Gallery 4A presented the work of Tim Johnson and My Lee Thi in an exhibition exploring ideas of transculturalism.

Although Thi had collaborated on a number of paintings with Johnson, this was the first time that they exhibited their work side by side.

This exhibition looked at these two art practices as parallel—informed by similar cultural influences—yet with different formal approaches.

Tim Johnson is a well respected Australian artist who has been exhibiting for the past twenty years. He has held exhibition in Gemrnay, Japan and the United States. In Australia he has also shown at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Although a central figure in the Australian conceptual movement of the 70s, Johnson’s recent work is characterised by a process of cultural distillation. His paintings combine influences from Eastern, Buddhist art, Western Aboriginal Desert painting and Asian symbols.

My Le Thi was born in the South of Vietnam. Her paintings and collages reflect this cultural heritage through the inclusion of Vietnamese poetry and sayings. The subjects of these texts are often about farming which Thi uses as a metaphor for the vitality of life. Her intimate works possess a delicate sensibility: grains of rice are paired with sketches of farmers.

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