Kristone Capistrano is a Filipino-Australian artist working across traditional and experimental drawing. His practice explores mortality, transience and contemporary figuration, visualising paper as a metaphor for skin and mark-making as a form of human touch: a vehicle for generosity and care.
In a world of increasing AI and automation, Capistrano creates works that are decisively tactile, handmade and analogue. The death of his grandmother led him to use Filipino brooms and household tools as alternative instruments for drawing—an homage that unites mark-making, sweeping and erasure with shared memories of labour, sacrifice and hospitality embedded within the Filipino imagination.
His moving-image work Orb: Anima was recently named winner of the White Rabbit Gallery’s Digital Art Call-Out. Commissions include Movement Study: The Bridge, Kingston Arts (2025), 101 Graham Street, PHIVE, City of Parramatta (2022), and forthcoming permanent public artworks for the new Bradfield Station (Western Sydney Airport line) set to open in 2027.
The Earth Melts Away
2025-26, Dual sided drawing, charcoal, burnt branches and sandpaper on paper; mounted on custom wooden stand.
Originally conceived as a work exploring the image of werestling / grappling as a metaphor for the challenge of creative production and completion. In this exhibition - the work is placed alongside my landscape works where mywork has shifted towards recently. In this context the human figures, large in scale, become always like valleys and mountains. Organic in shape, these shapes echo the very landscapes I now produce an engage in. Landscape as a site of nostalgia and memory; embodied and embraced.
Two figures in a tangle of arms and legs fighting/wrestling/embracing/resting. An image signifying the mental grappling and internal battles faced by artists. Herein lies a certain tension specific to my own practice and temperament, a tension between control and surrender. As a head-strong choleric eager to get what I want through grit and persistence, I often tackle projects and ambitions headfirst.
But I had a deep realisation when I discovered the root word behind the words 'Resolve' and 'Resolution' lies not in the force of will. Rather, these words come from the Latin solvere “to loose, release, unyoke; set free”. So perhaps the lesson for me, is to rely less on sheer force, but instead embrace those areas beyond my immediate grasp and understanding. Maybe only then will I find the sort of rest or visual resolution I'm looking for.
Orb IV
Sumi ink, charcoal, mylar, archival adhesive and kōzogami paper on steel.
Orb IV is a drawing of a sunset—an orb falling, light slipping out of reach. I made it with sumi ink and charcoal on kōzogami paper, then mounted the paper as a collage onto a found IKEA steel shelf. The work sits between two kinds of impermanence: the daily disappearance of the sun, and the short life-cycle of mass-made objects built to be replaced. Where the steel is left exposed, it catches light and shimmers as you move—an unstable image that changes with passing daylight. By bringing fragile paper into contact with industrial metal, I’m asking what we choose to preserve, and what we allow to disappear. The work holds a temporary moment, fixed to a surface that was never meant to be precious.
Orb V
Sumi ink, mylar, archival adhesive, banana and kōzogami paper on steel.
Falling sun, crashing waves; paper and steel, scratched, pasted and folded.