REMY FAINT
Arches (2024)
Acrylic and ink on silk, laser cut brackets, stitched fabric
123cm X 74cm



This exhibition of new work from emerging artist Remy Faint engages with his interest in the distortion of images and memories through time, exploring the dynamic between the past and the future as our view of the world constantly evolves. Utilising silk, textiles and timber as well as assemblages, Remy utilises methods of collage, juxtaposition, transcription, and scale to create works that are transparent yet solid, fleeting and eternal, much like our own memories.

Like many of his silk-based paintings,  in the work Arches (2024), architectural and figurative elements are referenced to consider ideas of hierarchy and constructions of historical narratives. Utilising imagery that is manipulated digitally and painterly in relation to the transparent nature of the silk substrate, the constructed image considers the architectural nature of the work that could also be imagined as a window or passage way into new perceptions.

This single piece is supported inside the A.SINGLE.PIECE gallery by an installation containing a series of recently developed fabric sculptures and assemblages. These works expand upon notions of the ’silhouette’ explored in the work in the windows. In these installations, materials are reconstructed into embodied painterly and sculptural forms, emerging as ethereal apparitions, ’ghosts’ or surrogates within a reimagined limbo, further adding to the concept of memory explored in the other work.

In the centre of the gallery is Apparition 1 (2024),a large-scale work (and Remy’s largest to date) that again plays with the concept of memory, building on mythological beliefs that after a period of time inanimate objects may become sentient, taking on the feelings and memories of those they have encountered throughout their existence. The shapes are inspired by traditional heirloom garments from Remy's family, but constructed from various found and recycled fabrics, elements that bring together many past stories into one new whole. They are then given substance as though they have transformed from merely shapes into their anthropomorphic beings, filling the space with their presence and memory. Combining elements of former painting substrates, textiles, prints and mass-produced materials the work also speaks to the cyclical nature of Remy’s studio practice, where materials and their inherent histories are blurred and subsidiary. 

Also in the gallery is Passage (2024) a two-part, autobiographical work that incorporates a work on silk (The Library, 2023) and then surrounds it with a larger assemblage. The Library mediates a painterly image of a room in Remy’s childhood home where his grandmother, a former seamstress, would store materials and domestic detritus. A space of imagination and discovery for the artist, this fond memory has strong echoes for Remy and played a pivotal role in the creative path he is on today. The broader work that surrounds ‘The Library’ acts like a doorway, a passage through which one can pass that has elements of the past and future, with the use of varying fabrics tying it to the room’s function, which was often filled with various fabrics which Remy would explore as a child, along with his heritage.

REMY FAINT CV

Remy Faint is an emerging artist based on Gadigal-land, Sydney. Engaging with a diverse range of mediums and strategies — including painting, collage, sculpture and assemblage — Remy’s practice is motivated by the desire to expand languages of abstraction by examining its global histories. Drawing upon influences from collection-based objects and materials specific to his Chinese-Australian heritage, his work mediates both painterly and sculptural ‘silhouettes’ to reflect on themes surrounding visibility, national identity and folklore. Remy’s interest in transparency is evident in his consistent use of silk as an artistic surface and the form of the folding screen. While Remy often reinstates the screen’s historical function as a barrier, divider or structural device, this cultural referencing coincides with physical acts of assembling, repurposing and combining various materials in his studio.

Remy has exhibited nationally including at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts [PICA], Cement Fondu, UNSW Galleries, Gosford Regional Gallery, Craft Victoria, ADSpace, Mothership Studios, Sheffer Gallery, Comber Street Studios and Kudos Gallery. Remy was curated into the national graduate exhibition Hatched, at PICA in 2022 where he received the inaugural Schenberg Art High Commendation Award. He was also selected to undertake a one-month residency at PICA in May, 2022. Remy was the winner of the 2023 Gosford Art Prize and has been a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize, the Jenny Birt Painting Prize, Kudos Emerging Artist Award and was a studio resident at the City of Sydney Creative Studios, Bathurst Street. He recently presented his first solo exhibition at Cement Fondu with his exhibition The Library and the Cave, in June 2023. Remy is a finalist in the 2024 Create NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging) presented at Artspace. He is also a 2024 recipient of the Art Incubator grant, where he will be presenting his first commercial solo exhibition at Cassandra Bird Gallery. Remy is currently a studio resident at Waverley Artist Studios.

This artwork is also available through Art Money
.