Mai Nguyễn-Long residency collaboration with Talbot Rice Gallery
During September and October 2025 we are delighted to welcome Mai Nguyễn-Long who is producing new works for a group exhibition at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, entitled The Children are Now.
Mai Nguyễn-Long will present a body of new glazed works from her celebrated Vomit Girl project, alongside unfired clay sculptures. More than four decades after visiting her father’s war-torn country of Vietnam, as an 8-year-old in 1978, Vomit Girl emerged from a viscerally sickening sense of being erased. This army of spirits form a new mythology to reclaim forbidden Vietnamese folk stories, empowering the imagination to thrive beyond fear and the ongoing impacts of violence, estrangement and intergenerational trauma.
The Children are Now runs from 28 October 2025 – 07 February 2026 at Talbot Rice Gallery which is supported by Creative Scotland and Edinburgh College of Art.
Mai Nguyễn-Long
Born in Tasmania to a Vietnamese father and an Australian mother, Mai Nguyễn-Long spent her formative years in Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. As a young adult she lived in Australia, China, and Vietnam. This trajectory of experiences during times of social and political upheaval continue to shape Nguyễn-Long’s sense of belonging. An acute sense of absence and disconnect informed her early academic commitments including Asian Studies, Art History, and Museum Studies. These experiences led to her work with an international health organization, becoming a 1999 Australian Youth Ambassador for Development with the Ministry of Health in Fiji. Since 1996 Nguyễn-Long has exhibited across a range of mediums including painting, drawing, media, mixed media sculptures and installation. It was a 2015 residency in the Hanoi ceramics village of Bat Trang that introduced Nguyễn-Long to clay. In 2023 she was awarded a practice-led PhD with thesis titled Vomit Girl Beyond Diasporic Trauma: Interconnecting Contemporary Art and Folkloric Practices in Vietnam. Nguyễn-Long’s works were exhibited at the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in 2022 and at the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial at QAGOMA, in 2024. She lives and works in Dharawal Country, Bulli, in Australia, and is represented by Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin.
