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Marina Yang

@marinayang_

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966

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ꕤ mostly human
ꕤ see more art at marinayang.com
ꕤ commissions closed

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artifacts, synthetic polymer paint on found chair

honestly this is an absurd sculpture. i have a highfalutin statement about it but really it’s a chair covered in a nonsense of text, painstakingly translated into a colour code. the entire chair is readable. the text includes overheard words, extracts from my journal, book quotes, text messages, and the names of my closest friends (and the name of my favourite f1 driver).

it’s an archive of information, fragmented and meaningless, and yet meaningful to me. i spent at least 50 hours on this ridiculous object. sweating through the summer, working in shifts, getting bitten by mosquitos. i remember being sad and tired and meditative and silly and stressed. i felt stupid for deciding to make this thing when i could have done something easier. but at the same time i loved the labour, the pure folly of it, giving myself to it. somehow thankful for the thankless work.

my parents thought i was crazy but they rolled with it. my dad could barely stop himself from helping me with the sanding and painting. my mum would show up while i was on my knees painting in her garage, and feed me pieces of fruit. they didn’t understand what i was painting but it didn’t matter to them. they knew the work was important anyway.

also much gratitude to @phi_morton_art for leading a group of us to stage our own version of sculpture by the sea at maroubra. my chair had previously been abandoned by the roadside, destined for the tip. instead it got to be loved by my hands and taken to see the ocean. if it’s stupid to be sentimental about this chair, i am happy to be stupid.
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#outdoorart #outdoorsculpture #publicart taken in Sydney, Australia by @marinayang_

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6 months ago

“BEGUN BY DAWN”, oil on canvas. I was inspired by a moment on the drive with @poolai to Aoraki (Mount Cook) in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Watching the mountains grow larger and larger before us, forming out of the darkness to emerge into the dawn. We were rushing towards something ancient and majestic while the night died and a new day began, and on that threshold of change the world felt full of promise.

(Sadly I didn’t get to the top of the hike, I made it over the snowline but tapped out when my vertigo kicked in and found myself clinging woefully to a rock and moaning about how dizzy I was…)
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#oilpainting #oilpainter #abstractart #abstractpainting #abstractartist by @marinayang_

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a year ago

An incredible two days of critiques with the best painting class at NAS. I feel so lucky to be surrounded by all these beautiful, creative minds. Deeply grateful for everyone's feedback and support. I love this community of artists - so excited by how far we've all come, and where we're going!

And a big thank you to @octaviaalarossiii @mhendo_art @nicolajones_art and geri for helping me set up!
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#artschool #artist #artistlife #artstudent #artstudentlife #artschoollife by @marinayang_

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a year ago

"Making Meaning" a mini documentary
2026
Artist: @marinayang_
Filmed by Jay taken in National Art School by @marinayang_

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2 days ago

Mini Documentary available on YouTube. link in bio.

Taking you behind the scenes for a quick look into what it takes to make a mini doc as a solo filmmaker. We work hard, but we don't forget to have some fun while we're at it.

Artist and talent 💃 @marinayang_ taken in National Art School by @marinayang_

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8 days ago

I’ve been making paintings that come to me like waking dreams. A particular image will rise to the surface and I hold it there and let more images emerge. There’s a rightness when certain images resonate with each other. It feels a little like chemistry; there’s a humming electric undercurrent, a near-lust, a yearning to reach out and touch.

I bring those images out into the world so that I can look at them and try to understand why they felt so strongly about needing to be together.

This candle called to the lighthouse and the lighthouse called back. I’m not sure which of them was the siren or the sailor.

“candle, lighthouse”, oil on canvas, 20cm x 25cm

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#oilpainting #painting #candle #stilllife #stilllifepainting taken in Sydney, Australia by @marinayang_

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a month ago

For the last two years, I feel like I’ve been living in a dorm with dozens of other painters. We can hear each other through the walls of our studios, we pop around to borrow paint and tape, we complain about the stairs we have to climb to get to our floors.

Periphery is a slice of our studio lives. Before any painting makes it onto a wall, there is the labour of research and experimentation, the by-products of which are artefacts that rarely get the luxury of being showcased.

My collage work “REBUS” invites viewers to play with symbols the way that I do in the studio. It’s a tool for infinite idea generation, a toy for quasi-divination à la osteomancy. The symbols lead me towards mental images that sometimes birth drawings and paintings. Images begetting images.

Thank you @masonkimber and @elizabethpulie for bringing us together for this show, and thank you to my Periphery peers for being such an inspiring and hardworking team. It’s so lovely to get this insight into everyone’s preparatory work, the hidden half of the painting process.

Thank you @nas_library for having us in the Library Stairwell Gallery.

Periphery is showing until 28 August. taken in National Art School by @marinayang_

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2 months ago

Overwhelmed by all the love and support from the last few days.

Thank you so much to @a.single.piece and curator Rose Jiiwulee for showing my painting “X BELL STICK VULTURE MATCH” as part of its latest group show.

And for all the friends, old and new, who showed up or reached out to support.

I’ve always wanted to be understood and seen and heard. At the same time I often felt undeserving and afraid that if anyone actually paid attention, they’d realise just how flawed I was. It was safer to keep quiet and hidden.

But painting and the beautiful communities around me just keep proving how wrong that thinking is.

Thank you for supporting my little painting; thanks for supporting little ol’ me 💕

“X BELL STICK VULTURE MATCH” will be viewable in the window gallery of A Single Piece on 21-22 July or by appointment until 25 July. taken in Sydney, Australia by @marinayang_

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3 months ago

BTS and testing for my collage-cum-sculpture-cum-game “REBUS”. Sometimes I play with these wooden cubes as a kind of osteomancy or jiaobei moon block practice. I’m not superstitious in the least, I’m not attached to the idea of a force driving a particular outcome, but I enjoy divination as a personal exercise. Prompts for a self-dialogue, temet nosce, etc.

Today I picked up a cube and turned it over to see a red hand and it made me think about what I need to stop doing. A litany of habits. Stop overworking; stop thrill-seeking; stop distracting yourself. All things I needed to hear (and sometimes, sometimes, I listen!).

These cubes live in my studio, often atop my paint cabinet, sometimes stacked in a tottering tower, sometimes strewn across the floor. Occasionally someone else moves them and I find them in a new configuration.

They’ve become precious to me, increasingly more as personal tools than as the artwork they were originally conceived as.
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#collageart #woodart #handmade #collage #smallsculpture taken in Sydney, Australia by @marinayang_

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4 months ago

“REBUS” is about our desire to make sense of the world and find meaning. Named after rebus word-picture puzzles, these 20 cubes are a game that can be arranged freely. The only instruction is to play.

This work is in part a response to present day conflicts. There’s so much focus on difference as a reason to hate and hurt each other, but I want to find ways to celebrate both our similarities and our differences. The hope is that people can handle these objects and find meaning in the random arrangements, and share and compare their interpretations. Sometimes it’s too easy to forget that we are all curious children, sharing the same world.

“REBUS” emerged from several weeks of research and testing in a little studio alcove I shared with @eleni_pape. It was high summer and we were all in a hot fever of art-making. I had never felt so invested in my own practice and the work of everyone around me. It felt like we talked about everything under the sun: love, family, the metaphysical, every -ism and -ology. Several months on I’m still thinking about it and making paintings derived from the research and experimentation that enabled “REBUS” to be made.
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#woodworking #smallsculpture #handmadeart #woodart #collageart taken in National Art School by @marinayang_

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4 months ago

I found an abandoned shopping bag of wood offcuts. All of them were weird and irregular shapes that seemed to suggest that they were more than just surfaces. I held this piece in my hand and the weight and shape of it immediately put the image of a knife into my mind. It only had to be released.

The painting process felt more like an uncovering rather than a making. Like digging up a buried artefact, that had been there all along, out of sight.

“a lament comes in many voices” (2025), oil and acrylic on wood.

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#contemporarypainting #stilllife #stilllifepainting #oilpainting taken in Sydney, Australia by @marinayang_

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8 months ago

“still warm in our nest” (2025), oil on canvas.

I was feeling soft and tender when I painted this one. Still do when I look at it.

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#contemporarypainting #abstractart #oilpainting #painting #surrealart taken in Sydney, Australia by @marinayang_

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8 months ago