Fu-On Chung

Fu-On Chung is a New Zealand painter based in Naarm Melbourne. He graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Auckland University of Technology in 2013 and was a founding member and co-director of artist-run gallery GLOVEBOX in Tāmaki Makaurau between 2015–2017.

Chung’s work embraces the process of painting. His paintings on canvas layer glowing, vivid colours with swirling expression, often hinting at forms both imaginative and mundane. A distinctively exuberant palette commands one's visual senses with an aesthetic that is at once excessive and refined. In earlier works, such as those included in Unpainted (2014), painterly application of colour is undercut with plastic or cellophane haphazardly wrapped over the surface of the canvas – ubiquitous green masking tape encroaching at the edges.

His work for Adele’s Lounge Room Paintings (2023), with fellow painter Lisa Radford, is the result of a lockdown-specific riff on the popstar alluded to in the exhibition’s title. Alongside his distinctive abstraction, Chung unexpectedly included a portrait of the singer. Chung moved to Naarm Melbourne in 2018, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts from Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne in 2019.

Fu-On Chung website

Two Rooms Gallery artist page

Interview: Insight Behind Fu-On Chung’s ‘Clouds’ Painting

Review of Talisman at Two Rooms Gallery

2023 – Adele’s Lounge Room Paintings, TCB Gallery, Melbourne, with Lisa Radford

2022 – Talisman, Two Rooms, Tāmaki Makaurau

2021 – Suspended and Undone, AAAB Gallery, Melbourne, with Angela Brennan

2020 – One Hit Wonder, Bowerbank Ninow, Tāmaki Makaurau

2018 – Fumbling Calamities, Bus Projects, Melbourne

2017 – Swirling Dream Wreck, Blue Oyster, Ōtepoti, with Sam Thomas

2017 – Hoardings of Fury, with Philippa Emery, Playstation Gallery, Pōneke

2016 – Drawing Rehearsals, Two Rooms, Tāmaki Makaurau

2016 – Seager’s Walters Prize, Mirage Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau

2016 – Painting: A Transitive Space, St Paul Street Gallery Three, Tāmaki Makaurau

2015 – Lumbering Towards Victory, GLOVEBOX, Tāmaki Makaurau

2012 – Drinking from the Fire Hose, Artspace Aotearoa, Tāmaki Makaurau