WA Focus – Nathan Beard

WA Focus – Nathan Beard

AGWA's annual program dedicated to displaying the work of Western Australian artists, WA Focus showcases recent and new work by local artists, selected to represent a mix of gender, experience and medium.

Nathan Beard is a young Western Australian artist whose work deals with the fluid nature of personal and cultural identities. Often based in an exploration of his own Thai-Australian background, his practice is conceptually and materially hybrid as he combines sumptuously rendered sculpture, photography and drawing to produce thoughtful, provocative and elusive experiences.

Central to his WA Focus display is Beard’s suite of mixed media photographic works titled Ad Matres. This work features manipulated images of found photographs depicting deceased relatives from his mother’s abandoned home in Nakhon Nayak, Thailand. Beard has meticulously decorated these portraits with intricate crystal patterns combining influences from various death masks and runway fashions with traditional Thai culture.

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About the artist

Nathan Beard graduated from Curtin University in 2010 and has exhibited in public and private gallery spaces in Perth, and in Melbourne at the National Gallery of Victoria with two other Western Australian artists as part of the 2012 Next Wave Festival, as well as in Sydney at Artereal and Bangkok. He has had artist’s residencies in China, Thailand and at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Royal Pavilion, Brighton, England.

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On Saturday 27 August, the Gallery is open 10am-3pm only as we prepare for the AGWA Foundation Gala supporting women in the arts. Some exhibition access will be disrupted with two Tracks We Share ground floor galleries closed. AGWA Rooftop bar will be closed, reopening at 2pm Sunday. Details