30 September – 1 November 2008

Paperbark Leaflets is Jason Wing‘s first solo exhibition. The artist will be employing a paper-cutting technique on old advertising posters gleaned from telegraph poles to create a three-dimensional installation – transforming the Ground Floor of 4A into a forest of falling leaves and dancing cherubs.

The image of the cherub is based on a photograph of the artist as a boy and represents a child’s perspective on life before adulthood. Previously appearing in Wing’s other works such as A.B.C Aboriginal Born Chinese (2007), G.M.O Genetically Modified Organism (2007) and Year of the Snake (2006), in Paperbark Leaflets, it will adopt a half-animal form with long and elaborate tails. Emanating off the gallery walls and emerging from the old posters on their delicate skeletal frames, they will playfully interact with each other as well as gallery visitors.

Wing sees the act of removing posters from telegraph poles and collecting them for his work as a reference to the traditional Indigenous process of removing bark from trees for painting.

His work is concerned with the apparent contradictions which he sees in contemporary everyday life and in his mixed Chinese-Aboriginal heritage. Paperbark Leaflets will explore, in particular, the relationship between nature, man and the urban environment. Wing considers the process in which a tree is cut down, stripped of bark and placed back into the earth ironic, and a testament to the absurdity of contemporary life and times where respect for nature is forgotten by man.