6 February – 1 March 2008

Heavenly Bodies brings together three Chinese-Australian artists from Sydney, Brisbane and Launceston. Including Suzan Liu, Pamela See and Greg Leong, these artists will be in Sydney at the beginning of February to participate in the celebrations. The exhibition is titled Heavenly Bodies, and explores very personal experiences of being Chinese in Australia, concepts of good luck and ideas of desire.

The exhibition includes Greg Leong’s extremely witty and subversive Waitress uniform at the Ding Kam Chinese Aussie Meat Pie Palace. A superbly crafted yellow cheongsam, this work is part of a series of costumes the artist made to address the idea of “putting on” or “dressing up” and the complex metamorphosis involving impossible changes of gender, sexuality and race and culture.

Suzan Liu, a young Sydney-based artist creates two large-scale clouds in the gallery, inspired in part by the whimsical cloud forms found in Chinese traditional painting. Using foam and pillow stuffing, the cloud forms become the surface onto which the artist will project video images.

Pamela See, a young artist from Brisbane, has created aluminium sculpture derived from traditional Chinese paper-cutting techniques. Included will be a new work consisting of thousands of pieces of paper-cuts, which the artist encourages visitors to the exhibition to take home with them, to continue the exhibition in their own environments. Pamela calls it a process of giving back to the community.

Heavenly Bodies in an umbrella event of the 2008 City of Sydney Chinese New Year Festival.