Art Guide

Features

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March/April 2010

A good ARI isn’t hard to find > NSW
Artist Run Initiative (ARI) Read More

Art Month Sydney > Precinct 1: Paddington/Woollahra > NSW
The first week of Art Month Sydney kicks off across Paddington and Woollahra, collectively crowned ‘Precinct 1’ Read More

Art Month Sydney > Precinct 2: Surry Hills/Darlinghurst > NSW
In reality Sydney’s gallery scene is a broad and vibrant kaleidoscope. Read More

Art Month Sydney > Precinct 3: Waterloo > NSW
Precinct 3 takes in the suburb of Waterloo, home to the Danks Street Complex which includes ten of Sydney’s commercial galleries. Read More

Art Month Sydney > Precinct 4: Redfern/Chippendale/CBD > NSW
Serendipitously there are two galleries in Precinct 4 that showcase Asian art, Read More

Discipline ain’t what it used to be
Donald Judd, one of the more influential founding fathers of minimalism couldn’t hack New York’s claustrophobia. Read More

The legacy of two great artists > NSW
Two significant Indigenous exhibitions, staged as part of Art Month Sydney, are East Kimberley Painting Revisited at Michael Reid at Elizabeth Bay and Museum III at Utopia Art. Read More

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On the move: Pamela Mei-Leng See (QLD)

By Heidi Maier

To stare deep into the intricate, highly-detailed worlds depicted in Brisbane-based artist Pamela Mei-Leng See’s papercut works is to lose oneself completely in the extraordinary detail and delicacy of her creations.

With her exquisitely rendered handcut images, See is regarded as one of the city’s foremost emerging talents. A young artist with a reputation for creating such beautiful works as A Change of Frequency – an installation piece comprising hundreds of traditionally cut Chinese paper moths that continued her practice of depicting and exploring the Asian migrant experience – See is, however, keen to move away from critical narratives that reduce her work to what she describes as “little more than representation of a minority perspective”.

An Australian-born artist of Chinese and Malaysian descent,
See studied Visual Arts at Griffith University’s Queensland College of the Arts and is perhaps best known for works that play on the duality of meaning attributed to symbols by Australian and Chinese cultures.

“Whilst I do perpetuate the classification of my artwork as being centred around the migrant experience, I do this only for sake of accessibility. Being trained in public relations, I am interested in how values are shaped,” See says.

“Cultural colonialism and the representation of ethnic minorities were central to my research during my Masters of Business. In this sense, you could take a very different reading of many of my artworks.”

See spent most of 2008 working, studying and teaching, honing and refining her own craft in China. Much of her time was spent with migrant workers in Beijing, teaching them about papercutting, with the proceeds of a 2007 solo gallery show affording her the opportunity to train one hundred local residents. She is particularly interested in the ability of art to educate and empower. “I am interested in using papercutting in two ways: to create awareness for cultural issues and also to fundraise and stimulate economic development. Here in China, papercutting is a vocation. I was fortunate to have studied the craft in several regional centres [across China] and now, I am able to teach it to people. I am hoping to, eventually, enable some women to be able to support themselves by using it.”

Reconsitution NO.2 (detail), (2008),
religious booklet and texta, 35 x 25cm.

Community and public art forms present two developing aspects of See's artistic life. Her designs have been integrated into commercial developments at Brisbane’s South Bank and the city’s Central
Business District and she regularly shares her craft through workshops staged at galleries, schools and community centres.

For See, cultural displacement has played a great role in her development. She is enthusiastic about her time spent in China, commenting that “working in China has been integral in my development professionally and personally.” See’s grandfather left China’s Fuijian province to start a new life in Malaysia and then sent his sons to Australia to be educated. One of those sons – See’s father – arrived in Townsville in the mid-1970s when he was nineteen-years-old. From there, he returned to Malaysia, where he married See’s mother and returned again to Australia.

“In Malaysia the Chinese are already a minority in a highly segregated society. My mother’s family also had their problems. Her parents died from leprosy and subsequently the family was ostracised. In coming to Australia she was further isolated.”

See says that returning to China allowed her the opportunity “to become acquainted with some of the beautiful aspects of my culture and many customs which did not filter down in my family.”

“There are, of course, many challenges met by women in Chinese society. My choosing to work with sculpture over there is significant because it’s a domain almost entirely dominated by men. There are some women working in the area but largely doing work about the body or costume. Papercutting is also very common-place though my application is a little bit different. I do infuse a lot of western drawing techniques and they particularly like my use of found materials as opposed to just paper.”

Found objects play an integral part in See’s recent works, many of which depict Chinese propaganda posters that she has completely transformed and reconfigured with her papercutting techniques.

Artists who work with found objects are particularly interesting and inspirational to See. She speaks passionately about her admiration of fellow Australian artists Rosalie Gascoigne, Fiona Hall and Madonna Staunton, all of whom are well-known for incorporating found objects to great effect in their collage, assemblage and sculptural works.
“I like Fiona Hall’s artwork because she is using a craft which
is innately familiar with people in Australia, just as papercutting is in China; Madonna Staunton for her appropriation of elements of domesticity and her collage artwork, and Gascoigne for her formal treatment of found objects, turning them into sculptural forms,” See says.

“What I like most about all of these artists is that they use objects and materials which have a memory. In this way, it has influenced my cutting into objects like carpet and car mats. The propaganda posters are also of this vein, as is the religious material.”

Tears for the patriotic, (2008).
Found political poster, 75 x 60cm.

Caloundra Regional Gallery
Pamela Mei-Leng See
21 January to 1 March

Heidi Maier is a brisbane-based freelance writer and reviewer.