As part of Asian Heritage Week, which has multiple events in America, Canada and Australia, defiantly experimental art gallery Dark Horse Experiment is hosting the Asian Heritage Week Exhibition, with the poster bearing the tagline ‘Celebrating Naarm Asian artists’. In doing so, the gallery has collected works displaying many facets of contemporary Asian art, including reworked ancient symbols, cute animals, foodie fixations and other, gloriously odd pieces.
Dark Horse Experiment was founded in 2008 by Dr Adrian Doyle, who is also behind the highly active Blender Studios (housed within the same building), an artists’ collective that has nurtured some of Melbourne’s most distinctive street artists. There’s little chance you haven’t seen one of the Blender team’s murals in Melbourne or beyond.
Doyle uses Dark Horse Experiment to give a platform to experimental and non-commercial artists, such as Japanese artist Sayoko Suwabe, whose art is often intentionally ephemeral. The Asian Heritage Week Exhibition is a collaboration between the gallery, Hoiszn magazine and Platform.
Although this group show has many highlights, Ruby Li’s beautifully unorthodox triptych I Don’t Know what You’re Searching for but I Think You Might Find It is a standout. The central image, an ancient Chinese lion transformed into some form of mermaid, is framed like an old-fashioned theatre stage and the pieces on either side, completing the three-panel work, are octopus tentacles. The composition, use of colour, lighting and technique combine to create a work that’s technically very highly accomplished, yet also wonderfully quirky.
Sharleen Cu’s ‘Yin’, one in her series of bewilderingly diverse self-portraits, is another highlight, as is Lizzy Yu’s clever Stork Market Crash. Food motifs are present in works by artists such as JJ Tsan as well as the piece Dumpling Party by the artist with the delightfully unGoogleable name, Jenny. Typically cute Asian animals are supplied by works such as Coffee Date by Misu Juju.
Of course, Asia is a big place, consisting of many countries with totally different histories, languages and cultures, so it should be specified that these artists’ cultural origins come from, among others, China, Vietnam, the Philippines and sometimes the likes of Chinese-Filipino heritage, but they are now all based in Melbourne. These different cultural backgrounds, meshed with a life in a bustling and highly creative city have produced a diverse, imaginative, and consistently professional collection of artworks.
Attesting to this high standard is that some of these artists are regulars at places like the Rose Street Market and some will be at Melbourne’s Finders Keepers market in Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building in July.
Read: Dance review: Don Quixote, His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth
Blender Studios/Dark Horse Experiment recently moved from their long-standing address in the CBD’s Dudley Street to literally around the corner on Spencer Street, West Melbourne, so this is an excellent opportunity to check out their new home, and see some brilliant artworks at the same time.
Asian Heritage WeekExhibition will be showing until 24 May 2024, with a closing party from 6.30-9pm on Saturday 24 May.
Dark Horse Experiment, 400 Spencer Street, West Melbourne
Free entry
