Melbourne, 2010; Brisbane 2011).
A survey exhibition covering 27 years of works was held at the TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria in 2005-2006. He was also seminal in establishing in 1995 the Asian Australian Artists’ Association (Gallery 4A), now the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, a centre for the promotion of Asian philanthropy and the nurturing of Australasian artists and curators.
Personal life
Young currently resides in Melbourne with his partner Kate Mizrahi and children Jasper and Charlotte-Persia.