This is me, in Chợ Lớn, the district in which (on paper) I was born.
Exactly 50 years and 8 months ago the Vietnam war ended on 30 April 1975 with ‘The Fall of Saigon’, and weeks earlier, I was evacuated on one of two flights that landed in Melbourne, Australia as part of a mass evacuation of children named @operation_babylift .
I spent months in quarantine in Fairfield, Melbourne. I had tuberculosis and a number of other physical issues that came from living my first months of life in a Saigon orphanage.
The document you see me holding was the only official identity that the Australian government could hastily issue in order for me to leave the country, and return, with my adoptive Anglo parents in order for them to bring my two adoptive sisters back from Bangkok, Thailand.
Despite returning to Vietnam many times, starting in 1989, and continuing from 2007 (I count perhaps 18 visits), this country has only ever seemed like a placeholder that explains my appearance, my origins. I have never felt ‘at home’ here.
For many years I felt at odds with my Anglo-Australian upbringing and physical appearance. As an adult, Vietnamese friends and their families taught me what it was to be Vietnamese, to eat Vietnamese food, to behave Vietnamese, to exist in the Vietnamese diaspora… to be ‘more Asian’. For years I was convinced I was ethnically Chinese (an Ancestry DNA test say otherwise).
I am able to move around Vietnam relatively unnoticed. I sit while my friends chatter in Vietnamese and am only exposed as an outsider when I speak English.
When the opportunity to return in this landmark year for Vietnam, I took it. As I write this post from Saigon, I do feel more at ease in this place.
I am grateful to my adoptive parents, sisters and adoptive country for giving me the opportunities in life I would never been afforded, had I not been evacuated in 1975.
I feel at peace with who I am. The prospect of never knowing a single biological relative doesn’t bother me. I realised as a teenager that the complete lack of any genetic relatives gave me the freedom to choose my own path in life.
In half an hour I will venture out to the street. Good morning Vietnam! 🇻🇳
Portraits, portraits, portraits! These days my subjects are usually inanimate but I do occasionally get the opportunity to photograph some talented and visionary artists and gallerists:
01. Scotty So @scotty.so (no f*cks given!) for @flackstudio_ Plinth Drinks
02. Nabilah Nordin @nabnordin in her Newport studio (now fabulously LA-based)
03. Nick Modrzewski @nickmodrzewski (now also LA-based, love you guys!)
04. Troy Emery @troyemery + Daniel Poole @danielpoolemelbourne with their 2022 MDW collab
05. Vipoo Srivilasa @vipooart (ceramics royalty)
06. Vincent Namatjira (legend) at Sydney Contemporary 2022
07. Ben Mazey @benmazey + Ted
08. Claudia Lau @claudialaustudio (Ceramicist, stylista, world traveller)
09. Kareem Soliman @kareemsoliman_x + Buster
10. Zara Sigglekow disrupting the art world with @futures_gallery
📸 All photos by me / Все фотографии мои
More on my documentation website, link in bio
Portraits Part 2:
01. Ali Tahayori @alitahayori (the One to watch!), Melbourne Art Fair 2024
02. Ara Dolatian @ara_dolatian studio portrait 2022
03. Kate Just ‘Protest Signs’ 2022 portrait @katejustknits
04. Matilda Davis (barefoot Godess)! 2023 @tildy_davis
05. Caroline Zilinsky (blink and she’ll cut you!) Melbourne Art Fair 2024 @carolinezilinsky
06. Hannah Gartside, Bayside Gallery 2022 @hannahgartsidestudio
07. Yuria Okamura (epitome of Zen), Melbourne Now 2023 @yuria.okamura
08. Matthew Harris, Nathan Beard, Mia Boe, Francis Carmody and Dean Cross for Plinth Drinks 2023 @flackstudio_
09. Nicola Stein + Dianne Tanzer, co-directors of @thisisnofantasy
10. Mike Parr for the cover of Vault Magazine, Issue 1, 2012
📸 All photos by me / Все фотографии мои
More on my documentation website, link in bio
Install documentation of TEMPLE FRAGMENTS, my recent solo exhobotion at Goldstone Gallery.
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2 Rooms
62 Paintings in total
3 Scaff Towers worth of components
54 Plein Air works of every Synagogue in Melbourne
3 Portraits
1 Imagined "Great Synagogue of Melbourne"
5 Architectural paintings
6 Months of urgent work
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Gallery: @goldstone_gallery_australia
Artistic Director / Curator: @nina_sanadze
Photography: @simonjstrong
Framing: @indigoframing
NotFair 2026 @notfair_artfair has now launched and is open every day from tomorrow, Wednesday 18 to Monday 23 from 11:00am to 5:00pm, 83 High Street, Prahran VIC.
Thank you for the tireless work of the curators @darrentannytan@liss_wick@argento6 , the leadership of NotFair founder @samleach_00 and @tonylloydart and of course all of this years participating artists and volunteers.
Thanks to @mattolucasphotography for fabulous opening night photos.
Special thanks to my work wife @elle_zoltak
Proudly sponsored by City of Stonnington
#notfairartfair
#EXHIBITION: An #Artist’s Garden: Sam Michelle, a contemporary #Australian vision of #Nature at the Martin Browne Contemporary in #Paddington, #Sidney, #Australia from 5 until 28 March 2026.
More info: https://url-shortener.me/CX5Q
#art #stilllife #botany #garden #travel #visitpaddington @sydney
Photo credit: @martinbrownecontemporary@sammichellepaintings
- ‘#Scabiosa Focal Scoop & Green Cloth’ 2026 credit @simonjstrong
- ‘#Wisteria Blue’ 2025 credit Simon Strong
- 'White Wisteria, #Clematis & Scabiosa’ 2026 credit Simon Strong
- ‘Wisteria Double Japanese’ 2025 credit Simon Strong
- The Artist’s garden credit Gemmola Photography
- The Artist’s studio credit @gemmola Photography
Dear Ashley,
Happy Birthday for Wednesday; you nearly made it! Near enough will have to do…
I’m at the airport ready to fly to Saigon. I’m going back to the place, the district, that I was (supposedly) born in. I’m going to do the research for that art project we had discussed for the last year or two. I’m very excited to see what will come of it.
Thank you for all the chats, all the discussions, the ruminations and analysis. Thank you for your support and encouragement. Thank you for the drunken, stupid times, and the serious conversation, the bitch sessions. You could always switch effortlessly from dead-pan serious to a (sometimes inappropriate) joke. I could barely keep up with you.
Thank you for the life advice, the career advice, the relationship advice (!). For being a productive work colleague, but most of all, thanks for being a friend - the friend who was always there whenever I needed to talk, or vent, or drink.
I, and everyone in the art world and beyond will miss you immensely, but we will see you again, somewhere; in the great beyond (something we never quite decided existed, but maybe it does)…
Farewell @ashleycrawford871 - the art world has lost one of its own and you’ll be sorely missed ❤️
IN THE GALLERY: 𝘈𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘨
04 SEPT - 04 OCT
THIS IS NO FANTASY is thrilled to present Ali Tahayori’s 𝘈𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘨 in the gallery.
Archive of Longing is a deeply personal search for love and belonging within an inherited family archive – a pursuit of fleeting “sparks of contingency” that often elude both the photographer’s intent and the subject’s awareness. In this body of work, Tahayori re-photographs, crops, enlarges, and prints archival family images onto glass. These are then fractured and reassembled into sculptural reliefs – fragmented yet intimate reconstructions of time, memory, and personal history.
By using glass rather than paper, Tahayori references 19th-century photographic methods such as wet plate negatives and daguerreotypes – prized for their clarity and reflectivity. As viewers move around the works, the images shift in visibility, evoking both the instability of memory and the fluidity of identity.
The reflective, shattered surfaces echo broken mirrors, returning the viewer’s gaze while reflecting on history through a queer diasporic lens—searching for glimpses of intimacy and desire within a turbulent socio-political context.
“In 2018, I inherited a series of family photographs from my mother. Even though I had seen these images as a child, I began to see them differently. The archive became personally significant, revealing aspects of my mother’s life before marriage, and collectively meaningful as a record of Iranian society before the 1979 revolution. Revisiting these images after thirty years, I began to uncover new possibilities, connections, and narratives that were absent from my mother’s original story. I started to tell my own story with – and through – them.” — Ali Tahayori
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Videography 🎥 by me.
Great exhibition by the iconic Mike Parr @stationgalleryaustralia Melbourne.
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Mike Parr has interrogated political and psychological extremes through his practice for over 50 years. Beneath the shock value often associated with his performances, printmaking, drawings, or sculptures lies a deeper interrogation of self-portraiture—one that questions the boundaries of authentic personal and political expression.
“I’m interested in portraiture, what it conceals & what others don’t see. All my work is a form of portraiture. The performance works in particular are portraits of my attempt to imagine myself into the circumstances of others.” - Mike Parr
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All artworks by Mike Parr
📸 by me
More of my documentation photography online, link in bio
@jackrowlandart ’s exhibition opens today @scottliveseygalleries ! I’m going to stare endlessly at the round painting 😵💫
Jack Rowland
Euphorica
Exhibition on view 26 July - 16 August 2025
/* Exploring the sublime through the lens of psychedelia, in his new body of work Euphorica, Jack Rowland reimagines the vast Ikara -Flinders Ranges of South Australia as a dream-like utopia, in spite of its rugged and at times hostile environment, through his saturated palette and realist approach to landscape painting...” */
Images:
01. Installation view
02. Installation view
03. Installation view
04. Installation view
05. Installation view
06. ‘Communion’ 2025
07. ‘A Perfect World’ 2025
08. ‘Heartlands’ 2024
09. ‘Ride The Snake’ 2025
Artworks by @jackrowlandart
📸 All photos by me / Все фотографии мои
More on my documentation website, link in bio
