The Secret World of the Shadow

In Buddhist cosmology the universe is likened to an infinite net – the net of Indra. In each knot of the net is a jewel, which is a light perfect in itself. However that light is made from the reflections of every other jewel in the universe: existence is simultaneously singular and absolutely dependent on interconnection.  The jewels represent all phenomena in the universe. Cosmos is not just in the heavens but intimately connected, inherent within all forms that exist including individual human life. We can never step outside of cosmos. The fire paintings in Secret World of the Shadow  invoke this interconnection through the concentric and complex inter-relationship of the circles - circles within circles, wheels of life turning within greater wheels. The use of fire to create these works denotes the elemental.

The figure in the drawings is Kuan Yin, the Chinese Bodhisattva of Compassion. In Buddhism compassion is not only kindness but also the courage to hold with tenderness all that exists whether it is joyful or sorrowful. The fire used in these works alludes to the ardency and open-ness required to walk a path of compassion.

In Secret World of the Shadow, the bold colours which I have consistently used for the past two decades are stripped away to return to the most fundamental colour – black. The black is the “Dark of Absolute Freedom” (Ad Reinhardt) calling upon the unknowable, ungraspable and ultimately dark mystery, which resides in each of us.

—Lindy Lee

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Lindy Lee has been represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery since 1986. She has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally in important museum exhibitions such as the 1985 Australian Perspecta, the 1986 Sydney Biennale, Prospect ‘93 (Germany), Edge to Edge: Contemporary Australian Painting to Japan (1988), Transcultural Painting (1994) and, Photography is Dead, Long Live Photography, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1996). In 2003 a solo exhibition, Lindy Lee: Birth & Death, was presented at Artspace, Sydney and in 2007 the same major installation was exhibited in Smart state at Campbelltown Arts Centre. In 2007 Lee presented a large body of work in Process/journey at the Australian Embassy in Beijing. Lee is a founding member of Gallery 4A in Sydney’s Chinatown. She is a former board member of Artspace and the Australian Centre of Photography, former president of the Asian Australian Artists Association and former deputy chair of the Visual Arts and Craft Fund, Australia Council. Lindy Lee is currently a trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Her work is held in many important collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Art Gallery of South Australia.