Artists statement

'Tropical Flesh (ii)' draws upon the slippery experience of identity to explore family connection. There are threads of dislocation and the thickness of tropical time. Silicone casts of tropical jackfruits are fused with a cast of the artists’ aunt’s foot, the cast of which was made upon her permanent return to Thailand. Together, the visibly-aged foot and a fruit that decays quite vividly, evokes a sense of time passing.

The work is informed by the experience of witnessing members of family age in slices of time, across vast distances. The artist asks us to consider the work as a memento mori.

Artist Bio
Nathan Beard is a multidisciplinary artist whose work draws from his Australian-Thai heritage to unpack the porous and precarious influences of culture and memory. Through the incorporation of exchanges with his family and archives alongside broader cultural signifiers of ‘Thainess’, Beard playfully express the complexities surrounding authenticity and diasporic identity.

Recent exhibitions include A Puzzlement, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2022), Husk, FUTURES (2022), Low Yield Fruit, sweet pea (2022), White Gilt 2.0, Firstdraft (2020), A dense intimacy (with Lindy Lee), Bus Projects (2019) and WA Focus: Nathan Beard, Art Gallery of Western Australia (2017). In 2022 Beard completed an Australia Council residency at ACME Studios, London. He has been a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize (2021) the Churchie emerging art prize (2020), and participated in the 4A Beijing Studio Program (2017), and the Gertrude Contemporary Studio Program (2023-2025).