Who/What is Ornaroco?
Ornaroco is a page dedicated to feature the art practice of Tony Tran. The term ‘ornaroco’ came from fusing the words ‘ornamentation’ and ‘rococo’, which best encapsulates the style he is currently interested in.
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Biography & Artist Statement
Tony Tran is an emerging contemporary artist who graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of New South Wales and has exhibited his works in several places around New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, London and Athens. His artistic practice revolves around using the mediums of sculpture and photography to construct images with numinous intensities stemming from the recesses of his psyche and imagination that gleans upon intertwining and abstracting his Asian identity within a westernised culture whilst drawing on an intimate obsession with ornate forms. He has been awarded an Honorable Mention for his series ‘Ornafanum-Vacui’ from the Tokyo International Foto Awards in 2022 while also being a finalist for the ‘It’s a Small World’ Sculpture Exhibition Prize, the 2023 Burwood Art Prize, Lethbridge 20000 Art Awards and the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize. Accolades growing, he became a merit awardee for the Kite Prize for Contemporary Art whilst also being granted a feature on the Art Edit Magazine for the 36th issue. Tran was born and raised on unceded Gadigal land (Sydney, Australia) from his immigrated Vietnamese parents.
Tran’s current work combines traditional and digital applications of sculpture to create these elaborate statues exploring his fascination with merging figurative imagery with ornate forms derived from shell-like, floral and geometric patterns. His practice often responds to an existential yearning to seek new cultural aesthetic and iconography through navigating the landscape of secular pessimism and experiences of cultural hybridity, alienation, and atomisation whilst also exploring and embracing ideas surrounding a technological-dependent modality of art making. Hence, his practice consists of making reimagined altar-like sculptures that attempt to fuse and collapse disparate myths, cultures, and ideas of classicism from pan-Asian and European influences to cultivate a novel and personalised aesthetic. The method of creating his works involves a constant iterative process of designing these sculptural dioramas which is achieved through digitally sculpting the forms from scratch, slicing up the intricate models, 3D-printing them then deftly welding them together. The result presents a faux-porcelain sculptural concoction that features fragmented chimeras of faceless angels and humanoid deities adorned with orchestrated implosions of fractal behemoths that recalls and recollects antiquated cultural imagery and artifacts that then becomes reconfigured and re-imagined.
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Artist C/V
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Education
2022 – BACHELOR OF FINE ARTS – With Distinction
University of New South Wales, Art & Design
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Selected Group Exhibitions
2022 – SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS, 19 Aug – 2 Sep, Blenheim House, Randwick, NSW
2022 – THE ANNUAL, 2 – 17 Dec, UNSW Galleries, Paddington, NSW
2023 – THE NEW ARTIST, 13 – 18 Jan, Boomer Gallery, Tower Bridge, LONDON
2023 – FAMILIAR & STRANGE, 27 Jan – 5 Feb, The Factory, Hackney Central, LONDON
2023 – FIERA, 27 Jan – 5 Feb, The Holy Art Gallery, Central Athens, ATHENS
2023 – HYGGE, 30 Jan – 19 Mar, Artists on the Lam, Virtual Exhibition
2023 – KITE PRIZE VIRTUAL MERIT, 3 Mar, Amie Potsic Art Advisory, Virtual Exhibition
2023 – IT’S A SMALL WORLD, 18 Mar – 9 Apr, Newstead Arts Hub, Newstead, VIC
2023 – PULP BOUND, 9 – 19 May, AD Space, Paddington, NSW
2023 – BURWOOD ART PRIZE, 22 May – 18 Jun, Burwood Community Hub, Burwood, NSW
2023 – LETHBRIDGE 20000, 17 – 24 Jun, Lethbridge Gallery, Paddington, QLD
2023 – WOOLLAHRA SMALL SCULPTURE PRIZE, 28 Sep – 5 Nov, Woollahra Gallery, Double Bay, NSW
2023 – TODDLERPILLARS, 29 Oct – 19 Nov, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, VIC
2024 – IN BLOOM, 18 May – 2 Jun, Saywell Gallery, Marrickville, NSW
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Awards
2022 – TOKYO INTERNATIONAL FOTO AWARDS – Honorable Mentions
2022 – IT’S A SMALL WORLD SCULPTURE PRIZE – Finalist
2023 – KITE PRIZE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART – Merit Awardee
2023 – BURWOOD ART PRIZE – Finalist
2023 – LETHBRIDGE 20000 – Finalist
2023 – VAO UK & INTENRATIONAL EMERGING ART AWARDS – Shortlisted
2023 – WOOLLAHRA SMALL SCULPTURE PRIZE – Finalist
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Publications
2022 – SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS – Exhibition Catalogue, Australia
2023 – THE NEW ARTIST – #4 Edition Catalogue, London
2023 – ART EDIT MAGAZINE – #36 Winter Issue, Australia
2024 – THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS – Vol. 63 no.1, Australia
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