Owen Leong: Bitten Peach 分桃

Exhibition Details

Date: 21 November 2024 to 28 February 2025

The Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (IAC) at Western Sydney University is excited to present the exhibition of the year: Bitten Peach 分桃, a solo show of high-profile multidisciplinary visual artist Owen Leong, known for his artistic exploration of queer world-making. As the recipient of IAC’s Chey Fellowship, and with support from the City of Parramatta through Parramatta Artists Studios and the NSW Government through Create NSW, Leong has created a major body of new works for this special exhibition.

Leong’s creations are inspired by a queer reading of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio,《聊齋志異》, a collection of classical Chinese stories by Qing dynasty writer Pu Songling (1640 - 1715). The collection, regarded as the pinnacle of classical Chinese fiction, conjures up a world in which nothing is as it seems, stretching the boundaries between the supernatural and everyday reality, using physical and psychological detail to make the move between these realms seem natural. Generations of Chinese creative minds have been deeply influenced by Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, including Mo Yan, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who in his acceptance speech paid a tribute to Pu Songling by naming him “one of the great storytellers of all time” and acknowledged that his own creative writing “carried on the tradition Pu had perfected”.

A unique feature to this exhibition is an illuminating collaboration between visual and literary mediums. Award-winning author Tom Cho has been commissioned by the artist to write a piece of creative fiction as a looking glass into the exhibition and its own creative response to Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. The short story entitled “The Whole Cannot be Understood Without Reference to its Holes”《無缺亦無圓》is now published in Series 3 Number 16 of HEAT, a renowned literary journal. The author’s recording of the story will be shown at the exhibition and a PDF copy can be accessed on the exhibition webpage.

The story of “bitten peach” 分桃 comes from an anthology of writings by Chinese philosopher Han Fei (c. 280 - 233 BCE) during the Warring States period. As the story has it, a courtier called Mizi Xia was the favoured courtier and lover of Duke Ling, ruler of the ancient Chinese state of Wey (ruled c. 534 - 492 BC). One day, when the two were taking a stroll, Mizi Xia picked a peach from a tree and had a bite. He found it so sweet that he instinctively handed it over to Duke Ling. Duke Ling exclaimed that Mizi Xia must love him so much that he forgot that he had taken a bite of the peach before handing the bitten peach to him.

In this exhibition, by fusing historical materials with contemporary forms, the artist has created an exquisite body of work that “navigates the delicate interplay between past and present, desire and fantasy, self and world” and “transforms classical literature into a contemporary celebration of queer joy, power and agency”.

This is an exceptionally rich, stunningly beautiful and sensual exhibition that cannot be missed.

About Artist

Owen Leong is a multidisciplinary visual artist exploring counternarratives of queer world-making. His work navigates the body as a site of individual experience and a product of social and cultural forces. He uses personal mythologies and kink aesthetics to explore power, control, and care, to reframe and reimagine identities and intimacies. His work centres queer pleasure as an act of political agency and healing.  At the heart of Leong’s practice is a belief in the power of art to transform the way we see ourselves and others.

Leong has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally including the Art Gallery of New South Wales; Art Gallery of South Australia; Queensland Art Gallery; Newcastle Art Gallery; Monash Gallery of Art; 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art; Singapore Art Museum; Today Art Museum, Beijing; Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai; OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen; and the National Museum of Poznan, Poland.

In 2024, Leong received The Chey Fellowship and will present a major solo exhibition at the Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts & Culture at Western Sydney University. He is currently undertaking a two-year studio residency at Parramatta Artists’ Studios. In 2017, Leong was a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize, Australia's premiere prize for young contemporary artists. In 2016, Leong received the MAMA National Photography Prize and in 2015, he won the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award.

Leong has been awarded numerous grants from Creative Australia, Create NSW, Ian Potter Cultural Trust, and Asialink. He has held artist residencies at Artspace, Sydney; Centre for Contemporary Chinese Art, Manchester; Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan; Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Shanghai; and Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong.

His work is held in the public collections of Creative Australia, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, Detached Cultural Organisation, Gold Coast City Gallery, Murray Art Museum Albury, Newcastle Art Gallery, University of Salford Art Collection UK, and private collections in Australia and internationally.

Artist Statement

Bitten Peach 分桃 is an exhibition of contemporary art inspired by a queer reading of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio 《聊齋志異》, a collection of classical Chinese stories by Qing dynasty writer Pu Songling (1640 - 1715). The studio, as a physical and symbolic space, functions as a gestalt—a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. In this exhibition, the studio embodies an aesthetic, cultural and sensual universe where historical narratives intertwine with contemporary queer identities.

My artworks use Asian gothic symbolism as a metaphor for haunting by heteronormative systems of power. When I read these tales, the boundaries between the supernatural and everyday reality are fluid. In my imagination, fox spirits, ghosts, and demons exist between realms as genderless creatures of otherworldly power and sublime form, focused on enlightenment through sensual pleasure.

The erotic, as a profound expression of human desire in all its extraordinary intensity and richness, explores the depths and nuances of human nature and consciousness. By blending historical materials with contemporary forms, I have created a series of queer-coded sculptures that navigate the subtle interplay between past and present, desire and fantasy, self and other.

Lanterns and candles symbolically light the way for the ones that have passed, while also illuminating the unknown to be seen. A bronze ghost claw clutches a dripping candle on a melting bronze staircase, suggesting a delicate tension between worlds. Another claw digs its talons into a rose wood table, referencing a lustful and life-changing encounter with a ghost. A giant glass peach, traditionally symbolising immortality, swells with an intensity of emotions. Oversized silk teardrops convey a sense of longing through cartoon aesthetics. A fox tail suspended by chain sheds glass teardrops towards a porcelain ring on the floor, like a portal into another realm. Bleach paintings on deconstructed cotton bed sheets feature ghostly calligraphic characters drawn from classical Chinese literature, erotic poetry and love letters.

For this project, award-winning author Tom Cho was commissioned to write a piece of creative fiction as a looking glass into the exhibition. The Whole Cannot be Understood Without Reference to its Holes 《無缺亦無圓 》is the story of a young scholar who makes love to an ink spirit that springs forth from his imagination, and reflects the theme of art making as an intimate encounter with the self. From Pu Songling’s Qing dynasty scholar's studio to Cho's writing space and my own artist's studio to the IAC gallery, this exhibition is a collaboration between artists and writers that unfolds through visual and literary mediums, connecting us across time and place.

About the Author

Tom Cho is an artist and the author of Look Who's Morphing, a collection of fictions. He has a PhD in Professional Writing from Deakin University. His fiction has appeared widely, including in such publications as The Best Australian Stories series, Asia Literary Review and The New Quarterly. He has also performed his work on the stages of many festivals, from Singapore Writers Festival to Sydney Mardi Gras, including in the award-winning show Hello Kitty, which combined literature with power ballads.

To purchase a copy of HEAT, please click on: https://giramondopublishing.com/books/heat-series-3-number-16/

The Whole Cannot be Understood Without Reference to its Holes 無缺亦無圓 by Tom Cho

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