Undying: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah (born 1977, Dharawal/Port Kembla NSW) lives on a cattle farm on Bindjareb Nyoongar Country, Western Australia. Shaped by formative experiences as a "Muslim kid with mixed heritage", on his father's side he is a seventh-generation Australian descended from convict arrival in 1815, and on his mother's side, from Bugis and Minangkabau royalty in Malaysia. Abdullah's earliest influences growing up in inner-city Perth included comic books, fantasy novels, skateboarding, hip hop, a haunted family home, Sufism, boxing, and grunge, and "living a very grass-roots existence as a lo-fi creative kid in the 1980s and 1990s".

After working as an illustrator, model maker and zoo designer, Abdullah developed a sculptural practice grounded in storytelling. Here in Undying, his intricately carved and painted works tell a story of our complex relationship with life, death and the afterlife, and of our connection with (and responsibility to) the natural world. Each sculpture is accompanied by a text by Abdullah, in which he reflects on the animal he has depicted.

Commissioned by the Chau Chak Wing Museum, The University of Sydney, and supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, Undying: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah takes inspiration from the Museum's collections of natural history and antiquity to present a story of curiosity, inter-relationship, and perpetuity.

Curator: Katrina Liberiou