One of Singapore’s most prominent multidisciplinary artists, Robert Zhao’s practice investigates man’s relationship with nature and the environment, producing works ranging from photography, video and installation. He wrote: “Since the 1950s, global changes such as deforestation and urbanisation have affected animals and plants in different ways. Sometimes they suffer through human development, and sometimes humans produce situations that allow novel organisms to thrive. Due to a dramatic increase in travel and trade, animals and plants have also crossed into new territories, creating new ecological categories of ‘invasive’ and ‘native’ species. Most conservation efforts are aimed at destroying the former and protecting the latter, though increasingly, more ecologists are conceding that these categories are fluid and unstable. New Forest exposes a variety of collisions; between nature and the city, invasives and natives. Sometimes these result in violent encounters: competition, predation and extinctions. Other times these interactions result in a new, precarious balance, and a destabilising of categories of foreign and local, noxious and useful.” His recent solos include: Robert Zhao Renhui: The Lines We Draw, ShanghART Singapore, Singapore, 2020, Singapore Biennale: Every Step in the Right Direction, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 2019, New Forest, Mind Set Art Center, Taipei 2019, The Institute of Critical Zoologists Final Report of the Christmas Island Expert Working Group, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore, 2018, A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World, Centre of Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 2015, and Primo Marella Gallery, Milan, 2014. He had also taken part in the 20th Sydney Biennale in 2016. Robert Zhao won the UOB Painting of the Year Award in 2009, apart from the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award (2010), Deutsche Bank Award in Photography (University of the Arts, London, 2011), the Sony World Photography Awards in 2010 and 2011. He received his BFA and MFA in Photography from the Camberwell College of Arts and the London College of Communication.