Hypnotising Chickens: Recent Video Art from Vietnam and Tasmania / Gà Gật: Các tác phẩm Video từ Việt Nam và Tasmania
Ngọc Nâu
Sabio
Lêna Bùi
Hannah Foley
Reece Nicolaou
Lê Đ. Chung
Trần Uy Đức
Trương Quế Chi
Việt Vũ
Matt Warren
Milly Yencken
Xiyue Zhang
Curated by Kylie Johnson, Linh Lê, Phạm Nguyễn Anh Tú giám tuyển
Exhibition: 13 – 29 March 2025
Opening: 5.30pm, Friday 14 March 2025
Art Forum: 12pm, Friday 21 March, School of Creative Arts, Dechaineux Lecture Theatre, Nipaluna/Hobart
Evening screening: 6pm, Friday 21 March, Contemporary Art Tasmania
Hypnotising Chickens: Recent Video Art from Vietnam and Tasmania is a partnership project between Saigon Experimental and CAT, presented in Nipaluna/Hobart, Tasmania and Saigon, Vietnam. The project brings together 12 artists from both locations within a video screening program that includes many formats: experimental film, animation, performance documentation and music video. A diversity of subjects are embraced, including merging the real with the imagined, history with the present, and existing with speculative ways of being in the world.
Artist bios
Ngọc Nâu is based in northern Vietnam. Through her work, she delves into social issues that are intertwined with technological progress – spirituality, land transformation and labor conditions – using these to reflect on the future, collective memory, and the human experience. Ngọc Nâu invites audiences to reconsider these narratives and engage in a dialogue about the complexities of contemporary existence. Ngoc Nau’s works have been presented at: Ecological Art from Beneath, Gangwon International Triennale, South Korea (2024); Art Basel, Hong Kong (2023), Documenta15, Germany through SaSa art projects collective (2022); ThaiLand Biennale (2021), and Singapore Biennale (2019).
Sabio (Sabrina Evans) lives in Lutruwita/ Tasmania. Sabio seeks to challenge perceptions and understandings of the self, identity and the body that carries this identity. She has trained in fashion design, textiles and Fine Art. Recent projects include: performance and costumes for Layers of the Kaleidoscope Qween, by Chrissie Hall, as part of the Head On Photographic Festival Sydney, Australia (2024); Emergency Dollhouse, co-created with David Male, 63 consecutive shows featured in Dark Fringe festival, Nipaluna/ Hobart (2023); and, Costume design, set construction and mentor on Hide the Dog, Nathan Maynard (Palawa) and Jamie McCaskill (Māori) production presented through Performing Lines (2021).
Lêna Bùi is based in Saigon and works primarily in painting and video. Her works are both amusing anecdotes and in-depth articulations of people’s relationship with nature and their surroundings, particularly amidst rapid urban development. She is deeply interested in nature and worldviews that are not entirely human-centric and also in human resilience. Lêna’s recent exhibitions include: Kyoto Art Center, Japan (2025), Bangkok Art Biennale, Thailand (2024), Galerie BAO, France (2024), Nguyen Art Foundation, Vietnam (2024), Asian Film Archive, Singapore (2023); Jeju Biennale (2022); and, Asia Culture Center, South Korea (2021).
Hannah Foley resides in Lutruwita/Tasmania. She explores the material and affective exchanges that occur between bodies and their ecologies. Through her work, she facilitates place-based encounters with the more-than-human, revealing and responding to the tensions, reciprocities, and negotiations embedded in these relationships. Hannah has presented work in Australian and international group exhibitions including: To know a river, Rosny Barn x Beaker Street Festival, Lutruwita/Tasmania (2024); Hatched: National Graduate Show, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (2021); and, Jalan Menuju Media Kreatif (JMMK) #12, virtual exhibition, hosted by ISI, Indonesia (2020). Hannah is a current PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania.
Reece Nicolaou is from Boorloo/Perth and is now living in Lutruwita/ Tasmania. Reece’s multidisciplinary and conceptual practice spans immersive installations, video, performance, objects, text, and sound, alongside explorations in painting. Reece has a playful approach within his work, navigating a world oversaturated by information, media, and content that has become janky and distilled through digital platforms. These layered approaches serve as a commentary on how systems of power shape not only the consumption of media but also perceptions of value, identity, and connection in a hyper-mediated world. Recent exhibitions include: It’s Like a Fantasy, Good Grief Studios, Nipaluna/Hobart, Australia (2024); StarStruck collaboration with Abbie Whitton, Sunroom Gallery, Nipaluna/Hobart, Australia (2024); and In Lingering Gestures, residency and exhibition, Sediments collective, Lost Eden Creative, Boorloo/ Perth, Western Australia (2022).
Lê Đ. Chung was born in the mountainous Lâm Đồng province in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and now lives in Saigon. With a multidisciplinary practice that includes painting, sculpture, installation, video, and performance, Đ. Chung examines everyday events as well as working with historical and counter-historical narratives. Through this, he explores contradictions and the complexities of ongoing reality, along with the enigmatic descent of unresolved motifs and meanings from the past.
Trần Uy Đức is based in Hanoi, Vietnam. His practice spans music, videos and social projects, often emerging from the interplay of communal exchange and self-detachment. His 2023 self-titled compilation, released on the dispari label by DJ Phuong-Dan, wrapped some of his most distinctive deconstructed club narratives to date. Uy Đức is the founder of hanoi bedroom shows, which promotes interdisciplinary-independent art in Vietnam.
Trương Quế Chi is a Vietnamese artist, curator and filmmaker who graduated from the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, in film studies. She investigates the spectacle of everyday violence in Vietnam, and within her work, she delves into the intricate interplay between archive, memory, and imagination. Most recently, Quế Chi presented work in How to Hold Your Breath, Asian Art Biennial (2024) and has shown work in Australia in Endless, Sightless: Nhà Sàn Collective, KINGS ARI, Narrm/ Melbourne (2019).
Việt Vũ (Quang Trung Pham) is a Vietnamese-born filmmaker who has lived and made films in various regions across Asia and Europe including: Vietnam, Portugal, Hungary and Belgium. Previously, he was a critic before breaking into filmmaking with his debut short of Ant-Man (2018), which won a Purin Award for The Most Promising Filmmaker from South East Asia at SeaShorts Malaysia. His has made work about various marginalized communities across Asia and Europe, which are typically filmed in long takes with a highly intimate first-person perspective. His works have been shown in numerous film festivals including: Locarno, Rotterdam, Tampere, and Singapore.
Matt Warren is an electronic media artist, musician, radio show producer, curator and writer, based in Lutruwita/ Tasmania. Through his work, he investigates memory, transcendence, liminal spaces and suspension of disbelief. Matt considers his art and installation practice as part of a greater context aligned to psychedelia, digital abstraction and hauntology. Het has exhibited, produced sound works and had screenings in Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, USA and throughout Australia. He currently teaches Sculpture & Time Based Media, Critical Practices, Creative Lab and Media Units at the University of Tasmania.
Milly Yencken was born in Naarm/Melbourne and studied at the University of Tasmania (2016), receiving a BFA. Her work involves narratives that emphasise feeling rather than story, and each visual portrait is influenced by the locations within which they are constructed. She has undertaken numerous residencies, internships and courses, including: the animation studios, Finta, Ljubljana, Slovenia and BAP Studio, Porto, Portugal (2023); Masters of Animation, Eesti Kunstiakaadeemia, Estonia (2019 – 23); and, Hladan, Litli-Gardur, Akuereyi resideny, Iceland (2022). Recent exhibitions include: Fistivals Animated, Germany; Fredrikstad Animation Festival, Norway – Grand Prix Award; Dusk, Devonport Regional Gallery, Lutruwita/Tasmania (all 2023); and Photons, Moonah Arts Centre, Lutruwita/Tasmania (2022).
Xiyue Zhang (CiCi) was born in China and moved to Lutruwita/ Tasmania in 2020. She works in sculpture, printmaking, painting and animation, fusing real and imagined imagery and stories. CiCi attained a Masters degree from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (2015). Since this time, she has exhibited in China, Korea, Germany and Australia. Recent exhibitions include: Tomas Garden, MONA FOMA festival, Nipaluna/Hobart, Australia (2023); The time of pick up star, Yu Jian Museum, Shanghai, China; The Shining World – Part of the Kindred project, Moonah Arts Centre, Nipaluna/Hobart, Australia (all 2022); and, I love your tears – NO.1, NO.2 and NO.3, Dorossysalon, Soul, South Korea (2021).
Linh Lê is an independent curator in Vietnam. Phạm Nguyễn Anh Tú giám tuyển is an artist and founding member of Saigon Experimental. Kylie Johnson is a curator at CAT.
Special thanks to curator Mary Lou David from Sàn Art and Saigon Experimental for connecting the project curators.
Accessibility
The exhibition is mobility accessible. There is low and variable lighting and some video works include flashing lights. Roomsheet available online and in large font hardcopies at the front desk. Some video works are subtitled in English. Please contact CAT if you have any accessibility requirements.
