Under the blooming jacaranda trees lining Kogarah’s Hogben Park, an artist paints at their easel. The occasional passerby lingers, witness to the conversation unfolding between the artist and their surroundings.
It is a scene that Sydney-based artist, and 2025 Liverpool Powerhouse Scholarship Award winner, John Wang, has often returned to.
Captured with broad impressionistic brushtrokes, a selection of Wang’s oil works, including his 2021 and 2025 renderings of Hogben Park, are displayed as part of the Scholarship Showcase 2026 at the Liverpool Powerhouse’s Hopper Gallery.
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| John Wang's Hogben Park Kogarah, 2021 and Hogben Park Kogarah, 2025 |
Wang’s Observations in Oil, invites viewers to partake in the artist’s unique creative journey, spanning over six decades and two continents.
Landscapes of Shanghai’s built and natural environments, made across the 1970s and 1980s, accompany more recent works created in and around Sydney.
Each work provides a window into a particular time and place, capturing the hidden beauty of the everyday.
Intermediary spaces - city streets, suburban parks and waterways - sometimes populated, are brought to life through Wang’s masterful application of light and shadow.
The same treatment is afforded to a series of large-scale works featuring floral and plant-life subjects. While the Bird of Paradise Series celebrates the untamed, the Lotus Series shows a more subdued appreciation of nature.
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| Exhibition entrance featuring two of John Wang's oil works: Bird of Paradise, Series 1, 2023 and Bird of Paradise, Series 3, 2024 |
These are not just observations, but conversations - between the observer and the observed, the artist and his world - at any fleeting moment.
Exhibition Details
John Wang’s Observations in Oil is showing at the Liverpool Powerhouse from 20 June 2026 to 6 September 2026.
A long-standing member of the Liverpool Art Society, Wang was awarded the Liverpool Powerhouse Scholarship Award in 2025, providing the artist with the opportunity to exhibit the following year at the Liverpool Powerhouse.
Connect
- Liverpool Powerhouse: Website | Instagram
- Liverpool Art Society: Website | Instagram
- John Wang: Instagram