Ivan Macarambon started being an all round creative when he designed and silk screened prints for his parents' garments business in the 80s. That was the time when he began painting on canvas. He worked for the legendary Badlis advertising boutique in Cebu City, Philippines in 1991, back when artists literally cut and pasted with X-Acto knives and rubber cement. In 1993 he joined the technical team of the Integrated Performing Arts Guild, Inc., and after a one-year apprenticeship at the Theater Operations Department of the Cultural Center of the Philippines he became the technical director of MinDulAni, the 1995 Mindanao Theater Festival. That, too, was the year when he first showed his works in an exhibition.
In 2000, with Chris Gomez, Macarambon opened the first art space in Iligan City and Northern Mindanao, Philippines -- the now defunct El Greco Café and Art Gallery. Since then the two have continued collaborating in different projects from two-man shows, artworks, art workshops, community outreach projects, publications, graphic design, product development/design, and exhibit design.
He was a finalist in Australia’s only national still life painting award, the EMSLA Eutick Memorial Still Life Award in 2017. He received the juror’s choice award in the GSIS National Painting Competition (Philippines) in 2009 and was a finalist in the China-ASEAN Youth Artwork Creativity Contest in Nanning, China in 2008. He served as representative of his region in the Committee on Visual Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) in the Philippines from 2004 to 2007.
Macarambon uses a wide range of materials, techniques and styles. Aside from paintings on canvas he has made murals, assemblages, 3D objects, installation art, sound art and digital art. He has created album sleeve art for real and imagined bands, the fictional ones being part of his continuing series called “The Covers”, some of which were shown at his “Discography” solo exhibition at the Gallery @ City Library (City of Melbourne) in 2017.
In “Perambulations”, a second solo exhibition in 2018 at the Walker Street Gallery & Arts Centre in Dandenong, Victoria, Macarambon explores themes of diaspora, identity and family.
Currently, aside from being an exhibiting visual artist, Macarambon is a culture and arts consultant, a product and graphics designer, and an illustrator.
He is the “figurative” visual art half of LetrasFiguras, a collaborative duo, with writer Zola Gonzalez-Macarambon providing the literary component. Together they have created ekphratic, text and sound works.