Hyun Hee Lee - Artist Residency Winner

Sunshine Coast Natinonal Art Prize 2024 - Artist Residency Winner

_{[Image courtesy of the artist]}

Value is up to $5,000 - Sponsored by Montville Country Cabins and Coastline BMW

Artist Statement

I migrated to Australia from Korea over twenty years ago and have always attempted to retain a connection with my culture through my artwork.  

This work is inspired from memories of my Korean childhood, where origami, drawing, painting and paper cutting were much loved children’s activities. The collection of these gentle memories, often unreliable and fragmented, are filtered throughout my work and expressed as broken and cut pieces of the Korean text re-assembled to create new stories. I have used both the positive and negative shapes throughout my work, reflecting the importance not only of what we remember but also of what we have forgotten. 

The memories of these fundamentally important years inspire a sense of comfort and provoke cathartic and meditative emotions in me, ultimately acting as a conduit to my family and the Korean culture that has shaped my life.

Judge, Julie Ewington, comments

This delicate work, an exquisite hybrid of paper, washes of colour and thread, speaks to Lee’s deployment of a Korean-derived aesthetic sensibility, learned in her childhood, for her work as an Australian-based artist. The overlapping tissue, washes, and intersecting threads, and the combination of positive and negative shapes, speaks to the fragility of experience, and of memory.

Her sustained practice suggests that Lee would be a wonderful artist in residence for the Sunshine Coast. I will be intrigued to see if the light and colour here find their place, somehow or other, in Lee’s future work.