Jayanto Tan

About the work

Floating Tales From the Celestial Garden, 2024
ceramic, lustre, incense
$550 per set

Floating Tales From the Celestial Gardens is like an altar which all family members and friends might gather. An ongoing series of fake foods displayed on top of the ‘lotus leaves’ these are reflections on the artists childhood and upbringing, imbued with a sentimental emotional value that unites with the current Australia contemporary lifestyle. It is a small and simple, but very potent and colourful way of suggesting thoughts about community, about how people come together and share life. Sensitive and sensual at the same time, this work is about sharing, friendship, family and neighbourhood.

About Jayanto Tan

Jayanto is a Gadigal/Wangal based visual artist who was born and raised in a small town in North Sumatra, Indonesia. His practice draws on his family history and diasporic background, blending Eastern and Western mythologies with the contemporary world and current events. Using ceramic sculptures, found objects, authentic food, performance and installation, his work often investigates how hybrid cultures can create new identities of possibility and hope.

Jayanto has exhibited extensively in both solo and group exhibitions in Australia and overseas and won the 2021 Georges River Sculpture Art Prize and was Highly Commented in the 2023 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award.

Top image: Jayanto Tan, Floating Tales From the Celestial Garden, 2024. Photo: Courtesy of the Artist.