China, South Korea, Hong Kong & Thailand

The acclaimed Korean artist Byeong-Doo Moon was born in Korea in 1968. Moon has always been interested in art and had a talent for painting from childhood. In 1989, he first attended Jungang University and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Masters of Fine Arts. Moon interprets the existence of humans through his work, with a satirical slant on the relationship between nature and modern civilization. As an award-winning artist, Moon dreams of a small space that ultimately has a coexistence of humanity and nature.

Born in 1960, Wang Shugang lives and works in Beijing. His works are internationally known and exhibited. During the 1990’s Shugang lived in Germany for over a decade, choosing Essen and Duisburg, two former industrial hotspots in theso-called Ruhr area, as the centre of his life. It was there where he first made close contact with western art: Modern (20th century) as well as the German Expressionism. This clearly had a lasting influence on Shugang and can still be seen in his work today. The artist’s ties with Germany possibly contributed to his receiving the Ernst Barlach Award in August this year. Shugang’s artistic influence can still be primarily found in China; the social life of the ‘simple, small people’ he alludes to in his installations and sculpture ensembles and the loss of individualism in a faster and faster turning world. Recently, Wang Shugang joined the “China Arte Brasil” in Sao Paolo, Art Cologne in Germany and Art14 in London.

Born in Scotland, Kirsteen Pieterse studied Art in Architecture at the Glasgow School of Art. She now lives and works in Hong Kong, after moving from Australia where she has exhibited widely and lectured at Macquarie University and the University of Sydney. Pieterse draws on a keen interest in the landscape and the man made structures within it. Her stainless steel and acrylic sculptures allude to abandoned buildings and those left in a state of collapse, standing alone in the landscape. These vacant structures are discarded as victims of time and erosion. In 2004 Pieterse won the People’s Choice Award at the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, and in 2005 she was a finalist in the National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. Pieterse has exhibited widely in Australia and Hong Kong. In 2009 she completed a sculpture for the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and two public commissions in Hong Kong in 2010.

Guan Wei 1957 bone in Beijing. He was a 1986 graduate from the Department of Fine Arts at Beijing Capital University, and came to Australia in 1989. In 2008 Guan returned to China and set up a studio in Beijing. He now lives and works in both Beijing and Sydney. He has won many art prizes in Australia including: NSW Art Gallery Sulman Prize; Gold Coast City Gonrad Jupiters Art Prize; Nillumbik Art Award VIC; Mosman Art Prize Sydney; 39th Festival of Fisher’s Ghost and Campbelltown Art Gallery Sydney. He has also completed various public Commissioned works for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Game poster; Mural Painting for 700 Collins St Docklands Melbourne; SBS & Australian Centre for the Moving Image and the MCA Sydney new building foyer mural. Wei's work is held in major public collections and universities, corporate and private collections. He has held more then 50 solo exhibitions internationally and has been included in many important contemporary exhibitions, such as the Shanghai Biennial; the Cuba 10th Havana Biennial; Australian Adelaide Biennial, the Third Asia Pacific Triennial; Japan's Osaka Triennial and the Kwangju Biennale.

Sculptor and painter, Naidee Changmoh, says his art is inspired by children and a series of Japanese cartoons of a young monk which he used to watch on TV when he was very young. “When I was drawing at university, I would think about this cartoon figure and create my own character, who had quite a large head. Always, part of my work has this (Buddhist) religious philosophy behind it”. Naidee Changmoh. Though he studied painting as an art student, for the past 20 years his main interest has been in ceramics. Casting in bronze has beena natural progression. In the past few years, he has been invited to attend conferences and hold workshops in China, Singapore and Taiwan, and is invited to Italy and the US later this year, and India and England in 2015. Last year he came to Australia by invitation togive a demonstration at the tri-annual national ceramic event held incentral western NSW. Changmoh has also been commissioned by a patron to create a number of concrete sculptures for a Buddhist temple in Paris.

Sang-Bong Lee was born into an artistic, religious family in Chung Nam Buyoe, Korea, in 1962. When he was in high school he was spiritually awakened and made up his mind to be an artist. After graduating from Chung-Ang University (majoring in sculpture), he studied at Studium der Bildenden Kunst Udk in Berlin, Germany for four years. As a result, he achieved the status of meisterschueler. Lee’s artworks can be defined as minimal, mathematical and geometric. They reflect his moderate way of life and are achieved through religious meditation. This kind of religious background and spiritual experience becomes the essence of his artworks. Lee has held 21 solo exhibitions in Germany, China, America, Japan and Australia, and has been invited to take part in numerous group exhibitions over the years. He has received special awards in the Dong-a Grand Art Exhibition and Moran Art Prize, as well as a first prize in a sculpture contest sponsored by Korail.