Jo Chew
Photo: The Examiner
I have always been drawn to creativity and making, majoring in Art throughout my education, with an ongoing love of music, poetry, and the visual arts. My parents are both keenly interested in art and painting, having met as commercial artists. They have always encouraged my interest and development as an artist - my dad secretly bought the first painting I had for sale at an exhibition on the peninsula and it still hangs in their living room - and my first art monograph, on Edvard Munch, was a gift from them.
I love the capacity of art to speak in a gentle and beautiful way about often very important and universal things. I think art can reach us and connect with us in a unique way, giving us a space for reflection and shared understanding of human experience. Over the years it has also been a place of refuge for me and a way to process and better understand my own experiences.
In 2017 I had the opportunity to travel to Italy for the first time. So many of the works I saw there had a lasting affect on me, but perhaps the highlight was visiting Morandi's studio in Bologna. I spent the best part of a day mesmerised by the quiet intimacy of his paintings and collection of objects. The story of his life and its setting providing a beautiful insight to his work.
My first encounter with Sawtooth was being in a group exhibition with Despard Gallery in the original Sawtooth space. It was just after finishing my undergraduate degree and a memorable experience as the first time showing my work in such a context alongside artists I admired. Over the years I have contributed works to several fundraising exhibitions for the ARI.
I appreciate Sawtooth’s support of my practice in selecting me as one of the artists for this 25th Anniversary fundraiser.
Biography
Jo Chew’s painting-based practice centres on themes of shelter, home, and belonging. Her works are often informed by small, paper collaged studies of found and personal imagery; seeing this process in part as a way to explore ideas of displacement and dislocation, but also of rehoming and potential for repair through the continuity of the painted surface. More recently her practice has extended to include sculptural installations of found objects, altered, sewn into, and assembled.
Alongside her studio practice, Jo is a mother of two young adults and works as a painting teacher at UTAS and a library technician at MONA.
Jo was a finalist in the Churchie Emerging Art Prize in 2022, and Hatched PICA 2019. She was the recipient of the Zonta Emerging Artist Prize at the Women’s Art Prize Tasmania in 2022, and winner of the 2023 Glover Prize with her painting ‘Tender’.
Recently completing a PhD, Jo is currently working towards her fourth solo exhibition with Despard Gallery in nipaluna/Hobart opening this September.
Her works are held in private collections throughout Australia and in QVMAG in Launceston.