Jason Phu’s installation at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art

Jason Phu’s installation, everyone is dead, except for me. everything is futile, and i am tired. i wait in my little house, for the winter to take me, is newly commissioned as part of a group exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. The exhibition comprises of Australian artists who each explore painting as an expanded practice that extends beyond the traditional paint on canvas format to incorporate diverse materials, structures and ideas of the works at large, finding common ground by all being at the intersection of painting and other materials, forms or disciplines.

While on an exchange program at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Phu visited a replica of the home of the late Canadian folk artist Maud Davis, whose simple yet creative existence stayed with Phu. The installation serves as a note of caution: a reminder to live in the present and value experiences and relationships over materials and objects.

Jason Phu, everyone is dead, except for me. everything is futile, and i am tired. i wait in my little house, for the winter to take me, 2022, installation view, Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Commissioned by ACCA and the Macfarlane Fund. Courtesy of the artist and STATION, Melbourne. Photograph: Andrew Curtis