‘four lines of cocaine with a slow drip capsules of pale yellow powder one capsule of coffee and sugar one capsule of grey powder one capsule of blood red powder some green leaf a bag of tictacs because of the bitterness but mostly because I’ve started frothing a bit and a cigarette so I look cool’ – This is the worst houseparty I’ve ever been to (2013).
The poetic inscriptions in Jason Phu’s paintings are evidence of the artist’s playful humour. More akin to a stream of consciousness or journal entries (though Phu swears he has “a nice moleskin diary for that”), these titles narrate his cheeky depictions of everyday life from ‘a person tripping over’ to ‘a bird pooping on a man’s head’.
Phu delivers his deadpan observations in misspelt bilingual script. “Most Chinese readers wouldn’t be able to read the majority of what I write, it’s all jumbled or made up or written wrong,” says Phu. “There’s no real meaning, they are just something I know from childhood, like how to draw a funny face or dog or a sandwich. All artwork, with or without text, will have layers of meaning inaccessible to someone somewhere.”
Drawing inspiration from the tensions inherent in his mixed-cultural upbringing, Phu embeds childhood stories, parental aphorisms and Google translations into his calligraphy. Born in Australia with Chinese heritage, Phu’s work occasionally addresses identity and cultural dislocation within an Australian context. A significant impact on Phu’s practice was the language barrier he experienced with his grandmother; “She only spoke Vietnamese and Cantonese and I only spoke English and Mandarin and she would just watch ‘Days of Our Lives’ while I sat in the backyard. After she would cook me cabbage soup with vermicelli.” Phu’s compositions illustrate this transition from one culture to another through Chinese traditional approaches – rice paper with red ink seal, ink brush techniques, calligraphy – and Australian suburban clichés – football, beer and TV – highlighting the hilarity that can be found in both.
His deliberate naïve style and tongue-in-cheek subject matter is sometimes overlooked as a more relaxed method to artmaking. “My work is quite crassly drawn and people often tell me that they could draw what I draw, and the truth is that they can”, says Phu. “I hope that they go home and do it. I often get pictures from non-artist friends of ‘shitty jasonphu drawings’”. A closer look reveals a skilled artist creating work that resembles traditional forms of Chan Buddhist paintings while experimenting in the ‘new ink’ genre.
Phu has recently opened his own studio in China where he is undertaking formal training in Chinese painting and calligraphy; “I am based in between Beijing/Chongqing and Sydney. Chinese culture is an essential part of my being. I have and live two perspectives through my upbringing, being born in Australia and visiting family in Beijing often. Diaspora culture is different from its origins but no less important or relevant than its source, going back to the source (Beijing) is a form of rejuvenation and clarity for me. People think I just go back to research this and that, which I do as well, but as my uncles in Beijing say, mostly I am ‘looking for something that doesn’t exist, but finding something else’.”
When questioned about his upcoming exhibition at Sydney’s Alaska Projects, Phu replies in his signature wit, “I’m not sure, I haven’t made the work yet, but I will probably slay a dragon and burn some incense.”
Alaska Projects
19 October to 12 November, 2016
Sydney
What’s up Doc, 2013, ink on Chinese paper, 40 x 40cm
[translation: I like the looney toons better than mickey mouse]
Courtesy the artist
