LINDY LEE

MOON IN A DEW DROP 3 JUNE – 28 AUGUST 2022

Lindy Lee is one of the most respected contemporary artists working in Australia today. Influential Australian Chinese artist Lindy Lee explores identity, history, spirituality and our relationship to the cosmos. She creates meditative works using light, shadow and scale across many artforms. Moon in a Dew Drop takes an in-depth look at four decades of extraordinary practice.

Working across a range of disciplines including painting, sculpture, installation and public art, Lee draws on her Australian and Chinese heritage to develop works that engage with the history of art, cultural authenticity, personal identity and the cosmos. Key influences are the philosophies of Daoism and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, which explore the connections between humanity and nature.

Take in shimmering, meditative and thought-provoking works in her major survey exhibition which draws on her experience of living between two cultures.

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.

DATES & TIMES

3 June – 28 August 2022

Saturday 4 June 2022

Mon-Fri 11am-5pm, Sun 12pm-5pm

ADDRESS

John Curtin Gallery, Building 200A, Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley WA 6102

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Admission and Accessibility.

SUPPORTED BY

This touring exhibition is supported by

Inset images: Lindy Lee, Buddhas and Matriarchs, 2020, installation view, Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2020, flung bronze, image courtesy the artist and  Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, © the artist, photograph: Anna Kučera. Flame from the Dragon’s Pearl: Open as the Sky, 2013, mirror polished bronze, image courtesy the artist and  Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and Singapore, © the artist.

LISTEN

In Conversation: Lindy Lee with Chris Malcolm

Photos by Desmond Mah  (www.desmondmah.com)   instagram.com/desmondmah and Brad Coleman

LISTEN

In Conversation: Lindy Lee with Ron Bradfield Jnr

Acclaimed public speaker and master of a good yarn, Ron Bradfield Jr. sat down with visual artist Lindy Lee  to talk with her about her touring exhibition Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dewdrop, on show at John Curtin Gallery until 28 August 2022.

This broad-ranging conversation covers topics such as how the practice of Zen Buddhism has informed Lindy’s art practice, how her mother became an expert document forger and underground gold trader at 19, the overwhelming beauty of Western Australia’s North West, and the often hidden effects of intergenerational trauma.

Ron Bradfield Jnr is a saltwater man from Bardi Country, north of Broome and grew up in Geraldton, Western Australia. He now calls Whadjuk Boodja (Perth) his home. Ron shares stories, locally, nationally and internationally.