Born in Hong Kong in 1956, John Zerunge Young moved to Australia as a child in 1967 during China's Cultural Revolution.
He then studied sculpture and painting at Sydney College of the Arts[2] with postmodernist artist Imants Tillers[3] and avant-garde composer and musician David Ahern.
[2] In the early 1980s he moved to Europe, living in London and Paris (at the Cité internationale des arts[4]) for a couple of years after being awarded the Power Foundation Scholarship from Sydney University.
[2] Young's first solo exhibition was a one-minute show held in a hamlet in the fishing village of Rosroe, Connemara, on the west coast of Ireland, in 1982.
After 2008, his projects started focusing on transcultural humanitarianism, including Bonhoeffer in Harlem (Berlin, 2009), Safety Zone (Melbourne, 2010; Brisbane, 2011).