Chris Ferric lives and works on Bunurong Country and Wurundjeri Country. They grew up on the floodplains of Tongarla (Murray River) and Balaba (Broken Creek) in bushland of Bangerang Nation. They were born in what English-speakers know as Japan, islands of living indigenous cultures Ainu and Uchinānchu. Ferric would like to offer a respectful acknowledgement to the Elders, past and present, of these places which they occupy and have occupied. While still trying to understand what the f*ck that means as a European settler-colonial.
Ferric’s larger-than-life-sized oil and metal-leaf works seek to amplify truth, beauty, and hopeful future visions. In 2025 they are the winner of the Midsumma & Australia Post Art Award, with their portrait of Jo Clifford.
Ferric’s live collaborations has had them engage with audiences from on stage and backstage: hot scenes to accompany queer story-telling at The Victorian Pride Centre, portraiture in the furniture section of Savers Footscray, in a live response to moving modern dancers during development with Caroline Bowditch, and a clown hanging a bowling ball of their scrote. As collaborator with Snuff Puppets theatre company, in 2025 their live drawings have been projected with performances for Snuff Salooon.
Other creative responses include hand-sculpting in plaster, clay, precious metal, silicone and wood, with intimate themes that connect to “non-normative” bodies. Their soft sculptural works include a cock shirt for Jax Brown, and a human-sized working chrysalis.
Ferric’s education has included a mentorship under artist and educator Jonas Ropponen, Feral Queer Camp, and research at Australian Queer Archives. Their ongoing development of a Community Engagement Strategy includes consultation with Arts Access Victoria. In 2022 under the Creative Victoria Creators Fund, Ferric spent 6 months developing methods to represent the diversity of disabled, queer and gender variant experiences within their work.
At the end of 2025, Ferric is focused less on creative productivity, and more on efforts to learn what meaningful creative collaboration and community can be. In the face of fascism, they invite you to reach out to make use of their brush.
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“And maybe the power of [Ferric’s portrait of Clifford] comes from the fact that it is the creation of a queer/non-binary artist painting a queer/non-binary subject in a way that to me both references a queer artist of the past (El Greco), shines a light on a better future and acknowledges the power of both our presences in this present moment. I think it’s miraculous.”
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