Lih Qun is a cross-disciplinary artist who sculpts her work around a passion for the beauty she sees in the world around her. She channels her fascination for painting, colour, textile manipulation, art finishing and the human body into the costumes and wearable art that she creates. And her love for the expressive and the intangible into her music.
A classical-trained cellist from the age of six, Lih Qun is particularly interested the collaboration of contemporary classical music with physical movement and in how musical and physical languages can speak with each other.
Her compositions mostly begin with the cello; her voice. She is intrigued by the exploration of the full vocal and percussive range of the cello. Her composition involves exploring new classical composition with loop or cell based composition, a style of composition (similar to electronic composition) that explores intricately shifting textures, harmonies and cross rhythms.
Lih workshops her compositions with physical movement through live improvisation, incorporating the loop station to create rhythmic loops, melodic counterpoint and lush orchestral sections. Her work explores a true human connection through the artistic languages of sound, movement and line.
Lih has also worked closely with electronic producers and contemporary, such as Jacob Cartwright and Reecode, to create works of contemporary classical and alternative and instrumental hip hop, trip hop and electro.
Lih Qun was trained as a period costume designer and technician at Swinburne University in Melbourne . Specialising in Circus costume, Lih has worked more recently as an artfinisher – specialising in airbrush and dyeing- in the Costume props department for Cirque du Soleil, the National Institute of Circus Arts, and CIRCA.
As a visual artist Lih is particularly fascinated with air brush art. Her current work explores the intertwining of human made environment and natural environmental patterns of growth, reflecting the veracity of wild Asian tropical jungle: the bold chaos of vines and roots that signals a ferocious fertility and tenacity of life. Reflected in skewed metal heaps and junkyards, the industrialisation and spread of urban life shows this same furious strive for growth and survival. This growth that is out of balance and at odds with the rest of ecological life.
Lih Qun endeavours to use her professionally-honed artistic abilities to remind her audiences, and herself, of the magic of childish make- believe.
Contact:
lihqun@gmail.com
