Special Exhibition Talk-Cutting a Fine Figure: Chinese in the Australian Cultural Landscape by Dr Pamela See (Catch up Online)
The event was held on Thursday 28 March 2024
Pamela is one of the three artists featured in the IAC current exhibition Individual and Universal: The World We Share.
In this talk, Dr See spoke about how she has been acknowledging the Chinese histories of geographic locations in Australia and inserting them into their associated cultural landscapes. In some regions of Australia, Chinese populations once outnumbered their British counterparts by a ratio of 10:1 yet the communities remain underrepresented in their respective cultural landscapes. Dr See will share the inspiration behind her artworks and the processes she employs to produce them. Her techniques will be examined in both historical and contemporary context, ranging from paper effigies to cast bronze. Documentation from the fabrication of large sculptures will be reviewed and the community consultation inherent in the public art process will also be considered.
Starting with an explanation of the artworks in Individual and Universal: The World We Share, Dr See examined the evolution of an ongoing set of portraits, initiated by the National Portrait Gallery of Australia and the Museum of Chinese Australian History. Cropped will also be profiled. This participatory art project is presently engaging residents of Redlands in Queensland to woodblock print and remember its Chinese history. The session will conclude with a discussion about the development of the award-winning Information Kiosk in Haymarket.
This talk was intended to foster dialogue about the role art can play in historically instating communities. The contrasts between government-driven and community-led development of culturally specific infrastructure will also be debated.
Pamela See
Dr Pamela See (Xue Mei-Ling) is an Australian visual artist who practises a contemporary form of papercutting. Her paternal grandfather left China in the early 1930s, and her father, in turn, emigrated from Malaysia in the early 1960s. Born in Brisbane in 1979, Pamela grew up in South East Queensland during the 1980s.
Pamela has been exhibiting since the late 1990s in museums and galleries, including the National Gallery of Australia, Arteriet in Norway, the Museo Gustavo de Maeztu in Spain, the Qing Tong Museum in China and the International Studio and Curatorial Program in the US.
Her artworks are included in collections housed in The Australian War Memorial in Canberra, The National Gallery of Australia, The National Portrait Gallery of Australia, The Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide, the Hua Xia Papercutting Museum in Changsha, Swire Properties in Beijing and Chinachem in Hong Kong.
She was invited to contribute to a young and emerging artist program, Starter Space, at the Queensland Art Gallery in the early 2000s. This was proceeded by inclusion in the national touring exhibition Echoes of Home, instigated by the Museum of Brisbane. During this decade, she also developed her skills through residencies in China and the US, funded by the Australia China Council, Australia Council for the Arts and the Brisbane City Council. During the late 2000s her work featured in solo exhibitions in many regional galleries across Australia, including Noosa, Goulburn and Gympie. Her work was also featured in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Chinese and Australian History in Melbourne in 2019 and in a group show So Fine at the National Portrait Gallery and Sydney Lunar Festival in 2018. Her most recent solo exhibition, …By Celestials, was shownat the SOL Gallery in Melbourne in January 2024. Pamela has also created various site-specific installations both across Australia and in New York and Beijing. Her most recent installation, Hopping Under the Same Moon, was created for the CWS Moon Festival at the Chung Wah Temple in Darwin in 2023.
Dr Pamela See holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Arts from Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, and a Master of Business and a Master of Education from Queensland University of Technology.
Investigating the impact of migration on the Australian cultural landscape has been a primary focus of her work.
