N.Smith Gallery

Christopher Zanko

Australia

Christopher Zanko is an artist based in the Illawarra/Dharawal region of the New South Wales south coast. Pulling from the architecture, culture, and history of his hometown, Zanko transforms his suburban environments through his unique ways of seeing, bringing to life his lived experience in the everyday.

Heavily influenced by the process and aesthetics of Japanese woodblock carving, Zanko seeks to distinguish the individualism of the red brick and prefab suburbia. The elements that make a house a home – tyre swans, water features, specialty terrazzo porches, are carefully noticed in his subject matter. Through hours of meditative carving, deeply considering forms and colour palettes, Zanko creates a sense of permanence to his quiet subject matter, fixing them to this sense of place unique to him.