Title

Parallel Worlds: My Le Thi & Tim Johnson collaborative installation.

Venues

UTS Gallery (9 September 2003 – 3 October 2003)

Date

(2003)

Summary

Multi-artist exhibition. Located: Australia (NSW). Paintings, Videos, Installations

Country of context

Australia

Abstract

My Le Thi and Tim Johnson bring together paintings, video and installation for their new exhibition Parallel Worlds at UTS Gallery. An elegant ensemble of skeletons, shoes, Buddha's and UFO's will occupy the gallery as worlds of difference collide and congregate in one place. Their individual artworks often find themselves sharing the same space in collaborative exhibition, most recently in Threads of Destiny at the Mori Gallery and in yab yum at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Parallel Worlds will survey each artists practice over the last 20 years. New paintings and unseen works will be shown with more familiar pieces such as Thi’s Transformation 2000 of cast feet and shoes. Showing together allows a conversational engagement between the works. Thi has been the model for life sized figures in installations by Johnson and likewise, at times, Thi's papier mâché skeletons appear working on Johnson canvasses.

In Thi and Johnson's collaborative ventures with others, cultural paths cross to highlight the differences and similarities between various philosophies and belief systems. Johnson is drawn to Buddhist, Eastern, Aboriginal and Native American cultures; these have led him to directly work with Tibetan artist Karma Phuntsok and Papunyan artist Clifford Possum.

Johnson's paintings carry a muted palette of whites and yellows with flecks of gold; on top of these sit the Buddha’s, portraits of Possum and the odd space visitor. Johnson writes of his work: "Strangely, many older cultures connect the idea of extraterrestrials with gods, law makers and ancestors. When older cultures can shed light on contemporary questions like this, painting can be used to investigate…art can be a conduit for experience and in so doing can actually change things."

Thi's poetic paintings and installations employ common elements; seeds allude to migrations; masks and skeletons to identities; nakedness and shoes to different cultures, places and times.

Other recurring motifs are the four colours white, red, yellow and brown, representing human skin colours, or alternatively, four different directions. Ladders symbolise transformation, a concept drawn from memories of her childhood home in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.[gallery media]