China, Hong Kong, & Thailand

Sculptor and painter Naidee Changmoh’s practice is inspired by children and informed by memories from his own childhood, particularly of a Japanese TV cartoon series about a young monk. "When I was drawing at university," Changmoh recalls "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." Though Changmoh studied painting as an art student, for the past 20 years his main interest has been in ceramics. Casting in bronze has been a natural progression. In the past few years, he has been invited to attend conferences and hold workshops in China, Singapore and Taiwan, Italy and the US and will travel to India and England in 2015. Last year Changmoh came to Australia by invitation to give a demonstration at the tri-annual national ceramic event held in central western New South Wales. He has also been commissioned to create a number of concrete sculptures for a Buddhist temple in Paris.

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 the so-called Ruhr area, as the centre of his life. It was there where he first made close contact with western art, exploring Modernism and German Expressionism. This had a lasting influence on Shugang’s oeuvre and can be seen in his work today. The artist’s ties with Germany possibly contributed to his receiving the Ernst Barlach Award in August last year. Shugang’s influence is also drawn from China, and the social life of the ‘simple, small people’, which he alludes to in his installations and sculpture ensembles. These refer to the loss of individualism in an increasingly fast paced world. Recently, Shugang has exhibited in the China Arte Brasil in Sao Paolo, Art Cologne in Germany, and Art14 in London.

Chen Wenling is recognised as one of the top contemporary sculptors in China today. Born in 1969 in Anxi, a remote village in Fujian province, Wenling remembers his family being so poor that his parents could not afford to buy him toys and he grew up making figurines out of clay to entertain himself. He counts himself lucky because his parents encouraged his artistic talent and Wenling went on to study at the Xiamen Academy of Art and Design, and then at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. The two main themes of Wenling’s sculptures are the manifestations of extreme humanity and immaterial images in a consumerist society. This is evident through his Red Boy series. It is neither realism nor vanguard sculpture, but instead the artists expression of himself to the critical state of life.

Following a number of prestigious exhibitions, such as Art Basel in Switzerland and the Shanghai Biennale, Wenling participated in Sculpture by the Sea at Cottesloe in 2011, winning the People's Choice Award. In 2011, the artist exhibited at Sculpture by the Sea in Aarhus and his work Red Memory - Shy Boy was purchased by the City of Aarhus.