Chris Ferric

Savers Footscray Residency

Jinghua Qian writing about Savers in the furniture section of Savers having eir portrait painted onto a used framed canvas from Savers (2025)

Acrylic painted over canvas-ish, wood frame, mystery paint, price tag, receipt

A receipt from Savers stapled next to a wood-framed canvas of Jingua Qian. Inside the frame, pink, beige and green blocks are evenly spaced over a white unprimed canvas. Over the top of these blocks, in the middle of the canvas, Jinghua is seated in a carved wooden armchair looking at their laptop. The impression of eir restless movements, like visual echoes, are messily painted next to eir head and elbows and shoulders. There are impressions of sections of objects in the background, a bike wheel, some books, a fire extinguisher. Hanging over the top left corner of the painting is a price tag for $4.49 from Savers - the original tag for the canvas.

This portrait was completed as part of Jinghua Qian’s brand-new site-specific work for Footscray West Writer’s Festival “From The Belly of The West”.

Ferric painted Qian at the back of Savers in the furniture section, while Qian undertook their writers-in-residence program.

From the existing Savers stock, Qian chose this un-primed canvas painting of triangles for Ferric to paint on.

Qian’s portrait is painted as they speak to people and write animatedly.