Kevin Chin is an Australian artist whose oil paintings bring different parts of the world together into beautifully balanced, dream-like vistas.
His lengthy development process begins with hundreds of thousands of photos taken on studio residencies and travels worldwide. Influenced by French poststructuralism and bricolage, they’re printed and dissected into collages that undergo countless iterations. Chin tests how meaning changes when different cultural cues are rearranged together. These collages form source material for painting to begin.
Chin’s painting technique has multifaceted influences from both his travels and personal background. He trained at VCA in Naarm/ Melbourne, where he grew up and is still based today. He uses European old-master techniques of layering translucent oil glazes, but through the lens of a mixed-race, Malaysian-born, Australian migrant.
His work speaks of a generation that had high hopes for global mobility. The paintings emote a desire to connect with the land, while wanting to explore the wider world. The fragmenting of landscape creates complex compositions, a search for stability in uncertain times. Chin attributes the paintings’ signature sensitivity to his experience as a queer person of colour. Perhaps this is why they resonate so broadly with our common yearning to fit in somewhere.
Chin’s paintings might be most instantly recognised for his relentless experimentation with colour. Taking the work into a dreamspace, he sees this as a way to explore emotional states of safety and connection. He controls the colour meticulously with single-pigment oils. It is a slow process that allows the paintings to become a meditation. Ultimately, Chin builds borderless new territories, challenging our world view while seeking to transcend it.
Kevin Chin is the winner of the Bayside Prize (Melbourne) and the Albany Prize (WA), as well as runner-up at the Redland Award (Brisbane) and a finalist in over 20 national prizes. His work is held in major institutional collections including Australian Parliament House, Artbank, RACV, City of Albany, Bayside City, Nillumbik Shire, and La Trobe Uni Museum of Art.
He has presented 20 solo exhibitions across Australia, and internationally in the USA, Japan and Singapore. Public solo exhibitions include Town Hall Gallery, Gippsland Art Gallery, Bayside Gallery, Linden New Art, and West Space. Representing multiple minorities, he has also spoken at various forums including for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, ABC radio, and many podcasts.
In 2020, Art Collector Magazine named Chin among Australia’s 50 most collectable artists, having also featured him on the cover in 2014. His work has been widely reviewed in Artist Profile, The Age, Art Guide, Time Out, The Design Files, Art + Australia, as well as internationally in Creative Boom (UK), JH News (USA), and Blouin Artinfo.
Chin has been awarded multiple grants from Creative Australia, Creative Victoria, the Ian Potter Cultural Trust, City of Melbourne, City of Yarra, and the National Association for the Visual Arts.
Portrait: Simon Strong
2024 Survey Exhibition
Town Hall Gallery curated the largest showing of Kevin’s paintings to date across all three spaces.
This accompanying video is courtesy of Town Hall Gallery and Julian Filer.
2024 Madrid Residency
Kevin speaks about his development process and research during his month in Spain.
The video is courtesy of #Ey! Studio and Simona Latorre.
Creative Boom Interview UK
This is the first time an Australian artist has been interviewed for this UK-based publication.
In this comprehensive 2023 interview with Dom Carter, Kevin talks about his painting technique, career evolution, and why parts of the paintings are upside down.
Art Collector
Interview
This 12 minute interview with Louise Martin-Chew is a deep dive into ‘Apart Together,’ one painting from the Social Distance series of 2020. Kevin speaks about a range of social issues that continue to influence his work.