Rel Pham
Rel Pham is a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist, designer, animator and illustrator known for his vibrant palette and surrealist approach. Drawing from ancient fables and rituals, he explores the interconnected nature of physical and digital realities through screen-based video, animation and installation.

Pham’s practice reimagines traditional scenes of Cao Dai temples and Western classical iconography in luminous neon and LED light. His hybrid worlds collapse time and space, exposing the invisible code behind our daily lives and transforming data’s ghostly logic into stories of human connection.

I wanted to explore how people try to find meaning in chaos. The I Ching and the algorithm feel like the same impulse, both promise answers that make the future feel less random.

In When Your Number’s Up , I’ve created a digital temple of uncertainty, a space where prediction becomes performance. Horses, numbers, symbols: they gallop and flicker like data packets or spirits, both wild and contained. The work is about our desire to believe, whether in divination or machine learning, and how those beliefs can both comfort and trap us.

Do you need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows?

The world is full of amateur oracles. Some tell you who you will marry, how many children you will have and how rich you will be. Some say they know the world is ending and why. Others tell themselves they know which horse will be first.

Consciousness is an eternal condition of knowing and not knowing. This anxiety has created a range of professions and occupations: fortune teller, rainmaker, soothsayer, stock broker. For better or for worse – where there are questions, big and small – there are those who say they know the answer. No question too big or small, not if there’s an outcome worth speculating on; jpeg art markets, housing prices, global supply chains or the outcome of war.

I’ll tell you how rich you will be because I know who wins the race, who you will marry because the dating app algorithm has found your perfect match (Please subscribe to premium to chat). Divine favour has revealed to me what lies beyond. I’ve trained a thousand computers on a thousand ancient texts and its generative wisdom has shown me the true face of God.

Some are clairvoyant through divine gift, others are backed by machine learning – staring into the Promethean flame of LED screens.

Hedge your bets, check your flanks, read your tea leaves, break yarrow stalks, throw coins, save for the rainy day, engage in insider trading and put it all on black because you have to stand out in the rain to get struck by lightning and one day you’ll know when your number’s up.

When I grew up and fell in love I asked my sweetheart, “What lies ahead? Will we have rainbows day after day?” Here’s what my sweetheart said:

Artist: Rel Pham
Sound Design: Rel Pham
Animation: Rel Pham
Production Support: Arts House Technical Team