Banner Galleries: Hyun-Hee Lee - Cultural Connections 2022

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In Korea, the Saekdong jeogori is a rainbow traditional dress worn during Lunar New Year celebrations.

The colourful stripes are believed to provide protection from evil spirits and bring good fortune. Reflecting the five traditional colours of Korea, the colours symbolise wood (blue), fire (red), earth (yellow), metal (white) and water (black).

The artwork is an amalgamation of Western and Korean ideas and content. The colours and lines are presented in a contemporary context reflecting the youth and energy of Australia but also understanding the heritage of its people. Using these traditional symbolic color references for Lunar New Year provides a symbiotic connection to culture, harmony and a cause for celebration on this important occasion.

About the artist:

Hyun-Hee Lee is a Korean-Australian artist whose work traverses traditional Korean and Western art practices. She aims to establish a spiritual and cultural connection with her country of birth. She achieves this by recreating and re-contextualizing traditional religious rituals, cultural practices and customs in a contemporary context.

She is fascinated by the way memories are distorted, changed and coloured by time and the emotional responses triggered by those memories. Now living in Australia, the artist finds that the Korean script she uses in her work has gained special significance, and has become much more than a communication device, but it is the essential thread that connects her to her past. The artist blurs conventional distinctions between writing, painting and installation, and through use of line, scale and colour, she eloquently expresses the emotions revealed in the pages of her diaries and journals which she uses as her source material.

Hyun-Hee Lee has a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from the National Art School. She was awarded the Bird Holcomb Foundation Honours Fine Art Scholarship on the basis of her BFA third year art practice in 2010. In 2012, Hyun-Hee was the winner of the John Coburn Emerging Artist Award, under the auspices of the Blake Prize. in 2015 she also completed a Master of Fine Arts (Research) from the University of New South Wales Art & Design, UNSW.

Hyun-Hee has received numerous accolades including a Judges Special Mention in the 2016 Hornsby Art Prize and second prize in the 2016 KAAF Art Prize organised by the Korean Cultural Centre in Sydney.

In 2013 she was awarded the Onslow/Storrier La Cite International des Arts Paris Residency from the National Art School. In the same year she was also awarded a COFA Travelling Grant from UNSW. In 2012 Hyun-Hee completed a Red Gate Residency in Beijing, China.

Solo exhibitions:

Her work can be found in numerous public collections including the: KAAF collection; the Middlebury College Museum of Art collection Vermont, USA; the Egon Zehnder collection, Sydney; the Grafton Regional Gallery JADA Collection; the Blacktown City Council collection; the Australia Council collection; the NAS collection and many private collections both within Australia and internationally.