13 May - 6 June

Opening Event: Wed 20 May, 6pm-8pm

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Clara Chiu’s body of work is focused on water, capturing how water in motion redefines form and questions our perception of the physical world. Clara’s practice is an intimate study of water’s natural rhythms. Using her camera as a meditative tool, she explores the resonant connection between the viewer and the fluid landscape. Her work captures the subtleties of waterfronts, the ripples, reflections, and shifting tones that often go unnoticed. By focusing on these everyday details, Clara transforms transient moments into striking visual stories, inviting the audience to find extraordinary beauty in the familiar. 

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The pieces in Water’s Awakening blend imagination with reality. Clara’s intuitive approach captures a spontaneous, yet reflective energy, while her intentional editing process reveals hidden messages and emotional depth. In The Universe Cheering, light bouncing off a yacht’s hull is reimagined as a symphony of clouds, recasting the waterline into the shoreline of a long-awaited breakthrough. Through her lens, a river’s movement is reimagined as Meandering Trees, and the light caught on the surface becomes Water in Flames. Printed with a painterly sensitivity on archival rag paper, these abstract compositions blur the line between photography and painting, encouraging the viewer to look beyond the literal. 

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Beyond their visual appeal, these works are rooted in a journey of healing and renewal. Clara sees her creative process as a pursuit of clarity, a way to find meaning amidst the noise of everyday life. Her pieces in Water’s Awakening offer a sanctuary for contemplation and emotional connection. This display is an invitation to pause, breathe, and witness the evocative quality and the fleeting forms of water. 

About the Artist

Clara Chiu is a Hong Konger-Australian fine art photographer now based in Sydney, Australia. Born in Hong Kong during its Belle Époque, a vibrant time of glamour and optimism shaped by both Eastern and Western influences, she moved to Sydney’s Lower North Shore in early childhood, where she developed a deep appreciation of coastal beauty and the subtleties of nature. Her Australian education fostered her innate affinity with visual art. Clara worked for many years as a financial services lawyer, initially in Sydney and then in Hong Kong. She returned to Sydney with her family in 2022.  

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From a young age, Clara was mentored in photography by her father, an experienced photographer. Some of her earliest memories are of helping him set up his tripod, holding the light meter, and sometimes even posing for his portraits. The father and daughter often went on photography trips together, where they would quietly take in their surroundings, sometimes engaging in a playful competition as they captured and shared their perspectives. Clara’s father was a man of few words, but through photography, they connected in ways words could not express. 

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The death of her father in early 2024 profoundly shaped her perspective and strengthened her connection to the medium.  One day, whilst she was still very much grieving, she started taking photos of the shifting forms and patterns of water near the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This marked the beginning of her water photography and current business, Jōzen Art. 

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Living on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, with its waterfronts and seascapes, Clara captures nature’s fluid, ever-changing essence with a bold and intentional style. Her images seek to evoke healing and connection, blurring the line between reality and abstraction. Through reflections, ripples, and shifting light, she explores water as a metaphor for memory, transformation, and the passage of time, each piece imbued with resilience, freedom, and hope. 

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Beyond her personal practice, Clara Chiu contributes to the arts community through exhibitions and charitable work. She raised funds as a portrait photographer for the Hong Kong Cancer Fund in 2021; she began exhibiting at the Greenwich Village Arts Trail since 2024. Her work Sunset in Miyazaki was selected as Finalist for the SOHO Art Prize 2025.  She is the winner of the Emerging Artist Prize of the inaugural Lifeline Art Show North Sydney (2025) for her work Meandering Trees, and her work Meditation by Sand and Water was selected as Finalist at the same event.