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Jo Chew

@jochew_

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Happy Father’s Day to all the dads. I love this cheeky photo of my dad and mum from when they were young. They’re still young at heart in their 80s and I’m grateful for them and their ongoing love for each other and for us kids 🙌💕 by @jochew_

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a month ago

Thanks @bayoffireswinterartsfestival and congratulations @george.kennedy and @ploverbird ✨✨✨

Congratulations to all the finalists, such a strong exhibition

Such a pleasure to be invited to judge this prize with the wonderful @katywoodroffe and Maureen Varnavsky and to get away with my love @sammyjhendo 💕 taken in The Panorama Hotel by @jochew_

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4 months ago

In good company with Launceston Church Grammar School’s 20th anniversary of its artist in residence program. Opening this Friday @poimenagallery in Launceston ✨✨✨ by @jochew_

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4 months ago

Packing up a house means packing away artworks I’ve lived with for many years. This is the only work of mine on the walls, a painting made in 2014 and never exhibited. It’s been in my son’s room since he moved back. It’s the year of the horse so thought I’d share it, especially with the afternoon light framing their heads so beautifully. If someone has a big wall and the inclination I’m happy to lend it out while I’m inbetween places x by @jochew_

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7 months ago

Back in the studio after a break…ugly duckling stage but hoping I can turn it around 🦢 by @jochew_

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7 months ago

Opening tonight from 5:30 at Good Grief!

The past year has been quite strange, a lot of wonderful things happened but a lot of difficult things too. Big changes have rattled me and my family pushing us out of our comfort zones. It feels like I’m returning again to the starting line. But I’m a horse so maybe I’ll do okay in the next race 🐎
I hoped to make new work for this show, beautifully curated by @tamzenbrewster, but time had a different agenda, so I have paintings made last year for Brisbane - still lovely to have them seen in my hometown.
There are some truly stunning pieces in this, so wonderful to be exhibiting again with @sallyr @tamzenbrewster @jacob.leary @jillianfarmer9 and Denis Pybus and Christl Berg ✨

I might be a bit late to the party as the incredible @meganwalch is opening at @bettgallery tonight too!

Peace ✌️ taken in Good Grief Studios by @jochew_

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8 months ago

The bending of light
2025
97 x 101.5 cm

I was drawn to this image of a young man looking at Buckminster Fuller’s recently completed dome home at Carbondale. The painting, like most of my works, is a shallow, stage-like space. Strangely coloured trees and light replace those in the source image, the title hints at ideas of mirages or phantom islands. It’s unclear if it’s from the past or the future. The young man reminds me of my son, who, I realised while painting this, is about to leave home and find his own. I wish the optimism and resourcefulness of someone like Bucky Fuller - and the 60s in general - still persisted (especially when it comes to housing).

For enquiries please email dean@michaelreid.com.au taken in Michael Reid Sydney by @jochew_

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10 months ago

FINAL DAYS: JO CHEW | Painting Now | Until 28 December | Michael Reid Sydney

“The collage that informed this painting is of a pale yellow spirit house obscuring a cut-out copy of a Louise Bourgeois drawing attached with masking tape to a picture of a Japanese garden in the snow,” says Tasmanian artist JO CHEW, discussing her work, ‘Magnetic Variation’ – on view in our year-end group survey, Painting Now, which will continue online after the gallery closes this week.

“More a meditation on the relationship between colour and form than storytelling, the title nonetheless suggests ideas of navigation and the difficulty of finding a way. Things are not always as they seem; sometimes, North isn’t really North, and we need to adjust. To me, this painting conveys a quiet acceptance – and a waiting. All of the things within this painting are deliberately hidden, enclosed, but like a cocoon, they hide something that is forming.”

With her Painting Now series, Chew builds bright, sun-dappled scenes on a dazzling scale, deriving her compositions from earlier collage work. Through this process, fragmentary photographs, drawings and found references are spliced together “in the hope of finding something that speaks to me,” she says. Achieving an almost trompe-l’œil effect, the resulting paintings retain a collagistic sense of pictorial layering in space – an illusory interweaving of paper and paint, memory and material.

Despite compelling ambiguities, themes slowly coalesce through Chew’s Painting Now series, in which house-like structures repeat in various guises and take on poetic resonance. Whether temporary and improvisational – tents and makeshift A-frames – or suggesting visions of a modernist future – dream houses and geodesic domes – her pitched forms invoke a universal language of shelter, inviting reflections on our longing for refuge and a place to call home.

To discuss ‘Magnetic Variation’ and other works from Jo Chew’s Painting Now series, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au

@jochew_

#jochew #paintingnow #paintingnow2025 #michaelreidsydney taken in Michael Reid Sydney by @jochew_

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10 months ago

Painting Now 2025 continues until 28 December at Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney ♥️

Thanks so much @deanandersen.art for curating me into this beautiful exhibition, alongside brilliant work by Columbiere Tipungwuti, Dhukumul Wanambi, @heathnock and @brenton_drechsler 💪✨✨

Huge thank you to everyone who visited and supported me in this venture, especially my traveling friends @amber_koroluk_stephenson @hellonicola @tim_price_paint and @juliacastiglionibradshaw

And a very big thank you to those collectors who bought works, you not only encourage us to keep going but you enable us to keep going 🙏✨ taken in Michael Reid Sydney by @jochew_

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10 months ago

Magnetic Variation (2025). At the centre of the collage that informed this painting is a yellow spirit house without windows or doors. It obscures a cut out copy of a Louise Bourgeois drawing (that has been living in my studio for some time) attached with masking tape to a photograph of a Japanese garden in the snow. More a meditation on the relationships between colour and form than storytelling, the title nonetheless suggests ideas of navigation and the difficulty of finding a way. Things are not always as they seem, sometimes north isn’t really north, and we need to adjust. To me this painting conveys a quiet acceptance, and a waiting. All of the things within this painting are deliberately hidden or enclosed, but like a cocoon they hide something that is forming.

This painting is part of a body of work made for Painting Now 2025, at Michael Reid, Sydney until 28 December.

Magnetic Variation
2025
oil on canvas
92 x 71.5 cm

For enquiries please reach out to Dean dean@michaelreid.com.au taken in Michael Reid Sydney by @jochew_

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10 months ago

🌿☀️🌊🎨 by @jochew_

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10 months ago

by @jochew_

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10 months ago