JASON PHU: My name's Jason Phu and my practice I'd say
medium wise is a range of mediums.  So, I studied printmaking...
so I do printmaking, etching,  woodcut, lithography but also
I do drawing and painting.
I do Chinese painting which is  water colour on rice paper.
I do installation and lately, I've  been doing a bit of performance
and video so a bit of everything.
Whatever suits the task at hand I guess.

NAVA: What are the main challenges you've experienced in your arts career?

JASON: The main challenges I've  experienced in my career?
Probably getting up every day  and being an artist and I think
it's important for artists to be  constantly failing in a sense
and trying new things  and experimenting and that can be hard
because it's a constant unknown.
It's constantly putting yourself  out there sort of naked,
metaphorically or sometimes  not metaphorically.
Just building a sustainable  career and understanding that
as a young artist that I've had  a lot of successes but often
these things dry up so sort of  trying to figure out how to
economically be  sustainable in my career.

NAVA:Describe some of your significant international or national experiences. What have they enabled you to achieve?

JASON: When I went to live in  China for two years in Chongqing
and was really able to interact  with a lot of the artists and
see how, you know, people work  differently because it is really
different in different countries - how people work even from
a basic economic point of view.
I travel twice a year to Chiang Mai to make prints with a friend.
Nationally, it's been, you know,  working at the big institutions like
working with Artspace for the fellowship  last year was very exciting,
getting the commission from  West Space last year as well.
It was really exciting and really  challenging but forced me to,
you know, work to a bigger budget.
I'm in a group show at the Art  Gallery of New South Wales right now
and I think I mentioned before  the Primavera coming up as well
but, yeah, working with these  big institutions, it's exciting
because, yeah, there's a lot  higher risk  I feel but, yeah,
the challenge is sometimes what keep me going.

NAVA:What does art mean to you?

JASON: For my artwork and not everyone else's artwork, my work has been,
well, storytelling as a person of  colour but understanding why that's
important and not any less valuable  than a work about materiality.
And I think, unfortunately, even  though there is this limelight
and trend to showcase this storytelling, it's often done with like
patting a dog's head like, oh, 'isn't that cute' sort of thing.
So I think it's this post-enlightenment  mentality of the Other
as this interesting,  exotic thing.
It means to me telling a story that not everyone can connect to,
but people who don't have these voices to connect to,
can connect to, yeah.