User:Kathfries/sandbox/Lindy Lee

Lindy Lee
Lindy Lee (born 1954) is a contemporary Australian artist working across a wide range of mediums including painting, sculpture and photo-media. Her work engages with political, historical and cultural Chinese Australian history as she explores her Chinese ancestry through Taoism and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism – philosophies that see humanity and nature as inextricably linked. ☂

Biography

Lee was born in 1954 in Brisbane, Queensland. In 1979-1980 she studied at The Chelsea School of Art, London, UK; then returned to Australia to complete her Post Graduate Diploma (Painting) and BA (Visual Arts), at Sydney College of the Arts NSW. Lee was awarded a PhD (Art Theory), from the College of Fine Arts University of New South Wales, Sydney in 2001.

With a practice spanning over three decades, Lindy Lee has a well established reputation in Australia, and enjoyed widespread international recognition exhibiting in Canada, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Lee is a founding member of Gallery 4A in Sydney's Chinatown. She is a former trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, former board member of Artspace Sydney and Australian Centre of Photography, as well as a former president of the The Asian Arts Society of Australia and former deputy chair of the Visual Arts and Craft Fund, Australia Council. Lee was a senior lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, 1995 to 2015. Her work is included in numerous major public and private collections throughout Australia, including Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Australia and The University of Melbourne.

Work

Lee practice explores her Chinese ancestry through Taoism and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism – philosophies that see humanity and nature as inextricably linked. Symbolic gestures and processes that call on the element of chance are often used to produce a galaxy of images that embody the intimate connections between human existence and the cosmos. Lee’s works are intentionally slow to impart their secrets. Rather than singular visual statements, they are thoughtful objects where meaning emerges from sustained meditation.

Investigating and questioning multiplicity of self has remained a central concern in Lee’s practice. From her early works that referenced the Western canon of portraiture and questioned the notion of authenticity in artistic practice, to her more recent use of family photos that reflect on the experiences of loss and transition spanning five generations of travel from China to Australia. Lee’s work, as a Chinese-Australian artist, has been crucial to visualising the experience and untold histories of Chinese diaspora in Australia.

Lee’s painterly techniques of wax splatters and ink spills reference the ancient Chinese practice of ‘flung ink painting', as performed by Ch'an (Zen) Buddhists. Lee has also developed these splatter gestures into sculptural forms by throwing searing molten bronze on to the foundry floor, which embodied the Buddhist act of renewal where all that is held inside oneself is released. Such mark-marking emphasises one’s presence in the moment, and these meditative realisations can also be seen in Lee’s repetition of burning holes in photographs, on paper scrolls and through sheets of metal.

Exhibitions

Lee's work has been the subject of fifty solo exhibitions and included in over three hundred group exhibitions. She is represented in Sydney by Sullivan and Strumpf; in Melbourne by Sutton Gallery; and she works extensively on public art projects with Urban Art Projects (UAP) in Brisbane and Shanghai.

Monographs 

Lee has been the subject of two monographs: Lindy Lee, The Dark of Absolute Freedom, produced by University of Queensland Art Museum in 2014, with essays by Associate Professor Rex Butler, Damian Smith and curator Michele Helmrich, as well as an interview with Lindy Lee conducted by Suhanya Raffel; and Lindy Lee, produced by Art & Australia in 2001, with essays by Ben Gennochio and Melissa Chiu.