Studio Portrait 2018, by Sinclair Cunningham Photography
Emily Fong Artist
Emily is a medical artist exploring life and death, embodiment and emotion; the experience of existing in a human container. Her artistic practice is underpinned by the observation and communication of the life cycles of living things; growth, mortality and change from the micro to the macro. Through the mediums of drawing, painting, sculpture and writing, she seeks to highlight our similarities not only to one another but also to other species that occupy this planet. What are we made of? How are we structurally and emotionally connected beneath the skin? Her intuition is that, by going deep inside life, turning it inside out, she might discover new ways of observing and re-configuring the outside.
Emily has a Master of Science in Medical Art from the University of Dundee in 2022, and a Bachelor of Design in Architecture from The Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane and l'École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Grenoble, France in 2010. Between 2012-2015 she studied Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia and the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee, Scotland.
Emily has been working as artist in residence at the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research (WCAIR) within the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee between 2020-2023. Through the mediums of conversation and conceptual art-science experimentation, she has been finding ways to re-imagine the body. Alongide her primary collaborator, scientist and artist Professor Alan Fairlamb, she proposed novel ways for communities to collectively process and reflect upon the ruptures created by the Covid-19 Pandemic. The ultimate aim being to move communities and individuals towards a space of healing through creativity and serious play. For initial reflective processes you can meet a sample of the WCAIR scientists here. This project titled Bonding was exhibited at LifeSpace Art Science and Research Gallery, for the Dundee Science Festival in 2023.
Between 2018 and 2020 Emily worked as artist in residence at The Centre for Regenerative Medicine (CRM), Edinburgh BioQuarter, exploring art-science collaboration as a model for public engagement, training to observe the world at a microscopic scale and developing methods of using her practice to amplify the beauty and significance of the tiniest encounter. The culmination of this residency was brought to public audiences at the Meadows Gallery, Summerhall, Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Science Festival in 2022, in partnership with ASCUS Art & Science and CRM.
Passionate about teaching drawing, Emily runs the Laboratory Art Binge based in Castlemaine, Victoria. Art Binge is a creative laboratory of experimental drawing workshops and creative connection. At Art Binge Emily envisions a future where art is for everyone and everywhere is the studio. Passionate about adventure, Art Binge has offered creative expeditions to places such as Tasmania, where the Binge Bus travelled to inspiring sites such as Mount Wellington, the Tessellated Pavement, Port Arthur, and MONA (The Museum of Old and New Art).
Find and book current workshops at Laboratory Art Binge. Art Binge is an opportunity for you to gorge on creativity in a safe environment. Take time for yourself, meet new people, astronomically blowout your drawing skills and integrate art into everyday life!
Alongside teaching Architectural Visualisation at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane between 2011-14, and co-founding the creative learning project Art Binge, she has facilitated life drawing sessions in Scotland and has tutored life drawing classes for the University of Dundee’s Access to Creative Education Program (ACES). Emily hosts worksops in science centres under the title, Laboratory Art Binge (LAB). Most recently with WCAIR in Dundee and CRM Edinburgh in partnership with the Luminate Festival. She has co-facilitated art-science workshops with ASCUS Lab funded by the British Heart Foundation and other third sector medical funding bodies.
Selected as one of nine international artists, Emily participated in the residency PLACE, PEOPLE and TIME: Publishing as an Artistic Practice 2019, facilitated by The Museum of Loss and Renewal (TMoLaR) in partnership with My Bookcase in Collemacchia, Italy, exploring the book as a platform for encounter. The group worked on a collective publication published by The Museum of Loss and Renewal. This was a return for Emily, having previously been selected as a resident in 2018. Other publishing projects inspired by this residency and the relationships formed there continue to flourish.
Exploring drawing as performance, Emily was involved in the project by New Emergences titled The Exquisite Corpse: Recomposing The Body; a new interdisciplinary composition involving musicians, a dancer and Emily as visual artist, which premiered at iii The Hague and Splendour in Amsterdam in 2019, directed by composer, cellist and sound artist Semay Wu. The piece was also broadcast on the Dutch National Radio NPO radio4.
Emily has had the immense pleasure of illustrating the cover of poet Giovanna MacKenna's first full collection of works titled How the Heart can Falter, published by The Museum of Loss and Renewal. You can read a review of this collection by poet and reviewer Neigel Kent here and order your copy here. Giovanna regularly participates in live readings of her work in the company of fellow poets and hosts intimate and supportive creative writing workshops. Follow her here to find out more.
For all enquiries contact:
Email: emilyfongstudio@gmail.com
Instagram: @emilyfongstudio