Melissa Nguyễn Mèo/Mèo
15 May.—07 Jun. 2025
Melissa Nguyen (b.2000) is a Vietnamese-Australian artist living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. Her painting-based practice explores the multiplicities of translation as a creative methodology. Through examination of cultural disonance and positionality as part of the Vietnamese diaspora, Melissa dissects the complex relationship between copy and original. Her practice takes 'self-Orientalism' as a conceptual framework through which she questions the relevance of cultural identity in art.
Selected works
Exhibitions
CV
Education
- 2022
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Arts) (Honours), Victorian College of the Arts
- 2021
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Arts), Victorian College of the Arts
Solo Exhibitions
- 2025
- Mèo/Mèo, Mary Cherry Contemporary, Melbourne
- 2024
- Water Street by Night, West Space Window, Melbourne
- 2023
- Ain't No Party Like An S Club Party, TCB Art Inc, Melbourne
Selected Group Exhibitions
- 2026
- TBA, Nexus Arts, Adelaide (forthcoming)
- Are you lonely tonight ? I'm so loneseome I could cry, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne
- Emergent Fields 2026, Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery, Melbourne
- 2025
- Where Memory Transforms, RACV City Club, Melbourne
- Halfway, Tiles Lewisham, Sydney
- I am Thai and You are Vietnamese (in collaboration with Panisa Ongwat), Bus Projects, Melbourne
- the way a stranger looks, Bus Projects, Melbourne
- 2024
- Everything We Inherit, ISA Art Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia
- 2023
- Surfeit, Kings Artist Run, Melbourne
- Then Sharply Turns, Connors Connors, Melbourne
- Within the without, CAVES, Melbourne
- 2022
- VCA Grad Show (Honours), Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne
- L'occitane la prairie Paris Texas Geelong: Cottagecore, Shope Betrayal, Melbourne
- A Playland of One's Own, Second Space Projects, Melbourne
- 2021
- VCA Grad Show, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne
Awards
- 2025
- Overall winner of the Churchie Emerging Art Prize
- Finalist in the Macquarie Group Emerging Artist Prize
- 2023
- West Space Mentorship and Window Exhibition, West Space x Victorian College of the Arts
- 2021
- Finalist in the Castlemaine Experimental Art Prize, Castlemaine Art Museum
- Finalist in the Majlis Travelling Fellowship, Victorian College of the Arts
- Awarded the Valerie Albiston Painting Scholarship, The University of Melbourne
Selected Bibliography
- 2026
- Buckley, Nick. “Bed rot, doomscrolling and a single goldfish: the Melbourne art show blowing loneliness open.” The Guardian, 2026.
- Giles, Oliver. “Part of One: Are you lonely tonight: I’m so lonesome I could cry.” Art Guide Australia, no.162: 88-91.
- Yee, Hannah-Rose. “In the making.” Vogue Australia, June 2026: 58.
2025 Watson, Kaylee. “Forecast: Melissa Nguyen.” Vault Magazine, no. 52 (2025-2026): 158-159. - 2025
- Watson, Kaylee. “Forecast: Melissa Nguyen.” Vault Magazine, no. 52 (2025-2026): 158-159.
- Gynes, Bec. “Mèo/Mèo – Mary Cherry Contemporary.” Lowbrow, 2025.
- Mcardle, James. “December 1: Experiment.” On This Date In Photography.
- 2024
- Brown, Annabel. “Today I am alive, and without nostalgia the night flows.” West Space Offsite, 2024.
- 2023
- Kostos, Emily. “Then Sharply Turns.” unProjects, 2023.