Exploding cupcakes, violent shark attacks, volcanoes, flying men and the pastel coloured remains of a café latte have all been depicted by emerging Sydney artist Tony Curran, who describes his works as experimental neo-paintings. Sitting somewhere undefined between sculpture, installation and conventional painting, Curran distills images onto layers of acetate or resin before physically reconstructing them into a completed work. It’s a precarious process, with the alignment of each layer crucial in the making of the image and the acetate layers easy to steal, an unhappy discovery made at his first solo show.

He has also toyed with visual perception and optical illusion in his works, painting portraits in red and green and supplying galleries with hand crafted 3-D viewing glasses. Currently locked out of his Sydney studio (due to carelessness not expulsion), he is concentrating on his curating his second show, for arts based club night The Wall at World Bar in Kings Cross, Sydney, to be launched as part of the Worlds Collide Australia Day celebration on January 25.

A nerd at heart, Curran is a keen consumer of both scientific and artistic journals, so committed to his craft that he admits to eating blueberries to improve his visual strength. Having been exhibited in artist run spaces, commercial galleries and museums in Australia and overseas, starting work as a curator and arts writer, Curran is eager to contribute to a greater arts dialogue. He is currently developing ‘Realperspectives‘, which he hopes will become a funded research body that showcases and supports the divergent works and worldviews of other creators.

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