Laurens Tan

Laurens Tan was born in 1950 in The Hague, Holland of great grandparents who migrated from Fujian, China in the late 1800s, and settled in Australia in 1962. Tan works in studios in Beijing, Las Vegas and Wollongong. Laurens’ work links sculpture, architectural & industrial design, 3D animation & video, graphics, music.

Concerned with the plight of global trance as it affects cultural identity, his work has been curated in international survey exhibitions at the Iberia Center of Contemporary Art, Today Art Museum (Beijing), the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, Houston Museum of Art (USA), Seoul National University Museum of Art, Gana Galleries (S. Korea), the Shizuoka Prefectural Art Museum (Japan), and at the National Galleries of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, and the Sydney Powerhouse Museum in Australia.

His recent commissions were by the City of Sydney—a giant Monkey lantern sculpture at the Sydney Opera House to celebrate the Lunar New Year (2016), and by Zappos.com at Zappos Downtown, Las Vegas (2016). He is currently working on a new commission for MAMA in Albury. He is an Adjunct Professor at Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts (since 2006) and La Trobe University (since 2011). He completed a Doctor of Creative Arts (DCA) in Communications and Media at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia (2006—his thesis ‘The Architecture of Risk’ had Las Vegas as his focus and primary research site), and a Master of Creative Arts (MCA) in Visual & Cultural Identity at the University of Wollongong, Australia (1991). He has served as academic coordinator in Art (since 1980) & Design (since 1992) and taught in undergraduate and graduate programs in Australia, USA, and China. Laurens served as a Board member for the Asian Australian Art Association, Sydney (1997-2007), and as Artist Advisory Group Member, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2004-06).