Art History X SCA: Ryan Ouyang In Conversation with Maeve Sullivan

Art History X SCA is a series of conversations between Art History and Sydney College of the Arts students that aims not only to foster connections between the two disciplines but also to forge new pathways for collaboration and crossover.

Ryan Ouyang (he/him) is an artist and a third-year student at the Sydney College of the Arts working across sculpture, ceramics and all the other mediums he enjoys. He has recently returned from a semester exchange at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston. 

Maeve Sullivan (she/her) is a third-year student undertaking a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Art History and English. She has recently returned from a semester exchange at New York University, New York City.

Ryan Ouyang in his studio at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Photography by Maeve Sullivan.

Maeve Sullivan: Where did you undertake your semester exchange, and why did you decide to go there?

Ryan Ouyang: I did my exchange at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) in Boston, USA. I’m a ceramics student, but while I was there, I took a mix of ceramics and sculpture classes. Unlike Sydney College of the Arts (SCA), MassArt is a publicly funded art school, so it’s entirely focused on creative practices. All of their facilities are geared toward making art. I had much greater access to materials, processes, and conversations with experts that weren’t always available to me at Sydney College of the Arts (SCA).

MS: Did you feel something was missing at SCA that MassArt offered? 

RO: It was mainly about access to a broader artistic community. The U.S. has a really strong ceramics culture because of their institutional support for the arts, so I had opportunities to be taught by artists with completely different skillsets and backgrounds compared to SCA. MassArt has been in one location for a while, so they’ve built up a huge archive of student work and very comprehensive ceramics facilities. Because of how long they've been operating, they’ve been able to build from the ground up. Even though I major in ceramics, I tend to think of myself more as a sculptor. I was really interested in their foundry program, working with metal casting in bronze, iron, and aluminium, which isn’t very common for students in Sydney. I actually heard about these offerings from friends at MassArt before applying. 

MS: Winning the 2024 USU Creative Awards, chosen by our shared icon, Billy Bain, did that give you the confidence to take the leap and go on exchange?

RO: Definitely. When I applied for the USU Creative Awards, I had just finished the body of work that ended up winning. My friends encouraged me to apply, even though I wasn’t sure. I was in the first semester of my second year and still questioning how much I wanted to commit to life as an artist. Being selected as a finalist, and then actually winning, which I didn’t expect at all, was such a huge affirmation. It made me feel like this was something I could do and wanted to do. It showed me that my art wasn’t just meaningful to me, but also resonated with others. That confidence carried into my exchange. I stopped worrying about whether the work I was making was “good enough” or if people would like it. I felt supported, and that gave me the freedom to experiment and push myself creatively. 

MS: So, on both a personal and practice level, what did you gain at MassArt that you wouldn’t have experienced at SCA? 

RO: At SCA, I was surrounded by the same people for the first two years. We were all on a similar journey, thinking in similar ways, growing together. To suddenly leave that and be in a completely new country, in a space where people aren’t necessarily making work that's wildly different, but are coming at it with a different mindset, using processes I wasn’t familiar with, that was huge. It was such a shift. And it was amazing to be immersed in that, to become part of a new community. I made lifelong friends with those people.

MS: And how did living in Boston compare to Sydney? Having been in New York myself, seeing all these new things was honestly life-changing. Especially since we’re both SCA and Art History students, we do a lot of looking. How did that new visual scene, even the light, all of those differences, feed into your practice?

RO: Place matters so much to the work you make: the sights, the smells, the kinds of people you pass every day. But also, there’s a lot of personal introspection that happens when you leave your safety bubble. When you’re far away from anyone who holds expectations of who you are, you can start to really explore what’s at your core, what makes you you, outside of all the noise. You’ve definitely experienced this too, being exposed to so much art, so many galleries and museums. Even the tiniest spaces over there hold shows that would be considered major blockbusters back in Australia. You were at NYU, and you had free access to the Met, so you know exactly what I mean. Just being around that level of art all the time... it changes something in you. Art is always different in person.

MS: Yes! We got to visit the Whitney and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum together. So different, but both so iconic. We saw a lot of art, but we also became part of artist communities while we were there. There was just so much on offer. You spoke highly of your time with the MassArt Iron Corps.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Massachusetts. Photo by Maeve Sullivan.

RO: Yes, IronCorps was this student group at MassArt, about 20 to 30 people, and twice a semester, they’d drag this huge furnace out into the courtyard, load it up with iron and coal, and cast metal. I got into it through a good friend and just started showing up to meetings and work days. At first, I wasn’t much help—I didn’t really know how to use any of the metalshop tools (still kind of don’t). But I went to the pours, joined a conference trip to Alabama with them, and ended up making what I think is one of my best pieces: a sculpture I cast in iron. You can actually see it now at the 2025 USU Creative Awards. It was such an incredible experience.

MS: You mentioned it’s a dying practice. My analogue photography teacher says something similar whenever we were working in the darkroom, surrounded by chemicals and gear that digital technology has mostly replaced. 

RO: Yeah, exactly. There are foundries in Sydney, but hardly any cast iron work is happening there, which is such a shame. Before MassArt, it wasn’t something I’d even considered. As far as I know, there aren’t really any fine art institutions in Australia offering metal casting to students. There was UNSW, but they haven’t offered it since 2021. In my first week at MassArt, I actually emailed the foundry teacher, Marjee Levine, basically begging to get into her class. Thankfully, she said yes. I wouldn’t have been so deeply involved in the community or the Foundry if I hadn’t joined. It was a real leap of faith—I even had to drop below the credit point limit just to take the class. But joining the Iron Corps was one of the best decisions I made during my exchange.

MS: You were lucky to take up an internship over the summer break as a Ceramics Studio Assistant at MassArt. How did you find that experience?

RO: When you go on exchange, your visa basically runs out right after your last class, it’s done, and you’re expected to fly back. But I loved being in Boston. I had some savings and was looking for a way to stay longer. I started asking around about internships or work. To extend your visa while on exchange, the work, paid or unpaid, has to be directly related to your studies. Since I was at MassArt for ceramics, I had to find something in that field. I ended up asking the ceramics studio manager if he needed help over the summer. Luckily, the studio was going through a rebuild and he needed an extra hand. We talked, and although it was last-minute, I managed to get my visa extended just three days before it expired. I got to stay until August. It was a great experience, learning how the studio actually runs, and realising how, as students, we make a lot of mess and don’t always treat the facilities so kindly. It was eye-opening to see the behind-the-scenes: the dirty work, the blood, sweat, and tears that keep places like MassArt going.

MS: Do you anticipate creating art in response to your time living away from Australia? Will this inform your grad show presentation, or is it more about the skills you learnt?

RO: Completely. So much of my work draws from myself, the world around me, the people, and the relationships I’ve built. All of that and the city of Boston, in some way, is a part of me now. When I left, I did this thing where I wrote letters to the people closest to me. I signed each one, “A part of you, a part of me.” I think a part of them lives on in me, and I hope a part of me lives on in them. My grad show work will definitely carry that with it. Also, the skills, but I think, like my teacher Jan Guy once said, “Skills are the vocabulary through which a work speaks.” I think going on exchange taught me more skills, and those skills have given me the words to say what I want to say.

Ryan Ouyang at the 2025 USU Creative Awards.

MS: It feels full circle that you recently won the 2025 USU Creative Award for the second consecutive year with your work, Sanctuary, which was carefully transported from Massachusetts to Sydney.

RO: That work came out of a place of introspection and loneliness, a time in my life when I started looking inward, questioning who I was and how I felt. The piece became a kind of shell of myself. I was thinking about metal and iron as symbols of protection, but also as materials that corrode and eat away at themselves as they rust. It was a work I found meaning in while making it. I remember stepping back and thinking that if I didn’t bring anything else home from the States, it had to be this. It felt like a natural transition, coming back with the USU deadline approaching, and it was a great feeling, not only to win for the second year in a row, but for it to be this piece.

Ryan Ouyang's Sanctuary (2025), at the 2025 USU Creative Awards. Photography by Jessica Maurer.

MS: How do you think SCA and Art History students could better connect and build a stronger community between the two disciplines?

RO: I think it’s a shame. SCA students are required to take four mandatory units of Art History, but because everyone does it in their first and second years, they mostly stick together in those classes. From what I’ve observed, they don’t really branch out or mix. I think part of the disconnect is that SCA students often aren’t as interested in writing, but also, there’s a real lack of shared space. Art History tutorials float around in so many buildings, mostly around Schaeffer, while SCA students often avoid the library and tend to have all their classes at Old Teachers College. SCA even has a monthly show in the gallery there.

MS: I had no idea.

RO: Exactly. Invites are sent to all SCA students, but Art History students aren’t part of it. Every month, usually on a Wednesday night, I see SCA students show up, but never an Art History student. There’s also SCASS, SCA’s student society, which hosts exhibitions at Backspace Gallery in the Wentworth Building. A lot is going on, but SCA can feel like a bit of an echo chamber. Sometimes it feels like they forget Art History even exists. 

MS: I'd say that within Art History, there's little mention of what's happening in the SCA and the disconnect seems to go both ways. A perfect food-for-thought ending note for this first conversation in the Art History x SCA series. Thank you, Ryan!

RO: Thank you!