Photograph: Garry Trinh
I ACKNOWLEDGE THE GADIGAL PEOPLE OF EORA NATION AND THE DHARUG PEOPLE, THE traditional custodians of the land on which I HAVE THE PRIVILEGE TO live and woRK, AND PAY MY DEEPEST RESPECTS TO ELDERS PAST, PRESENT AND EMERGING. Sovereignty was never ceded.
Owen Leong is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose practice spans sculpture, installation, photography, and video. His work explores counternarratives of queer world-making, using personal mythologies and kink aesthetics to explore power, control, and care, to reframe and reimagine identities and intimacies. His work centres queer pleasure as an act of political agency and healing. At the heart of Leong’s practice is a belief in the power of art to transform the way we see ourselves and others.
In 2025, he will be artist-in-residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, USA. He has previously held artist residencies at esea contemporary, Manchester; Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan; Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Shanghai; Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong; and 4A Beijing Studio Program, Beijing.
Leong received The Chey Fellowship in 2024 to present a major solo exhibition at IAC Western Sydney University. Previously, Leong was a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize, Australia's premiere prize for young contemporary artists, and received the MAMA National Photography Prize and Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award. He has been awarded numerous grants from Creative Australia, Create NSW, Ian Potter Cultural Trust, and Asialink.
Leong has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally including Singapore Art Museum, Today Art Museum Beijing, Zendai Museum of Modern Art Shanghai, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal Shenzhen, and the National Museum of Poznan Poland.
His work is held in the collections of Creative Australia, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, Detached Cultural Organisation, Gold Coast City Gallery, Murray Art Museum Albury, Newcastle Art Gallery, Western Sydney University, Swatch Art Peace Hotel Collection Shanghai, University of Salford Art Collection UK, and private collections in Australia and internationally.