Congratulations to Hyun-Hee Lee – winner of the 2024 Sunshine Coast National Art Prize – Artist Residency Award!

This award is one of four given as part of the Sunshine Coast National Art Prize, and was announced last night at Caloundra Regional Gallery.

Hyun-Hee was awarded this prize for her artwork titled ‘Fragments of Memories’. Elaborating on this artwork, Hyun-Hee Lee writes in her 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 love 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 activating as a conduit to my family and the Koreans culture that has shaped my life.”

The winners of the 2024 Sunshine Coast National Art Prize were selected by guest judge Julie Ewington – a renowned curator and writer with long-standing experience working within the curatorial fields across Australia, including an extensive stint as Curator of Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art.

Commenting on Hyun-Hee Lee’s work, Julie Ewington said: “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 future work.”

Hyun-Hee Lee’s winning artwork can be seen as part of the Sunshine Coast National Art Prize exhibition at Caloundra Regional Gallery until 13 October, 2024. Hyun-Hee Lee will now undertake an Artist Residency with Caloundra Regional Gallery in 2025.

Hyun-Hee Lee, Fragments of Memories,  2024, silk, organza, chalk, silk thread, Korean hanji paper, 82 x 84cm