BIOGRAPHY + CV
Ian Strange (b.1982) is a transdisciplinary artist whose work explores the home, site-specificity, and landscape. His practice includes collaborative community-based projects, architectural interventions, installations, and exhibitions resulting in photography, film, sculpture, site-specific works, research, 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, music, performance, and film.
Strange is best known for his ongoing series of large-scale architectural interventions, film, and photographic works that subvert the archetypal domestic home. These works and exhibitions have been created in the United States (‘SUBURBAN’ 2011–13); post-earthquake Christchurch, New Zealand (‘FINAL ACT’, 2013); Western Australia and Victoria, Australia (‘SHADOW’, 2015) (‘TARGET’, 2017) (‘DALISON’, 2022); Katowice, Poland (‘ZŁOTY’, 2015); and in the United States throughout Ohio’s rust-belt region, (‘ISLAND’, 2015–17) ('PENUMBRA', 2022). This has resulted in exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), the Canterbury Museum, FotoFocus Biennial, UCCA Centre for Contemporary Art, FORM Gallery, RMIT University, Standard Practice NYC, the John Curtin Gallery, Cockatoo Island’s Turbine Hall, the Fremantle Arts Centre (FAC), Moore Contemporary, and as a 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-based musician Trevor Powers (Youth Lagoon); a collaborative series of works and installations with designer and artist Virgil Abloh, including major sculpture commissions for Off-White 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; and ‘345 Franklin’ (2016), a collaborative architectural intervention work with Detroit-based architect and artist Catie Newell and SiTE:LAB for ArtPrize 2016, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA.
Strange’s site-specific public light works have been commissioned by Lyon Housemuseum (‘LIGHT INTERSECTIONS', 2019), by the City of Sydney, Australia, for its 2021 "Art and About" public art program (‘LIGHT INTERSECTIONS II’, 2021), and by Wyndham City ('SIGNALS', 2023).
In 2020, the John Curtin Gallery presented 'Suburban Interventions: 2008 – 2020,' marking the first comprehensive mid-career survey exhibition of Strange's works. In 2022, the FotoFocus Biennial presented 'Disturbed Home,' his first survey exhibition in North America, at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Damiani Editore subsequently released ‘Disturbed Home’ (2022), a comprehensive monograph featuring new scholarly essays by FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator Kevin Moore, and Britt Salvesen, Curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Prints and Drawings, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
In 2022, Strange premiered 'PENUMBRA' (2022), a significant new commission for the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial. He released ‘TRACES’, (2017–2020), created in collaboration with contemporary dance company Chunky Move and Dutch choreographer Anouk Van Dijk, and opened a series of exhibitions and screenings of the work ‘DALISON’ (2022), including at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing.
In 2023, Strange commenced work on a new photographic series tracing the shared histories of fireworks and explosives in landscape and photography, with a collection of new works created in Ferijaz, Kosovo ('Jezerc', 2023), and Suhača, Bosnia.
In addition to these projects, Strange maintains an active studio-based research and archive practice, alongside inter-institutional collaborations. This includes a 2017–2019 archival and research project ('The Corley Archive') commissioned by the State Library of Queensland and the Asia Pacific Design Library, working with the State Library’s Corley photographic archive. In 2017 he initiated a 12-month pilot vertical studio program with RMIT University, to explore new avenues of artist/university collaboration and transdisciplinary studio practice. In 2022 this program was further expanded, incorporating a partnership with the Art Academy of Cincinnati, alongside their 2022 artist-in-residence program.
Between 2020 and 2021, Strange was appointed Guest Artistic Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA)—Western Australia’s largest public art museum—overseeing the museum's 5-year forward curatorial program, acquisitions, research, publishing, and new projects commissioning.
In 2022, Strange co-founded the roaming site-based curatorial project 'AT HOME' alongside Jedda Andrews, Dr. Rory Hyde (University of Melbourne), Steve Mintern and Simon Robinson (OFFICE), Dr. Mathan Ratinam, Emma Pegrum, and Miriam McGarry (Hidden Cities).
Strange’s drawings, paintings, publications, and sculptures have been exhibited globally in spaces such as Whitewall Galleries, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, ThinkSpace, MCA, The Lyon Housemuseum, The Queensland State Library, Allouche Gallery, RMIT, Standard Practice Gallery, Strychnin Gallery Berlin, Fremantle Arts Centre, as well as at arts festivals including Underbelly, PUBLIC, RiSE, NuArt, Perth Festival, Auckland Festival of Photography, and SPRING/BREAK.
In 2017, ABCTV produced and released 'HOME: The Art of Ian Strange', a 6-part documentary series exploring Strange’s career and work to date. Additionally, his work has been included in publications and journals, including ICON, Document Journal, Politics of Public Space Volumes 1 & 2, ABC Radio National, The Financial Times, The Art Newspaper, Houses, Grazia, OSMOS, Kerb Journal, Wallpaper*, Imagine Architecture, Dazed and Confused Magazine (Dazed), Nowness, The Saturday Paper, Hypebeast Magazine, The Monthly, Art Almanac, Artist Profile, Assemble Papers, Architecture AU, and Hyperallergic, among others.
Strange has presented and lectured on his practice at institutions including Harvard Graduate School of Design, RMIT University, Parsons School of Design, Melbourne School of Design, TEDxSydney, Columbia College Chicago, Sotheby's Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Victoria.
Strange's work sits in museum and institution 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, the State Library Victoria, the State Library of Queensland, FotoFocus, John Curtin University, CMC, MAC yapang, City of Sydney, Wyndham City, Research Library Archives, and the Asia Pacific Design Library.