LINDY

Lindy Lee is one of Australias foremost contemporary artists, with a career spanning three decades in Australia and internationally. Born 1954 in Brisbane, she currently lives and works in Sydney. qualifications BA (Vis Arts), Post Grad Dip (Painting) Sydney College of the Arts; PhD (Art Theory) College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney. Australia selected solo exhibitions 2009 Flames from the Dragon's Pearl, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney. 2008 Tales of Moonlight and Fire, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne. 2006 Cycles through a Chinese Landscape, Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Dark Star, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney. 2003 Birth & Death, Artspace, Sydney; Narrow Road to the Interior, Atrium Space, MITA, Australian High Commission, Singapore. 1995 No Up, No Down, I am the Ten Thousand Things, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. selected group exhibitions 2009 Coming Home, Linda Gallery, 798 Dashanzi, Beijing. 2008 Yin-Yang: China in Australia, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney. 2007 Process/Journey, Australian Embassy, Redgate Gallery, Beijing; science as art, Garvan Institute Fundraising Auction, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. 2006 We Are Australian Too: Women Against Racism, curated by Nicholas Tsoutas, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Casula. 2004 Jia (Family, House, Home), Asia-Australia Arts Centre touring exhibition, Fringe Gallery, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Hong Kong. 2002 Buddha: Radiant Awakening, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. 2001 Three Views of Emptiness; Buddhism and the art of Tim Johnson, Lindy Lee and Peter Tyndall, Monash University Museum of Art, Clayton, Victoria, Australia. 1997 Spirit + Place, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. 1996 Photography is Dead, Long Live Photography, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. 1994 Transcultural Painting, toured Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and Australia. 1993 Prospect 93, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany. 1989-90 Australian Contemporary Art to China, toured State Museums of Beijing, Wuhan, Shanghai & Guangzhou, China. 1988 Edge to Edge: Australian Contemporary Art to Japan, toured museums in Japan. 1986 Origins, Originality + Beyond, The 6th Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. representation Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; Sutton Gallery, Melbourne; Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; China Art Projects, Beijing. publications monograph by Benjamin Gennochio & Melissa Chiu, published by Fine Arts Press & Craftsman House, Sydney, 2001. collections Mitchell Endowment, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia; Wollongong Art Gallery; BHP Billiton, Melbourne; The Phillip Morris Collection; Benalla Regional Art Gallery; Budget Collection; ICI Collection Melbourne; BP Collection, Melbourne; Allen, Allen & Hemsley Collection; University of Melbourne; Griffith University, Brisbane; Wesfarmers, Melbourne.

Statement
Almost all of my life I've been preoccupied with the nature of self in the world. My Zen Buddhist practice provides a frame of reference and spiritual discipline for this exploration.
Lately I've become interested in images of the Chinese dragon and of fire, which is the embodiment of cosmic and elemental forces at play C forces beyond the realm of human intervention and yet completely material to human existence.
The fire of the dragon is the Treasure of Infinite Potentiality C it is also the fire of being. In these latest works I am using fire to invoke something direct and elemental about our existence. We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as outside the laws of nature because to a certain degree we can control her laws to our advantage, but in reality we can never step outside. The laws are fabric to what we are.

Lindy Lee's new body of work Conflagration from the end of time can be seen as the artists response to the well-known, yet much debated Zen Koan Daizui and the Kalpa Fire. So the story goes:

A monk asked Daizui, When the great kalpa fire is inflamed, the whole universe will be destroyed. I wonder if that will also be destroyed or not.
Daizui said, Destroyed.
The monk said, If so, will that be gone with the other?
Daizui said, Gone with the other.

From a western dialectical perspective anecdotes such as these bring forth many possible assumptions. Typically an existential interpretation might spring to mind, whereby the acolyte is forced to confront their own inevitable mortality. Similarly, anxiety in the face of so primal a realization is, for the psychoanalyst, but a cornerstone of clinical practice. But where the modern mind remains in the grip of dualistic thought, the Zen disciple accepts nothing of the sort. With this in focus, it is difficult for one schooled in the former to illuminate the philosophical implications of Lindy Lees beautiful Zen images.

Some reprieve at least can be found in reactions of suitably enlightened masters. When the story was retold by Yan-wu, he remarked, What an embarrassment. You shouldnt conclude that it is destroyed, or that it is not destroyed. After all, how do you understand? And so we are left to wonder.

In studying Lees images, of infinity streaming from the heart of the Buddha or of patterns fashioned from the destructive agency of fire, perhaps we might conclude that what is here represented, is not so much the koan itself, but the condition by which one might contemplate it, that is how the artist positions herself in relation to the object of attention. Notwithstanding the challenge of abandoning long held habits, both of thought and taste, does it not seem that a codicil of these works is the quiet yet persistent request from the artist that we look less with our minds and somewhat more with heart? And were we to adopt this stance, might we also consider, in light of the works grand theme of impermanence, how images such as these seem reflective of their own, and by extension the worlds, luminous fragility?

There was once a time when I would liked to have thought that the intellectual content of works such as these was something I might readily grasp. Nowadays when I see how changeable awareness can be, I feel generally more inclined to consider them as objects of contemplation around which ideas and thoughts might slowly fall away.