RAINY TONG

Rainy Tong is a London-based painter and recent graduate of the Royal College of Art. Her practice centers on the female body, shaped by both of  her Chinese cultural background and the context of contemporary Western art. With painting as main practice, she explores identity, desire, beauty and intimacy, questions what the female body can be and what the female body can become.

Row, rough, wild and untamed-Rainy’s work is driven by a deeply intuitive, materially exploratory process. Refers to notions of idealised body and self-portrait, Rainy draws inspiration from the emptiness and spatial rhythm of Chinese traditional ink painting. Linked to the “idealised landscapes” in traditional Chinese ink painting, they are, in essence, self-portraits of the artist. In this sense, Rainy’s works are also her self-portraits—constructing playful-scapes in erotic, poetic, and violent ways which are drawn from her interior world.

Rainy currently focuses on exploring the materials of ink as a language which is an ancient material from her culture-China associated with the historically female’s identity. The bodies in her works are entangled in ambitious lines, wild drips, and explosive brush strokes. They are faceless, boneless, and amorphous. They inhabit a space between love and intimacy, desire and danger, sexuality and identity. Through intertwined bodies, she reflects on danger, intimacy, identity, and life itself.

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