The artwork of
Bundit Puangthong
bundit Puangthong
Contemporary abstract expressionist
Bundit Puangthong is a contemporary Thai artist based in Melbourne. His artistic identity fuses his training in traditional Thai art with a modern western-based arts practice. Utilising a range of techniques, from detailed brushwork to stencilling (which is a key technique used in traditional Thai temple arts), Bundit blends his formal training with an interest in the contemporary practices of graffiti, abstract expressionist and pop art to create a unique and dynamic artistic style.
His works on canvas incorporate a range of mixed media including acrylics, oil sticks, spray paint, and can be characterised by their size. Bundit’s formative experience working as a sign writer painting billboards in Thailand as teenager, combined with a background as an art director on film sets, has manifested in a natural inclination to work on a massive scale.
Guided by an acute awareness of social phenomena, Bundit utilises the pictorial space as a site of negotiation between inherited and adopted motifs. Via this jumble of words, themes and associations – Buddhism, culture and identity – he encourages us to discover and enjoy the multiplicity of meanings and commonalities that weave together to create our cultural fabric.
Bundit has a Masters in Visual Arts from the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts. Before coming to Australia, he spent four years studying traditional Thai art at Nakhon Si Tammarat Academy of the Arts, and later studied contemporary western methods at Chiang Mai University, under the guidance of renowned Thai artist Montien Boonma
He regularly participates in group and solo shows in Asia and Australia and his work is highly sought by collectors and institutions, including Artbank, Australia’s largest collector of contemporary art.
artbank.gov.au/search/profile/12282
Bundit is represented by Edwina Corlette Gallery. edwinacorlette.com His work has been reviewed in Australian Art Collector, Art and Australia, Artist Profile, Vogue Australia, and recently Art Guide Australia
reviews
critics say...
Melissa Pesa
Art Almanac - 14 September 2016
Puangthong creates complex, chaotic compositions, filled with detail. Drawing on his formal studies, his paintings are rich in religious and cultural symbology from temples and gods to village houses and fishing boats. Accented with evocative colour, swift brushwork, graphic lines and occasional paint drip, these images rest on the threshold of dreamlike, or fairytale.
Amelia Winata
Art Guide - 19 June 2020
Puangthong’s paintings offer a sense of his inner consciousness. His canvases largely feature bright, dream-like figures overlapping with amorphous lines and shapes against flat monochrome backdrops. The compositions are often cryptic, an intermingling of figurative and abstract shapes.
Brisbane Art News-
2020
Bundit Puangthong’s perceptive search through worldwide cultural imagery is grounded in traditional technique and the buzz of the street. His dreamlike compositions draw on childhood experience stenciling puppet theatre backdrops with his grandfather, as well as years of formal study in Thailand and Australia. Old and new systems of visual persuasion are his “found objects” and all become fair game for inhabiting multiple philosophies of being.
Art prizes
international / australian
Bundit Puangthong has been a finalist in multiple prizes including: