New, Leeroy

Born in 1986 in General Santos City, Leeroy New is one of the vanguard forces defining ultra-contemporary Philippine art on the global stage. He displayed a prodigious talent for anatomical drawing and horror illustration early in his youth, which led him to formal training in the visual arts at a highly selective national academy before he pursued a specialization in traditional sculpture.

New’s versatile, boundary-pushing studio model quickly propelled him onto the international biennial circuit in his early twenties. He famously achieved widespread global pop-culture recognition through his experimental fashion collaborations—such as co-creating the iconic, muscle-tissue-inspired wearable sculptures worn by Lady Gaga in her "Marry the Night" music video. Today, New maintains a highly prolific, nomadic exhibition timeline, engineering massive site-specific public art installations across Asia, Europe, Australia, and North America.

Education & Academic Foundations
Fine Arts Degree: Graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Major in Sculpture – University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts, Diliman, Quezon City.

Secondary Arts Education: Alumnus of the prestigious Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA) on Mount Makiling, Laguna, where he majored in Visual Arts.

Major Institutional Awards & Prestigious Residencies
2014: Invited Representative – Design Philippines Pavilion, Salone Internazionale del Mobile (Milan, Italy) and the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF, New York).

2013: Recipient – Philstage Gawad Buhay! Award for Outstanding Costume Design (For his avant-garde work on Tanghalang Pilipino's musical epic Ibalong).

2011: Finalist Nominee – Signature Art Prize, Singapore Art Museum.

2009: Grand Winner – Ateneo Art Awards, which earned him dual international research grants: the La Trobe University Residency Grant (Australia) and the Artesan Gallery Residency Grant (Singapore).

2005: Grand Prize for Sculpture – Metrobank Art & Design Excellence (MADE) Awards.

Exhibition History
Recent Milestone Installations & Global Projects
Polyp (2025–2026): A massive, site-specific public art installation commissioned by Linden New Art in St. Kilda, Victoria, Australia. The structure wrapped around the building's exterior balcony like a giant octopus tentacle covered in coral-like bamboo and PET bottles. In a brand-new methodological shift, New planted fast-growing pumpkin, cucumber, and bean plants at the base to crawl through and organically conquer the synthetic structure.

Ocean Futures (2025–2026): A landmark collaborative exhibition between The Mind Museum Manila and Futurium in Berlin, Germany. The special exhibition addressed marine climate change and biodiversity by embedding New’s vast, mythical sea-creature installations into the venue, activated by spectacular costumed live dance performances.

Flotilla & Bird Nests (2026): Specialized abstract and modular presentation hosted at The Columns Gallery, Seoul, South Korea.

Selected Major Bienniales & Museum Surveys
2022: Winds of Artist in Residence – Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan. For this city-wide festival, New staged his monumental public installations Ectoplastic Bakunawa and Ectoplastic Balete directly inside the sacred Myorakuji Temple.

2022: Balete (rīvus Exhibition Framework) – 23rd Biennale of Sydney, Australia. Featured a major flotilla of recycled plastic vessels floating inside the Cutaway and an organic root sculpture wrapping around the Arts and Cultural Exchange building.

2013: Istanbul Forum Fashion Week – Featured runway presentation of his experimental, wearable textile and rubber fashion lines, Istanbul, Turkey.

2011–2012: Psychopomp's Reef & Chrysalis – Bonifacio Global City (BGC) Offsite Gallery, Taguig, and the Himala sa Buhangin Festival, Ilocos Norte (Where he erected a 40-foot post-apocalyptic bamboo and rattan ship on the Paoay Sand Dunes).

2010: Balete (Breakthrough Studio Iteration) – Ateneo Art Gallery, Quezon City. This project marked his historic first large-scale application of woven, orange flexible electrical conduit casings to conceptually "colonize" the architectural lines of the university museum.

2009: 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale – Fukuoka, Japan.

2008: The Singapore Biennale – Landmark open-city survey presentation, Singapore.