ARTS VICTORIA: KATIE LEE AND JENSEN TJHUNG

In 2012, at the invtiation of Arts Victoria, Gertrude Contemporary exhibited the work of Gertrude Studio Artists Katie Lee and Jensen Tjhung. The works were exhibited for four months in the gallery foyer of the Arts Victoria offices at Southbank.

The exhibition wsa an opportunity for visitors to Arts Victoria to encounter the work of Lee and Tjhung and gain an insight into the Studio Program at Gertrude Contemporary. The collaboration also celebrates the ongoing relationship between the two organisations. Arts Victoria was instrumental in supporting the establishment of Gertrude Contemporay, then 200 Gertrude Street, in 1985 and continues to support the program through annual funding. 

Jensen Tjhung, Gertrude Studio Artist 2010 - 2012 

Jensen Tjhung was born in Bently, W.A in 1980. Thjung completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting), Victorian College of the Arts in 2002. Exhibitions include The Solo Projects, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, 2010; The Hell, Hell Gallery, Melbourne, 2009; Roaming District Church, Melbourne Art Fair, 2008; Un-Sunken Lounge, Gertrude Contemporary, 2007. He has understaken a residency at Artspace, Sydney in early 2013. His recent work takes the form of large-scale sculpture, small-scale sculpture drawing, painting and problem-making.

Katie Lee, Gertrude Studio Artist 2010 - 2012 

Born in Tasmania, where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1998, Katie Lee has lived and worked in Melbourne since 2000. Katie has since completed a Postgraduate Diploma of Education (2001), Honors in Fine Art (2004) and a Master of Arts (2009) at RMIT, while regularly exhibiting both in Melbourne and overseas.  Katie has spent time in Vietnam where she worked and exhibited independently in 2003/4 and returned as a resident artist with Asialink in 2007.  She teaches in the Sculpture department and the Architecture and Design Foundation Studies program at RMIT.

A central concern within my practice is to use an intuitive sculptural language to investigate structures in the built world.  In particular I look at structures that have an inherent tension within their make up and their role semantically, socially or formally.  This can occur materially (elasticity v. resistance); politically and socially (the normative v. the liberal) and spatially, (structure v. transversality). One overt example of this is the way that structures of coercion in the built world relate to the body. Therefore, commonly I have looked to architectures of bodily discipline, ranging from the delineation of public space to the choreography of bodies by urban design. These spatio-visual codes become the basis on which I create a set of sculptural forms within an art gallery context or site.  The sculptural forms often mimic the original structures, however like any simulacra there is a slippage and in my case- revision back the psychological.