Jason Phu: Monster Talent.

At the ART SG fair earlier this year, we stopped for a quick chat with rising Aussie artist Jason Phu, promising to take no more than five minutes of his time. Here’s how the conversation unfurled.

Alright, Jason, tell me how and why you got into the art game.

I didn't want to become an artist originally. I did art in high school, and I liked it, but I feel like most kids like to draw. It's a fun thing to do, and I like cartoons as you can see. But then I saw a movie with Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortensen; he’s an artist, he lives in an attic and does heroin. I saw that when I was a kid, and I thought, that looks shit. But then my art teacher told me, that's a movie, you idiot. It's not real life. I was two marks short of doing engineering, which I had a passion for. My art teacher talked to my parents and said I should pursue art, like Viggo Mortensen's character, so that’s how I went to art school.

What’s the root of this visual style you've adopted? It has this childlike naivete, but…

Oh, I don't know, it just sort of happened. I didn't see it that way until now, that’s a good observation.

[I wonder: Is Jason taking the piss? I think he’s taking the piss. I think he think my observation is basic AF. Anyway, let’s keep going.] There’s this juxtaposition of the slightly sinister and macabre — monsters, dead flowers — but also something joyous and child-like, right?

I think it’s a contemporary distinction between childlike naivete and the macabre. Everyone knows now, through Hollywood's re-imaginings of classic fairy tales, that the origins of those fairytales are quite dark. If you look at any culture's OG stories, original stories, they're all fuckin’ macabre. There was no PG rating, back in the day, for kids stories. They would be like, "Yeah, then the kid's head got chopped off, and he died, and his whole family died — because he didn't eat his veggies." Whereas that might be considered extreme now. I didn't actually think about that until you mentioned it, but it is quite childlike and colourful.

Jason Phu at the Chalk Horse Gallery stand at ART SG 2024.

You don't have to put this in the article, my gallery hates when I talk about this, but REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTEDREDACTED REDACTED REDACTED and people like colourful things above their fireplaces. My friend Adbul Abdullah says we make jewellery for houses.

Okay, that's a nice way of putting it. I read the other day that Basquiat said, “Art is how we decorate space, and music is how we decorate time.”

But also, you know what, I'm being cynical and dumb about all this stuff, but I don't see art as a big thing. There are so many bigger things in our lives. I think I just make pretty pictures. Some artists might say their work is more important, and I say, cool, good for you, but I just make pretty pictures.

Installation view of a couple of Jason’s pretty pictures.

In our last 15 seconds, what should I be reading into this work right here? What's the message?

Well, it’s two giants at war. It's the bigger forces that are overwhelming us that we can't control or fight against. It's an overwhelming sense of sleepiness.

Good one, Jason. Thanks. That's five minutes exactly. I thank you.

JASON PHU IS REPRESENTED BY CHALK HORSE GALLERY.