Alvin Ong

Ong engages the world from various vantage points. References to sacred imagery and art history stem from the Catholic iconography he was exposed to growing up with his family in Singapore, and these are combined with his lived experiences of restlessness, boredom, desire, and intimacy.

His experiences living between Singapore and London manifests as a surreal reality. Food references and objects appear in his work as markers of identity, nostalgia, family, and cultural memory. A sense of “rootedness” or sometimes, the lack thereof, is an undercurrent in his work.

The paintings often explore the ambivalent ‘inside out’ and ‘upside out’ sentiment of being at once here and nowhere, as a queer artist navigating complex games of desire, rejection, inclusion and exclusion. It is through this gaze that the paintings become a threshold, serving as mirrors, filters and screens through which audiences are implicated as voyeur and flaneur.

He was awarded a residency in 2017 with the Royal Drawing School, as well as the 2018 Chadwell Award. His works have been exhibited at the Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore; Peranakan Museum, Singapore; Northampton Contemporary, Northampton, UK; National Portrait Gallery, London, UK, and Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK. His works are collected by the ILHAM Gallery, Malaysia, X Museum China, Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong, the Ingram Collection, UK, and the Victoria & Albert Museum (Print Collection), London, UK.