OPENING OF LINDY LEE: MOON IN A DEW DROP

John Curtin Gallery presents Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop.

Opens 6pm-8pm Thursday 2 June. Exhibition continues 3 June – 28 August 2022.

Lindy Lee is a Chinese-Australian artist who uses a spectacular array of processes which include flinging molten bronze, burning paper and allowing the rain to transform surfaces, to explore the connections between art, cultural authenticity and the cosmos. Key influences are the philosophies of Daoism and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, which explore the connections between humanity and nature.

In late 2021, Lee was commissioned to create a new major public work Lindy Lee: Ouroboros – in celebration of the National Gallery’s forthcoming 40th anniversary.

This exhibition is curated by former MCA Director, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE, supported by Associate Curator, Megan Robson and will introduce audiences to key works from across the artist’s extensive career, from early photocopy artworks to recent installations and sculptures.

Exhibition organised and toured by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Project assisted by the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program.

Event supported by Otherside Brewing Co.

Artist

Lindy Lee is an Australian artist (born Brisbane 1954). Lee’s 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 of Chinese diaspora in a country that has historically whitewashed its multiculturalism.

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 can also be seen in Lee’s repetition of burning holes in photographs, on paper scrolls and through sheets of metal. Each mark-marking gesture is a pitch into eternity – meeting with this moment – indeed in Buddhism eternity isn’t anywhere else but here, there is only this moment of now.