SPACE 2: NANI PUSPASARI
'MORE BIRTHDAY CAKE'
More Birthday Cake is an exploration of the multifaceted concept of celebration and its complex relationship with time. This body of work delves into the interplay between our human desire for joyous commemoration and the bittersweet reality of aging and transience.
Birthday cake serves as a symbolic representation of the passage of time, the cyclical nature of celebration and the way it repeats and evolves over the years. As we age, the significance of this ritual changes, becoming more nuanced and introspective.
Through a dynamic range of media, including painting, sculpture, and installation, More Birthday Cake invites the viewer to contemplate the complex emotions that arise when we celebrate milestones and the fleeting nature of human existence. Bold brushstrokes, vibrant hues and textured surfaces in the artwork evoke both the enthusiasm and melancholy of festivities.
BIO.
Nani Puspasari is a Chinese-Indonesian-born visual artist based in Naarm (Melbourne), studied design at Swinburne University in 2008 and graduated from RMIT (Master of Fine Art) in 2010. In addition to ceramic, her practice includes painting, illustration, installation, sculpture and mixed media. Her art practice explores the narratives between childhood memories, identity and culture in contemporary life to communicate feelings of innocence, anxiety, loss and sorrow. She was a finalist in the 2023 Muswellbrook Art Prize (Ceramic), the 2023 TRAILS Sculpture Prize and The Korea-Australia Arts Foundation Prize in 2021. She received the Silver of Illustrator Australia Award in 2012 and the Excellent Prize of Japan Illustration Awards in 2017.
Instagram @_designani
SPACE 2 : YIYING LEE
"INSTINCT" is an artistic exploration of the innate human need to create and express through marks. Drawing inspiration from children's inherent desire to draw and make marks as a means of exploring and comprehending their surroundings, this body of work explores the innate impulses that drive our creativity.
As a parent, the artist has had the privilege of observing her own children's uninhibited experimentation with art materials and objects. Through this lens, she has reflected on her own fears, anxieties, and self-criticism that often hinder her ability to create without constraints.
With "Instinct," the artist aims to break free from learned rules and overthinking, allowing her natural creative impulses to guide her work. There will be no preconceived structure or logic - just her own instinct to create.
BIO.
Yiying is a multi-disciplinary artist who works in ink and watercolour, ceramics and printmaking. She completed her Diploma of Visual Arts in 2012 at CAE Melbourne and also hold a Bachelor of Science and a Postgraduate Diploma in psychology. She has since shown her works around Melbourne and also a pop-up at Los Angeles. Yiying spent most of her childhood in Singapore and her teenage years in Malaysia. She has been studying, living and working mostly in Melbourne since 2003. Her inspirations include Yoshitomo Nara, Shaun Tan and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Instagram @byyiyinglee
