Laurens Tan was an Australian multidisciplinary artist whose practice spanned sculpture, 3D animation, video, sound, design and curation. Over four decades his work interrogated language, cultural identity, globalisation and the idea of "Chineseness," developed across studios in Wombarra (NSW, Australia), Beijing and Las Vegas.

Born in The Hague, Netherlands, on 10 August 1950 to parents of Chinese Indonesian descent whose family had emigrated from Fujian province in the late nineteenth century, Tan spent his early childhood between the Netherlands, Surabaya and Singapore before migrating with his family to Australia in 1962, aged twelve. This peripatetic beginning, a life he described as lived "out of a suitcase," instilled the sense of hybridity and displacement that would anchor his art.

Tan studied music theory and arrangement at the NSW Conservatorium of Music (1972) before completing a Bachelor of Education in Fine Arts at the University of South Australia (1978). He pursued cultural studies at the School of Architecture, Hunan Normal University in Changsha, China (1987), a Master of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong (1991), and a Doctor of Creative Arts at the University of Technology Sydney (2005), with the thesis The Architecture of Risk, an analysis of the built environment of Las Vegas.

Tan began with ceramics in Adelaide in the 1970s before turning to steel, sheet metal and, later, fibreglass finished in baked enamel. From his base in the Illawarra he developed what he called "historic futurism": retro futuristic constructions fusing pop culture, industrial design and architecture. Critic Benjamin Genocchio, writing in ART AsiaPacific, identified in these works a vision of "cyburbia" and a sustained commentary on casino culture and the global temples of mass consumption.

Key works of this period include Test Pattern X (1994), Well, the Image is One Thing (1994), Vegas of Death (1995), created for the touring exhibition Death: An Insight on Life, and Octogene (1996), a video sculpture commissioned for the foyer of Sydney's restored Capitol Theatre. He exhibited in Australian Perspecta 1991 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and in the international tour Elvis + Marilyn: 2 x Immortal (1994–96), which travelled to museums across the United States and Japan.

Tan was equally influential as an educator and advocate. He lectured at the University of Wollongong, Sydney College of the Arts and the University of Western Sydney, served on the board of Gallery 4A (now the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art) from 1997 to 2007, and sat on the Museum of Contemporary Art's Artist Advisory Group (2004–06). His curatorial projects, including Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1999–2000) and Another Silk Road (2009), opened pathways for a generation of Asian Australian artists.

A first journey to China in 1987 prompted a reconnection with his obscured heritage. Supported by Australia China Council residencies in 2006 and 2007, Tan established a studio in Beijing in 2009 at the height of the city's art boom. There he developed the Babalogic series (2008–18), sculptures and dual channel animations built around the sanlunche, the three wheeled delivery tricycle, as a vehicle for ideas about language, labour and urban transformation. Major projects included Brueghel's Tower (2008) for the 798 Art Zone, the solo exhibitions The Depth of Ease (Anniart, 2007) and Chinese Toy Stories (Red Gate Gallery, 2010), the commission ShiWaiTaoYuan for The Opposite House (2012), and Empire Bookends (2014–15) at the University of Chicago Beijing Center. He also curated Arena: A Post Boom Beijing (2010–11), which toured Australia, and held an adjunct professorship at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts.

Las Vegas, first the subject of his doctoral research, became Tan's third home and studio base from 2012. The city's architecture of risk and spectacle ran through his work from the 1990s onward, and in later years he exhibited there extensively: Babalogic in the Desert (Clark County Rotunda and Sahara West Library, 2017), Plural: New Acquisitions at the UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art (2018), and Three Wise Monkeys across multiple Las Vegas venues (2020).

His large scale public commissions for Sydney's Lunar New Year festivals, the Monkey Lunar Lantern (2016) at Bennelong Point and The Ox Lunar Lantern (2019) at The Rocks, brought his fusion of Chinese symbolism and contemporary design to audiences of millions.

Tan's works are held in numerous public, corporate and private collections across Australia, China, Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, the United States and Canada. Public holdings include the Art Gallery of Western Australia (1984), Artbank Australia (1988), the Arts Council of South Australia, the Australian Embassy in Paris (1990), the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada (1998), Campbelltown Arts Centre (2005), Casula Powerhouse, the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (1990), the Craft Council of the Northern Territory, Curtin University, Galerie Cannibal Pierce, Paris (1990), Griffith University, Hunan Normal University, China (1987), the Ipoh Gardens Development (1995), Lanyon House (ACT), Laura Civic Centre, South Australia (1980), Modern Sky Music, Beijing (2010), the Moët & Chandon Foundation, Epernay, France (1990), New Parliament House (ACT), Orange Regional Gallery (1989), the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Tasmania (1984), the Queensland Art Gallery, the Queensland University Art Museum, the South Pacific Forum Collection (National Gallery of Australia), Tamworth City Gallery, the University of Wollongong and Wollongong City Gallery.

Laurens Tan died in Las Vegas on 20 January 2025, survived by his wife Vivian Vidulich and his children Jacinda and Michael.

References

Benjamin Genocchio, "The Art of Laurens Tan," ART AsiaPacific, pp. 76–79.

"Vale Laurens Tan: a force that made the world feel a little smaller," ArtsHub, January 2025.

"Laurens Tan (1950–2025)," ArtAsiaPacific, January 2025.

Laurens Tan, The Architecture of Risk, Doctor of Creative Arts thesis, University of Technology Sydney, 2005.