About

Born in Hong Kong, Cyrus (Wai-kuen) Tang moved to Australia in 2003. She finished her Degree (Hons) of Fine Arts at Victoria College of the Arts, Melbourne in 2004, and her Master of Fine Arts (Research) in Monash University, Melbourne in 2010. In these years, Cyrus has been offered by different residency programmes, including Helsinki International Artist Program 2013; The National Art Studio in South Korea in 2012; Cite International de Arts, Paris in 2009 and The Banff Centre, Canada in 2008. Her work was showing in Tarra Warra Museum of Arts 2017 also interstate in Australia and various countries including Bangkok, Helsinki, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, France, Shanghai and Sweden. She is Finalist of Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2021; recipient of McCelland National Small Sculpture Awards 2020; recipient of Incinerator social change award 2020; Honourable Mention of William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize 2018; Highly Commended of Sunshine Coast Art Prize 2016, Asia Link Residency Programme 2012; the Australian Council for the Arts Skills and Arts Development Grant in 2011 and New Work Grant in 2009; George Mora Foundation Fellowship 2008; Theodor Urback Encouragement Award 2004 and The National Gallery of Victoria-Trustee Award 2003. She is currently represented by Arc One Gallery, Melbourne 

Artist Statement 

My art practice reflects sentiment of nostalgia through translation of disappearance into remembrance and fantasy. It reflects my examination of the paradox of reconstructing ephemeral mental images and sensations in permanent materials. 

My work depicts ruins and decay: of human bodies, of houses and of cities. It depicts spirit-like things drifting in a black void, and the dust of civilisation lifting and floating into an ether without gravity. It deals with a loss of memory, as forgetting the past and rendered as decaying form and with the effort to hold onto memories and to even resurrect them. But the medium itself is also caught in this drama of loss and recovery. The visual effects I use are all analogue, and shot with labour-intensive procedures. This is crucial to the art: the analogue world is being dissolved by the digital media. My own videos and photographs are presented in post-production digital formats, but I produce the work materially in the studio in these labour-intensive analogue ways. The analogue is the ruin, the memory that is being eroded, and yet in which I pin my hopes for resurrection or survival. My work is about the potential survival of the analogue, perhaps as a dream of recovery and restoration. Perhaps as a utopia, beyond the medium’s obsolescence.