Gallery 1

Rachel Tai - Chop & Change

14 - 25 October 2026

please note last day of exhibition ends on 25 October at 3pm

Opening night

16 October | 6 - 8 pm

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Sunday: 10 am – 5 pm

ARTIST  STATEMENT 

Tai is a Melbourne based artist whose oil paintings begin with collage. For Tai, the collage is not simply a preparatory stage, but a way of discovering and testing composition. Hundreds of collages may be made before a single painting begins, allowing different arrangements of colour, shape and space to emerge. The paintings are selected from those compositions that strike a particular balance between harmony and disruption, or that contain an element that creates a compelling desire to paint.

Often, this initial attraction is quite specific: a particular colour, shape or relationship between forms becomes the point of entry into a composition. The pleasure of painting is closely tied to this moment of discovery—the sense that something looks intriguing, unexpected, or simply compelling to translate into paint.

In this recent body of work, Tai has begun to challenge that instinct to continually move on to the next composition. Rather than abandoning the shapes and colours of one collage once a painting is complete, they have returned to these elements across multiple works, exploring how they can behave differently within changing compositions.

This process has shifted the focus from the immediate appeal of a shape or colour towards a deeper investigation of its possibilities. By revisiting familiar forms and colours, Tai considers how their weight and visual relationships change from one composition to another. The paintings become a way of extending the life of an idea, allowing seemingly simple elements to reveal new possibilities through repetition, variation and reconsideration, mirroring the collage process.

ARTIST  BIOGRAPHY

Born in Naarm/Melbourne, Tai developed a love of oil painting in high school inspired by the work and guidance of Natasha Bienek. Tai went on to graduate from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) in 2015. Since then, Tai has exhibited across Melbourne, including mounting solo exhibitions and being shortlisted for various prizes across Australia.