The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) have shared their excitement that rising star of the art world Anna Park will have her first Australian exhibition at the gallery in 2024.
The exhibition will be Park’s first international museum solo exhibition and it’ll be titled Look, look. Anna Park. It will open on 20 April 2024.At 27 years old, Anna Park is a major new figure in contemporary drawing. Described as “a young prodigy”, Park has chosen Australia as the location to present a new body of her signature large-scale black and white drawings.The exhibition will see the debut of 15 never-before-seen charcoal and ink works on paper that are described as feverishly capture the spirit of contemporary life, created specifically for AGWA.Drawing inspiration from popular culture, shared human experiences and interpersonal exchanges, Park’s works are described as addressing the cultural construction and perception of identity, sexuality, and power within our hyper-mediated society.Park has enjoyed a meteoric rise since receiving her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2020—her work is held in numerous major public collections, including the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami.“Anna Park is part of a new generation of artists who are channelling the chaotic energy of this present moment into powerful artworks that capture the vulnerability and psychological tension that simmers beneath the surface of every human interaction,” said AGWA Director Colin Walker.“Park stands out as one of the most captivating among these young talents, confidently working with charcoal and ink to craft kaleidoscopic drawings that challenge conventions. Over two gallery spaces, Look, look. Anna Park is a major 2024 show for AGWA. We are thrilled to be hosting this significant moment in Park’s career and sharing her poignant drawings with Australian audiences for the first time,” he said.The exhibition homes in on Park’s darkly humorous exploration of female identity through the lens of film and television. Having immigrated from South Korea to the United States as a child, Park’s earliest experiences of Western culture were shaped by current and past American screen stories and advertisements.
Here, she combines these with common phrases and fragmented female figures sourced from mid-century advertisements, comic books, American pop culture and questionable historical texts.
“Being inundated with a lot of quintessential tropes of Western culture, it shaped the way I viewed my own identity and femininity,” Park said of her work. “What I aspired to be was built from the way women are presented in mass media. Filtered images of women in ads and on screen who were always depicted as nothing more than ‘perfect’.
“They were rarely created to be multidimensional beings. I see the female figures I present in these works as a vessel of my own self. Women who reflect a certain ‘ideal’ yet are placed within an environment consumed by chaos.”Curator Rachel Ciesla also had high praise for the artist’s work.
“Park’s works display a form of nostalgic montaging, as she intentionally remixes elements from past art movements and styles, including Pop art from Warhol to Ruscha, comic artists such as R. Crumb and Ralph Steadman, and the graphic collages of Barbara Kruger, with archetypal images floating freely within the zeitgeist. Her satirical drawings make visible the ongoing societal pressure to conform to gender norms that reach across race, sexuality and class.” Ciesla said. Look, look. Anna Park will premiere at AGWA on 20 April 2024 and run until 8 September 2024.
OIP Staff
Images – Anna Park I’m Fine 2022. Ink, acrylic, charcoal, and paper on panel, two parts: 233.7 x 173 x 5.7 cm each, 233.7 x 346.1 x 5.7 cm overall. Photo: Evan Walsh. Anna Park This Could Be Us 2022. Ink, acrylic, charcoal, and paper on panel, 151.8 x 254 x 4.4 cm. Photo: Evan Walsh. All images © Anna Park, Courtesy of the artist and BLUM, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo.
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