Nathan Beard

Based in Boorloo (Perth), Nathan Beard is a multidisciplinary contemporary artist whose practice explores identity, memory and cultural heritage through the lens of his Thai‑Australian background. Working across photography, sculpture and installation, Beard draws on personal archives, family objects and ornamental motifs to examine what it means to inherit a relationship to culture that is shaped by both proximity and distance.

Beard’s work reflects on the complexities of diaspora (people being displaced) and the interplay between personal and collective histories, questioning how identity is constructed, performed and represented. Through repetition, embellishment and material excess, he unpacks ideas of authenticity, belonging and cultural inheritance, inviting viewers to consider how culture is remembered, reimagined and lived across generations.

  • Cultural Identity: Beard investigates the nuances of Thai heritage within an Australian context.
  • Memory and Archives: His works incorporate family photographs and heirlooms t evoke personal narratives.
  • Ornament and Symbolism: Decorative motifs reference cultural aesthetics and traditions.
  • Diaspora and Belonging: Beard’s practice considers displacement and the negotiation of identity across cultures.

Nathan Beard, Cicerone, 2025, painted silicone, PLA, steel, foam, resin, found objects, dimensions variable; Courtesy of the artist, FUTURES; photo: Christian Capurro.

Cast in hyperrealistic silicone, the artist’s own hands and feet are multiplied and displayed throughout the space, clasping durian fruit, pink orchids as well as 3D‑printed Buddhas reproduced from sixteenth‑century works in AGSA’s collection. These gestures reference traditional Thai dance and devotional practices, while embellishments such as acrylic nails and jewel‑like surfaces introduce theatricality and excess. Beard draws on a recognisable visual language of fruits, temple figures and saturated ‘Siam’ reds, greens and sapphires, sampling cultural symbols associated with Thailand and re‑presenting them through contemporary sculptural processes.

Alongside the sculptural works, Beard’s video Bound (2025) extends this method of sampling and repetition. The silent montage brings together found footage, family Super 8 films and popular media, looping images of hands in motion—dancing, working, resting and touching sacred objects. Across the installation, hands become both subject and symbol, raising questions about how cultural identity is performed, repeated and recognised. Drawing on his own lived experience, Beard approaches the work as a form of autoethnography, using personal memory and inherited imagery to explore how identity can be fragmented, doubled and reassembled. Rather than offering fixed definitions of self or culture, the installation embraces ambiguity, suggesting that meaning can emerge through surface, gesture and repetition.

installation view: Ramsay Art Prize 2021 featuring Limp-wristed Gesture (i) by Nathan Beard, 2020; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; photo: Saul Steed.

Ramsay Art Prize 2021 - Finalist

Limp-wristed Gesture (i) sees the artist’s hands cast in fleshy silicone as they perform a floral gesture from traditional Thai dance. Embellished with repurposed cultural objects, including garlands made from hand-stitched monks’ robes, the work draws upon spiritual totems of cultural pride and expression.

The fleshy limpness of Beard’s sculptures are underpinned by his childhood feelings of shame and anxiety inherent in the ‘authentic’ performance of his Thai heritage through traditional hand gestures. Beard reframes this cultural otherness through his queerness; particularly the adolescent self-consciousness around projecting effeminacy through expressive or limp-wristed hand-gestures. The work reclaims this precariousness through evocative excess.

  • What do you notice first about Beard's installations? Consider colour, material, scale or repetition.
  • How are the hands represented, do they appear familiar, strange or exaggerated?
  • Beard casts his own hands and feet in materials such as silicone, resin and glass. How do these materials affect how the works feel or are perceived? What is the impact of making the body appear soft, flexible or ornamental?
  • Why might repetition be important in Beard’s work?
  • The hands in Beard’s work are detached from the body.
    • How does this fragmentation affect how we think about identity or the self?
    • Can a single body part communicate cultural identity?

Gesture study: hands as language

  • Observe your own hands in different positions or gestures.
    • Create a series of drawings, photographs or small sculptures focusing only on hands. Consider how gesture communicates emotion, identity or habit
    • What is gained or lost when the rest of the body is removed?

Objects of inheritance

  • Beard uses recognisable symbols associated with Thailand, including fruit, orchids, Buddhist figures and specific colour palettes.
    • Identify 3–5 objects that reflect your background, family, interests or lived experience.
    • Recreate or reimagine these objects through drawing, collage or sculpture.
    • Why do these objects matter objects matter to you and how might they be interpreted differently by others?

Repetition and variation

Use repetition as a creative strategy.

  • Select one simple form (e.g. a hand, fruit, symbol or everyday object).
  • Reproduce it multiple times, changing only one element each time (colour, texture, scale, orientation).
  • Display the works as one installation. Discuss how repetition can create rhythm or emphasis.

Colour as code

  • Responding to Beard’s recurring ‘Siam’ colour palette, research or reflect on colours associated with a particular place, memory or tradition that is special to you.
    • Create an artwork using a this palette.
    • Annotate the work with short reflections explaining your colour choices.

Fragmented Self-Portrait

  • Create a self-portrait without showing the full body or face. Focus on a fragment, hands, feet, clothing detail, posture or a repeated motif. What does this fragment reveal?