First Car

12 July - 17 August 2025

Sherry Zheng

Produced by Luna Wenxin Xu
Poster design by Ivy Chen
Supported by
No.9 Space Design Studio
The Grifter Brewing Co.
Basewhite Fine Art Printing
Catalogue Essay by Zali Matthews


Everyone remembers their first car

Everyone remembers their first car. The make and the model. The metallic hue of its enamel shell. The smell of petrol and leather interiors, the feeling of asphalt underfoot, and the exact pressure needed to rotate the steering wheel and make a turn. Everyone remembers picking it up for the first time: from the garage of someone whose Facebook Marketplace ad you had responded with, “Is this still available?”, or passed down from a family member or friend.

Everyone remembers sitting in the front seat, grabbing the wheel with both hands, and putting a foot on the pedal. The first journey made; the first destination reached. Then the second, and third, and the many dozens after that. Stretching roads, long horizons, and beckoning destinations, bringing new freedoms, opportunities and futures.

David Wei Min Zheng’s first ever car was a white Toyota Celica, purchased at Sydney’s old Flemington Sunday Car Market a couple of years after he emigrated from Shanghai in 1989. Only one photograph of it exists. In it, a 30-year-old David sits in the driver’s seat, one hand resting on the wheel and the other on the windowsill. He turns back as if someone has just called his name, eyes closed seemingly mid-blink, a smile curling up into his cheeks. Behind him, a bunch of green and yellow ballons have been squeezed into the back seat.

Sydney-based photographer Sherry Zheng discovered this image of her father whilst sifting through her parents’ photo albums in preparation for her first exhibition Cocoon, held late last year. This image, along with several others of her family and extended relatives, was exhibited beside a series of photographs taken by Zheng of collaborators from all over the world, open and vulnerable in their homely “cocoons”. Through these images, Zheng reflects on her struggles with navigating her Asian diasporic identity – having been raised in Sydney to Chinese immigrant parents, moving to Japan in her early twenties and eventually returning to Sydney again – an experience echoed and shared in each photograph, and in the face of every collaborator.

This photograph of Zheng’s father would become the impetus for continuing to explore her experiences with her uncertain self-identity and diasporic struggles, this time through the vehicle (literally) in First Car, on show at Puzzle Gallery. For this exhibition, Zheng steps back as photographer and into the role of curator or archivist, having collected photographs from friends, family and acquaintances within Sydney’s Asian-Australian community via an Instagram call-out.

The submitted photographs span across decades and generations, depicting a colourful variety of cars: sedans and hatchbacks, vans and coupes, wagons and sports cars. Some are weathered and bent, others sleek and shiny, some second-hand and others brand new. Their owners pose beside them with arms crossed or in their pockets, leaning against a door or sitting on the hood. Sometimes, like Zheng’s father, they peer out towards the camera from the driver’s seat. Adhered to the gallery walls, these vinyl prints create a kaleidoscope of cars, owners and families in a grainy patchwork of stories, memories and journeys.

It’s easy to forget that Puzzle Gallery was once built as a garage, and for this show it becomes one once again, housing a khaki-coloured station wagon covered in vinyl prints which remains open for any visitor wishing to clamber into it. This is Zheng’s very own first ever car, purchased online for $5,000 after returning from Japan. Moving back to Sydney during the Covid outbreak, with both parents in Shanghai and friends scattered, Zheng felt more confused and uncertain with her Australian identity than ever. At this time, her car gave her a new way to navigate this strange and unfamiliar space she found herself in. Feeling distant and disconnected, her car became something which she felt was unequivocally hers.

In a country where broad, low-density suburban sprawl dominates city landscapes with miles of stretching highways lying between them, cars are a necessary means of travel. Yet for many Asian families immigrating to Australia in the late 20th century, their first cars meant more than that. They meant new opportunities, possibilities and freedoms previously out of reach – new jobs, new schools, new shopping centres, or new family holidays. These ‘first cars’ offered a powerful reprieve from the struggles of navigating an unfamiliar and often unfriendly cultural landscape, an experience shared by many families who immigrated to Australia at this time.

Whilst preparing for this show, Zheng would find a second photo of her father in the same red shirt, this time posing against the dramatic backdrop of the Blue Mountains. Was this his first journey, his first destination: before the second, and the third, and the many dozens that came after it? Stretching roads, long horizons and beckoning destinations – connecting father and daughter, parent and child, wife and husband, grandfather and granddaughter, ex-boss and ex-employee, in unbroken journeys of adversity, resilience and celebration.