DISCOVER: YOUNG TALENT VICTORIA

Affordable Art Fair Melbourne is proud to reintroduce its much-anticipated Discover: Young Talent platform, showcasing six unrepresented artists who have been selected for their innovative and exciting approach to their practice.

This curated selection of young artists offers an ideal opportunity for collectors to snap up their artwork early and discover exciting new talent and techniques. With a range of mediums and styles, the Discover: Young Talent platform is not to be missed at the upcoming Affordable Art Fair Melbourne. Read on to hear more about the six artists to watch out for during your visit 31 August – 3 September at Royal Exhibition Building.

Yi Cheng

Yi Cheng is a Melbourne based artist whose artworks draws from his everyday experiences and encounters. The resulting paintings captures a moment in time through his subjective experiences. Yi’s work aims to evoke feelings, creating an atmosphere and mood that permeates his paintings while presenting his experience in a suggestive greater narrative.

Yi is bringing a series of works to the Affordable Art Fair called BY THE POND which is a response to the pond in Carlton Gardens. These paintings represent a portrait of his experiences of the place and the ducks impressions on him as he translates them through painting.

FLICK CHAFER-SMITH

Flick Chafer-Smith is a Ngarrindjeri artist and Torch staff member who creates geometric, tessellated paintings inspired from moments in her childhood and stories passed on to her.

Flick believes her art practice gave her an identity to build on and feel accepted in the world as an artist. Through her art she has connected with her family who live on Country and is always learning more about her culture. It has changed her as a person because she has re-evaluated boundaries that stopped her from attempting things in the past.

Alex Kynaston

Alex Kynaston is a Melbourne based artist whose practice critically engages with the connection between painting and psychoanalysis.

Kynaston’s saturated palette captures dreams and emotional traces of the everyday throughout her work in landscape and portraiture. The world that Kynaston’s paintings inhabit is equal parts romantic and haunting, her work as expressive as it is uncanny.

Kynaston embarks from her award-winning Master of Fine Arts graduating portfolio at RMIT in 2022 to a thriving studio practice dedicated to unravelling painting’s complexities.

Liv Mccarten

Straight from completing a BFA at RMIT with distinctions, Liv McCarten has emerged into the art scene with an almost sell out debut exhibition in February 2023, showcasing a variety of her work and the balanced duality between her bold coloured, pop art styled pieces and her highly textural realism works, all connected by reference to everyday imagery.

This collection exhibits the more textural, realist side of Liv’s work to highlight her process of working solely with a palette knife to sculpt the image onto the canvas.

Chris Henderson

Chris Henderson is a figurative artist known for his reactive and emotionallyfocused work.

Drawing inspiration from growing up in a rural environment, Henderson’s artwork often reflects themes and colours associated with his upbringing. Through confident mark making and expressive forms, he captures the essence of his subjects in painting. His work ignites a subtle fascination with our surroundings, inviting viewers to contemplate the relationship between the figure and its environment.

Dedicated to his creative process, Henderson continually explores new ways to express his storytelling and incorporates elements from his rural background.