Ahead of The University of Melbourne’s major new group exhibition, The same crowd never gathers twice, presented at Buxton Contemporary until 13 October 2024, T Australia sat down with artist Yona Lee to talk about the cello, geometric sculptures and using running water in her work for the first time.
Along with Lee, the exhibition features 5 other leading international and Australian artists: Cate Consandine, Riana Head-Toussaint, Taryn Simon, Angela Goh and Laresa Kosloff.
T Australia: Your art is so tactile and performative but also quirky and beautiful at the same time. Did you always want to be an artist?
Yona Lee: Actually, I wanted to be a cellist and have played since I was six-years-old. I spent my teen years prepping to go to music school, getting those grades and I did audition and got in. I was fairly serious about it but towards the end of it I had an injury on my wrist and I couldn’t continue and I had to choose a different pathway. I realised that I had always loved making and drawing so instead of going to music school, I collected all these drawings and paintings I’d done in my free time and I applied for art school. I didn’t really have an idea that an artist could be a profession and it wasn’t really until the last year of art school that I started thinking about what to do afterwards. It sort of happened naturally.
T Australia: Did you work in other mediums before finding what you are known for – installations, objects and structure?
Yona Lee: What got me excited about sculpture was materials and objects in space. A lot of descriptive language for classical music and sculpture share words – rhythm, pattern, composition, space, body and form. With music these are abstract concepts but with sculpture they become real and physical things. The material language of my work that I’m known for, I arrived at quite early on. My work and I have gone on quite a journey together. It is iterative and generative and always evolving.
T Australia: Tell me about your works for The same crowd never gathers twice? Is it a collaborative work with the other artists or do you all occupy separate spaces?
Yona Lee: The invitation from the institution and the curator was to create a new work that would be dedicated to the space. It’s a sculpture for the Heritage Gallery in Buxton Contemporary, and it’s the only work in those rooms. It’s a space that is often divided up and where the works are hung on the walls. For my work, we’ve removed the partitions to make the space into one room, opened the blinds and the sculpture is positioned in places that are not usually occupied by artwork – like the ceiling trusses, middle of the floor and the garden outside. It’s the first time I’ve used running water in an indoor sculpture and this is something I’m excited about taking further in my work.
T Australia: What do you hope viewers walk away with after seeing your works?
Yona Lee: I don’t have a specific message that I intend to communicate with my work. It’s more about the audience and their encounter with it. The objects and the materials are ordinary and recognisable from everyday life so people have their own associations but the way that things are arranged in space are unfamiliar and irrational.
T Australia: Who or what would you say are your biggest inspirations?
Yona Lee: There are amazing classical musicians that can perform the same piece again and again but it never feels the same. There is something iterative about performance in space that I find inspiring. Travelling in between cities and being in transit, I think about how all of these things that are made by us, humans, and like a mirror it reflects us. There is a tension between controlling things and being controlled by them.