About



Photograph: Angela Prendergast

Jacquie Meng (b.1998, Hangzhou) works with painting, sound, and installation. Her work redefines diasporic cultural identity beyond national and geographical specificities, rather seeing it as unfixed. Through consideration of posthumanism, performativity, and the migration of objects and imagery between cultures, Meng  explores the ways that identity can be reflected beyond the body: it can be revealed through objects, patterns, chance encounters, idiosyncrasies, as well as through embedded cultural and social practices. She makes paintings of her surroundings through a speculative lens, collapsing time and space, changing the experience of observation into one of invention, referencing mythologies and personal truths and fictions. Through this, She highlights the uncannyness of the everyday and reflects on the strangeness of identity politics.

Meng was awarded Guy Warren Emerging Art Prize 2024,  the Brett Whitely travelling scholarship in 2021, was a finalist in the churchie Emerging Art Prize at the IMA, and was a part of PICA’s Hatched 2022. In 2023, she completed two overseas artist residencies, at Kunstraum in New York (April-July) and Pilotenkueche International Art Program Leipzig (July-September). Meng is represented by Stanley Street Gallery.



“As cultural theorist Sianne Ngai has argued, cuteness—and its associated feelings of diminution and powerlessness—is never far away from feelings of aggression and destructiveness, as can be seen in the desire to squeeze or ‘gobble up’ the cute object. Meng’s works play with this tension between aggression and passivity, and between pleasure and menace, in a way that speaks powerfully to the fragmentation of online culture. More specifically, her paintings draw on the eclectic maximalism of hyperpop, the bricolage of memes and imageboard aesthetics, and online spirituality and wellness communities. Not only do these paintings powerfully play with cultural and geographical diaspora, but also the communicative and technological diaspora produced by periods of rapid acceleration and stagnation of online visual culture.” - Francis Russell, 2022. [Artlink]



C.V


Education

Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) (First Class Honours)/ Bachelor of Art History and Curatorship, The Australian National University


Awards/Prizes/Grants

2024 Guy Warren Emerging Artist Prize (Mosman Art Prize), Mosman Art Gallery
2o24 Lenn Fox Painting Prize Finalist 
2022 the churchie emerging art prize, Institute of Modern Art (Finalist)
2022 Schenberg Art Scholarship (Finalist)
2022 ArtsACT Activities Funding 
2021 Brett Whitely Travelling Scholarship
2021 ANU School of Art and Design Drawing Prize (Finalist)
2020 ArtsACT HOMEFRONT Grant
2019/20 Emerging Artist Support Scheme (EASS) Tributary Projects Exhibition Award
2016 ANU Foundation for Visual Arts Scholarship


Residencies
2023 Kunstraum, Brooklyn New York (01 April - 30 June)
2023 Pilotenkueche, Leipzig (04 July - 23 September)
2022 Brett Whitely Travelling Scholarship Residency, Kangaroo Vallery NSW (Cancelled due to COVID19/floods)


Solo/Collaborative Shows

2024 THE WORLD IS MY PLAYGROUND (forthcoming) Stanley Street Gallery
2022 Gorgeous Shadow, Bent Dream (with Genie Stuart, Tom Campbell, Joanne Leong) Tuggeranong Arts Centre, Canberra
2022 Both Ways Beyond the Sky (with Emma Rani Hodges)
Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS) Manuka, Canberra
2021 Don’t Cry For Me, I’m Brave (with Genie Stuart)
Tributary Projects, Canberra


Selected Shows/Fairs

2024 Canberra Bienniale (Upcoming), Canberra
2024 Sydney Contemp0rary (Upcoming) Carriageworks, Sydney
2024 Floor is Lava Tiles, Sydney
2024 Year of the Dragon 4A Center for Contemporary Art, Sydney
2023 Sydney Contemporary Carriageworks, Sydney
2023 Train Inspectors Every Day Alte Handelsschule, Leipzig
2023 Circle Becoming Body Alte Handelsschule, Leipzig 
2023 The Office NYC Thames Art Center, Brooklyn NYC
2023 IMA Annual Gala The Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
2022 Loss of Horizon Stanley Street Gallery, Sydney
2022 The stuff in between, ANCA Tenant’s Show Australian National
2022 the churchie emerging art prize The Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
2022 Hatched Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth
2021 ANU School of Art and Design Drawing Prize ANU School of Art Gallery, Canberra
2021 Sugar Cube Gallery Launch Sugar Cube Gallery, Canberra
2020 我 In Process Tuggeranong Arts Centre, Canberra
2020 Suggestive Terrain Tributary Projects, Canberra
2020 Fire Fight Nishi Gallery, Canberra
2020 Fire Relief (Fun)draiser Tributary Projects, Canberra
2019 ANU School of Art and Design Graduating Exhibition ANU School of Art and Design, Canberra
2019 Unshaken Gallery 17., St Kilda, Melbourne
2019, 2018 Tuesday On My Wall ANU School of Art and Design, Canberra
2018 Canberra DIY Presents IN THE LIGHT OF: RA Polish White Eagle Club, Canberra


Selected Performances

2022 ASMR Gossip Broadcast, 3rd Installment, Tuggeranong Arts Centre
2021 ASMR Gossip Broadcast, 2nd Installment, Tributary Projects
2020 ASMR Gossip Broadcast, Tributary Projects


Commissions

2024 Triple R (3RRR) 102.7FM April Amnesty design, Melbourne
2024 Bar Rochford x hotnoodlecoldwine (Earth Angels) poster design, Melbourne
2024 genie_beanie_in_the_washing_machiney@hotmail.com “Your Love Makes Me Sing” EP artwork
2024 Gabe Gordon x Karla Laidlaw poster design, Melbourne
2024 Woodburnia Interactive Painting Woodburnia
2023 Rory J S “Edits how I one it” EP art
2021-3 sideway event poster design, club design, Canberra
2021-3 Fiend Bookshop merchandise design, Melbourne
2022-3 Blonde Concept store mural, merchandise, branding, Canberra
2023 Sesame Girl “Boys” Single Cover
2022 “Liquid Fidelity” Ravensworth Wines wine label design
2022 黑芝麻 (Hei Zhi Ma) “黑芝麻和朋友们 (Hei Zhi Ma and friends)” Pure Space EP Artwork
2022 SUNY Cereal Bar merchandise, Canberra
2020我-In-Process [12 week collaborative project], Tuggeranong Arts Centre, Canberra
2020 Art Not Apart n.10.aus stage design, Canberra
2017 Art School Ball, Coordinator, ANU School of Art and Design, Canberra


Publications

Francis Russell, Hatched: National Graduate Show Review, Artlink, 2022






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