Even though Chinese-Australian artist Lindy Lee has changed and refined her art practice over time there are certain themes that continually pervade her work. These include her Chinese heritage, questions of identity and being, spiritual practices, gesturing towards the cosmos, and the emotions of pain, grief and hope. Lee’s upcoming solo exhibition, The Seamless Tomb, exhibited at Sullivan + Strumpf, extends and refocuses these ongoing investigations.
It’s important to note, however, that The Seamless Tomb is centred around one single image; a family photograph. It shows her mother, father, eldest brother and aunt, all walking towards the camera. “The poignancy of this moment,” explains Lee, “is that this is my Dad’s last day in China.”
Lee’s father is about to board a boat heading to Australia. Meanwhile, because of White Australia policy restrictions, Lee’s pregnant mother will remain in China. She doesn’t know when she will see her husband again. “It’s a moment that is so fraught with anxiety and uncertainty and yet there is hope, because a migrant’s story is really one of hope, of trying to find something better, and that to me is part of what happens in this seamless tomb,” says the artist.
Lee’s show harkens back to a pivotal moment in her family history. Yet it also evokes the philosophies of Taoism and Zen Buddhism which have been central to her practice since the 1990s. The Seamless Tomb, in Zen practice, prompts one to imagine themselves as completely encased in a tomb, with no exit and no light. Within the tomb, says Lee, there is only one central question: “Where is your freedom?” This search has informed the artist’s work and Lee considers her upcoming show as “a response to 25 years of Zen practice and living in the seamless tomb.”
Stay up to date with the Art Guide podcast by subscribing via iTunes or Spotify.
Presented and produced by Tiarney Miekus. Engineering by Mino Peric. Music by Jesse Warren.
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
The growing cultural interest in art books reflects the enduring power of the printed word. Jane O’Sullivan takes a closer look.
In Anmatyerr artist Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana’s first solo exhibition in Melbourne—which focuses on the Central Desert food source Arnwekety (bush plum)—the influence and love of her Country and culture is palpable. Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana is now showing at Niagara Galleries.
