We were delighted to support a major survey exhibition by Australian Chinese artist Lindy Lee.  Curated by MCA Director, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE and supported by Associate Curator Megan Robson, this exhibition will introduce audiences to key works from across the artist’s extensive career, from early photocopy artworks to recent installations and scultures.

Lindy Lee began exhibiting in the 1980s, when she overlaid photocopied Renaissance portraits with transparent layers of paint (The Silence of Painters, 1989). In the mid-1990s, she began incorporating portraits of family members into works that questioned ideas of cultural authenticity and acknowledged her own cultural background. At around the same time she started exploring abstraction, influenced by the monochromes of American abstract painter Ad Reinhardt. Buddhism has become increasingly significant in Lee’s practice, and her work seeks to break down individual identity through decomposition of the image.  Symbolic gestures and processes that call on the element of chance are often used in her work.

What a privilege to support a survey show of this important artist.  Lindy Lee is a painter whose practice centres on portraiture and the self. Her practice is informed by the eastern philosophies of Taoism and Buddhism and their teachings on the relationship between humanity and the universe. Symbolic gestures and processes that call on the element of chance are often used in her work.