Ming Wong announced as the new Artist in Residence at The National Gallery

We are delighted that the Singaporean artist Ming Wong will be the new Artist in Residence at The National Gallery for 2025, a twelve-month residency created in partnership with the Contemporary Art Society. Wong’s broad practice across film, performance, painting and installation draws on the history of cinema, pop culture, and speculative fiction to uncover the politics of representation. In re-staging scenes from world cinema in his films and performances, Wong has explored the ways both individual and national identities are coded and constructed. Recent projects have engaged with speculative futures, Sino-American relations, and cross gender opera.

Wong has been invited to respond to the collections of the National Gallery and this year’s partner museum, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea. He will begin his residency in March 2025 and will work over the course of the year in the National Gallery’s on-site artist’s studio. This will culminate in a publication and a presentation in winter 2025, as well as a permanent acquisition for Glynn Vivian Art Gallery.

The Artist in Residence programme invites a mid-career artist to develop their practice in the context of the museum and to benefit from unparalleled access to the Gallery’s collection. The partnership between the National Gallery and Glynn Vivian Art Gallery will give Wong the opportunity to respond to both the National Gallery’s collection of masterpieces in the Western European tradition as well as the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery collection, which covers a broad spectrum of visual arts from the original bequest of Richard Glynn Vivian (1835-1910) to 20th Century Welsh and contemporary art, including oil painting, china and glassware.

Wong is the fifth Artist in Residence to be chosen since the launch of the Gallery’s new Modern and Contemporary Programme, following the appointment of Rosalind Nashashibi in 2020, Ali Cherri in 2021, Céline Condorelli in 2023 and Katrina Palmer in 2024. The award is a collaboration between The National Gallery and the CAS, generously supported by Suling Mead