Artist Bio

Christopher Young was born in small-town New Zealand in the mid-seventies. After finishing his studies he moved to Germany in 1996 before settling in Western Australia in 2002.

Isolation is a recurring theme in his life and artwork – the remoteness of growing up in semi-rural New Zealand, the loneliness of living in Germany as a poor German speaker and lately the geographic and ideological seclusion of life in Australia, have all coloured his artistic practice.

Context, coding in images and a lack of a personal cultural library have been central themes explored in his work.

Artwork statement

In contrast to urban exploration, which is often adrenaline-fuelled, my work is a formalised process that is much more about absorbing, reading and activating spaces that have somehow been disconnected from general society.

Typically, I deliberately enter spaces blind, only with a vague idea of what I am about to encounter. Any ambiguity in the resultant images should enable a new, personalised reading by someone who then views the work. Essentially replicating my original experience.

As with many Australasian artists, themes in my work have often been identity-based. I find myself without a set of pre-determined motifs from which I can draw and I instead tend to grasp for an emotive connection.

I have always found any study of genealogy/sociology to be a rather dry, essentially intellectual pursuit, so I have concentrated on becoming more aware of what moves me. The problem comes with ownership of any motifs that might affect me. What rights do I have in regards to their usage? If I have sympathy for something, is it wrong to acknowledge that creatively?

I want my images to be less about specifics (ie. a school, a church, etc.) and more about universal experience. That is, what moves both the viewer and I without it being so much about the content imaged. Because of this, the images are often intentionally highly ambiguous.

What or who is not there? What can’t we quite see? How do we overcome the helplessness of not being able to ground an image in a time line?

The images are an attempt to exploit this helplessness and the illusion of reality to create a more visceral, rather than intellectual, response to images.

ARTIST WEBSITE