Art / “Moon in a Dew Drop”, Lindy Lee, Canberra Museum and Gallery, until December 3. Reviewed by ROB KENNEDY.

LIVING between two cultures has been the catalyst for creating the artworks by Australian Chinese artist Lindy Lee. In this exhibition, audiences can experience key works from across her extensive career.

Curated by the previous MCA director, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, and supported by associate curator Megan Robson, in this Canberra Museum and Gallery exhibition, Lee draws on her Australian and Chinese heritage that engages with the history of art, cultural authenticity, personal identity and the cosmos

The multi-dimensional aspects of Lee’s artworks portray an artist engrossed in her creations. They cross genres, styles and mediums. They come from an artist with a divided self.

Sculptures, fabric, photocopies, prints, wood, steel, paper, board and bronze; all these mediums reflect the diversity of her designs and artistic statement.

Flinging red-hot molten bronze on to the floor of a foundry may not be a process for every artist, but for Lee, the resulting stochastic shapes from her creations reveal aspects of how time affects forms and ideas. As in her “Echoing the 10,000 Patterns”, 2020.

Zen Buddhism is another influence on her life and work. In “Equanimity”, made of mirror polished stainless steel and an LED inside the blimp-shaped design with hundreds of holes references the four Buddhist virtues. As a viewer walks around this work, it becomes kinetic through the light that shines from within and out the holes, as the lights above shine through, creating patterns on its plinth.

Several works have extended titles, such as “The Seamless Tomb (Wearing An Iron Yoke That Has No Hole)”, 2014, which add to the mystery of her artistic thought process and creations. This inkjet print over three panels is an image of Lee’s pregnant mother walking with her husband and family members. It captures the moment when her father is about to step on to a boat to come to Australia. It’s a black-and-white image that looks at a moment in time when everything must have changed for her family. It is deeply moving and powerful.

In “The Silence of Painters”, 1989, we see 15 images of either a Van Eyck or Rembrandt female portrait that has been painted over in black block shapes and long dripping lines.

It talks about the meaning of originality. It challenges the idea of is a copy inferior. How does an artist like Lee, who is divided, represent authenticity and make statements about the world while including herself and her ideas to say the things that progress art in this world? After viewing this work, I see how a copy can be made new.

The title of this exhibition comes from the 14^th Century Zen Monk, Dōgen. It perfectly captures the nature and feel of the whole exhibition. It says that in the tiniest of things, such as a dewdrop, it can reflect something the size of our moon to show how everything is connected, if we look closely and long enough.