Stanley Street Gallery is delighted to present Jacquie Meng’s first solo presentation ‘The World is my Playground’. Opening Celebration: Saturday 23 November 3-5pm In ‘The World is my Playground’ uncanny distortion and self-portraiture as self-roleplay facilitate the emergence of new identities, chance encounters and transformation. Vulgarity at the carnival is about the body warping; the foot is a map, the eye is a pool ball, the faces are contorting, and the world is synthetic. […] Exaggerated self-portraiture goes beyond self-representation into immersion with the thing-power objects, which have a radiating agency of their own. Smoke, light beams and patterned grass coalesce around the body and objects and are entirely enmeshed. The textural experience of Meng’s works reinforce painting as a practice of playing with space and collapsing time - Claire Grant Jacquie Meng (b.Hangzhou) works with painting, sculpture and installation. Her work redefines diasporic cultural identity beyond national and geographical specificities, rather seeing it as unfixed. Meng was awarded Guy Warren Emerging Art Prize 2024, the Brett Whitely travelling scholarship in 2021, was a finalist in the churchie Emerging Art Prize at the IMA, and was a part of PICA’s Hatched 2022. In 2023, she completed two overseas artist residencies, at Kunstraum in New York (April-July) and Pilotenkueche International Art Program Leipzig (July-September). Meng is represented by Stanley Street Gallery. Image: Jacquie Meng, mother of pearl jester dresser, 2024, oil on canvas, 155 x 122 cm, Image Remy Faint