BIOGRAPHY + CV
Ian Strange is a transdisciplinary artist whose work examines the home, architecture, site-specificity, and landscape through site-based projects, photomedia, and installation. His practice includes collaborative community-based projects, architectural interventions, installations, and research projects, resulting in exhibitions, photography, film, sculpture, site-specific works, archival material, and documentary works. His studio practice includes painting and drawing, as well as ongoing research and archival projects. Additionally, he has created collaborative projects with other practitioners and institutions in the fields of dance, performance, architecture, and film.
Strange is best known for his ongoing series of large-scale architectural interventions, films, and photographic works that subvert the archetypal domestic home. These works and exhibitions have been created in the United States (‘SUBURBAN’, 2011–13; ‘ISLAND’, 2015–17; 'PENUMBRA', 2022); post-earthquake Christchurch, New Zealand (‘FINAL ACT’, 2013); Western Australia and Victoria, Australia (‘SHADOW’, 2015) (‘TARGET’, 2017) (‘DALISON’, 2022); and Katowice, Poland (‘ZŁOTY’, 2015). These projects have resulted in exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), the Canterbury Museum, FotoFocus Biennial, FORM Gallery, RMIT University, Standard Practice NYC, Völklinger Hütte, the John Curtin Gallery, Cockatoo Island’s Turbine Hall, the Fremantle Arts Centre (FAC), Moore Contemporary, and as part of the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art (‘LANDED’, 2014) at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA).
These bodies of work have included a number of collaborative projects: ‘DALISON’ (2022), a site-based installation, film, and sound work with US musician Trevor Powers (Youth Lagoon); a series of works and installations with designer and artist Virgil Abloh, including major sculpture commissions for Off-White in Melbourne, Sydney, and New York (‘Nothing is Finished,’ 2017); ‘TRACES’ (2017–2020), a collaboration with contemporary dance company Chunky Move and their creative director, choreographer Anouk Van Dijk; ‘FINAL ACT’ (2013), a collaboration with celebrated New Zealand cinematographer Alun Bollinger; and ’345 Franklin’ (2016), an architectural intervention with Detroit-based architect and artist Catie Newell and SiTE for ArtPrize 2016 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA.
Strange’s ongoing series of public light sculptures and installations have been commissioned by the Lyon Housemuseum (‘LIGHT INTERSECTIONS', 2019); the City of Sydney for its 2021 'Art & About' public art program (‘LIGHT INTERSECTIONS II’, 2021); and Wyndham City ('SIGNALS', 2023).
Since 2023 Strange has been developing a new site-based photographic series tracing the shared histories of fireworks, explosives, landscape, and photography, with works created in Ferizaj, Kosovo ('Jezerc', 2023); Völklingen, Germany; Krems, Austria; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and Suhača, Bosnia. This body of work has developed alongside 'Ohio Fall' (2025), a forthcoming feature-length film work and photographic series documenting Ohioan landscapes in the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, due for release in 2026.
In 2020 and 2022, respectively, two major mid-career survey exhibitions of Strange’s work were mounted: ‘Suburban Interventions: 2008–2020’ at the John Curtin Gallery (Australia); and ‘Disturbed Home’ at the Art Academy of Cincinnati for the FotoFocus Biennial (USA). Subsequently, Damiani Editore released ‘Disturbed Home’ (2022), a comprehensive artist monograph with new essays by Kevin Moore, Artistic Director and Curator of FotoFocus, and Britt Salvesen, Curator and Head of Photography and Prints & Drawings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
Strange’s research, archival, and curatorial practice has included projects with the State Library of Queensland, the Asia Pacific Design Library ('The Corley Archive', 2018), RMIT University, and the Art Academy of Cincinnati. From 2020 to 2021, Strange served as Guest Artistic Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), overseeing the museum’s 5-year forward curatorial program, acquisitions, research, and publishing. In 2022, he co-founded the curatorial platform 'At Home' with Jedda Andrews, Dr. Rory Hyde (University of Melbourne, MSD), Steve Mintern and Simon Robinson (OFFICE), Dr. Mathan Ratinam, Emma Pegrum, and Miriam McGarry (Hidden Cities).
Strange has presented and lectured on his work at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Parsons School of Design, Sotheby's Institute of Art, the University of California San Diego (UCSD), Melbourne School of Design (MSD), TEDx Sydney, and the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). His work has been featured in The Art Newspaper, Hyperallergic, the Financial Times, Wallpaper*, Document Journal, OSMOS, Architectural Review, Dazed and Confused Magazine, Nowness, ICON, and in the Politics of Public Space series (Volumes 1 & 2), among others. It has been the subject of scholarly writing in books published by MIT Press, Yale University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and Lund Humphries. In 2017, ABCTV produced and released HOME: The Art of Ian Strange, a six-part documentary series exploring Strange's career and work.
Strange’s work is held in museum and institutional collections including the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), the Canterbury Museum, State Library Victoria, the State Library of Queensland, FotoFocus, Curtin University, the Cincinnati Museum Center (CMC), MAC yapang, the City of Sydney, Wyndham City, the National Gallery of Australia Research Library and Archives, and the Asia Pacific Design Library.
He is currently a PhD candidate at RMIT University’s School of Architecture and Design, where his research focuses on the histories of photomedia and installation within site-based arts practices.