Solo art show to highlight variety

FOR visual artist Jon Lam, variety really is the spice of life, and that ethos will be on display during his upcoming exhibition next week.

Titled Art, Sweat, and Cheers, the show will be Lam’s 10th solo display and his fourth in Ballarat since moving to the region in 2019.

He said the exhibition will showcase his eclectic style.

“With private galleries, they always want a theme or style and that’s not what I am as an artist or even as a person,” he said.

“Maybe it’s the Gemini, double personality in me, but I like different things and want to try everything.

“Because I’m trained as a graphic artist, I’m trained in all things whether it’s watercolour, acrylic, oil, pastel. It will show in this exhibition.

“I’ve had exhibitions where people have said to me ‘If you told me there were three artists in this show, I would’ve believed you’.”

Taking place at the Mercure Ballarat, the exhibition will be opened by Lam’s fellow Ballarat Society of Artists member John Canham.

A lifelong artist, Lam studied graphic design at the Gordon Institute of Technology, now The Gordon, when he moved to Australia in 1970.

Having taught art for more than 30 years, he said his own output has become more intense in the last decade.

The upcoming show will feature more than 50 works roughly 60 per cent of which will be recent pieces while the remainder will serve as a retrospective of Lam’s life and development.

“One will be a work from when I was studying in Geelong in the 1970s,” he said.

“There’s another which is a painting I did for my mum in 1990, then I’ve got a huge black-and-white portrait of John Lennon from 2001.

“There are a lot of things in there that matter to me personally like current political issues. One painting, for example is of a woman wearing a rainbow-coloured hijab. It’s about different types of people, and equality.”

Art, Sweat, and Cheers is on show at the Mercure from Thursday 23 November until Sunday 17 December.