The First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Irene Chou (Zhou Luyun) was born in 1924 in Shanghai, China. She graduated in 1945 with a degree in economics from St John's University, Shanghai and for a time worked as a reporter there for the Peace Daily. In 1947 the artist married and two years later moved to Hong Kong. T he followingyear she began to study traditional Chinese painting methods under the Lingnan School master Zhao Shaoang. From 1976 to 1984 Irene Chouwas an art instructor in the extramural department of the University of Hong Kong. As an indication of the esteem in which she was held, she received the Artist of the Year Award, Hong Kong, in 1988. In January 1991 the artist emigrated to Brisbane, Australia, where she continues the same highly disci­ plined studio regime of her earlier career. Irene Chou has held solo exhibitions in Hong Kong from the 1970s onwards and has exhibited internationally in Manila, New York, Hamburg, Tokyo, Melbourne, San Francisco and London. She is represented in prestigious public collections such as the Hong Kong Museum of Art, National Arts Center, Taibei, Taiwan and the British Mu�eum, London. In the genesis of her mature work, Irene Chou has discarded the traditional rep­ resentational canons of pictorialism and stretched theChinese brush andink genre to a form of abstraction which has no obvious parallels in the West, unless one thinks of aspects of American abstract expressionism. Influences on Irene Chou's work have included various masters of broad ink strokes such as Bada Shanren and Qi Baishi. In Hong Kong she was impressed by Lu Shoukun, an innovator in modern Chinese painting. His experimentation with ink and watercolour washes and calligraphic brushwork encouragedher to use generous slabs of ink often superimposed in layers. Early in her career, Irene Chou also copied archaic calligraphic scripts. She developed an interest in philosophy and religion and as her knowledge broadened she became more in tune with her inner aspirations. Despite the artist's urban environment, she also began to respond keenly to the natural world (aware for instance of the changing phases of the moon). In her work of the 1960s there was an organic factor seen in areas of paint rather like human or vegetal veins. She was keenly aware of the irrepressible power of life, which perishes and regener­ ates as a matter of course. Always intro­ spective, her paintings could be seen as HONG KONG IRENE CHOU The universe is within our hearts 11992 Chinese ink and colours on oriental paper 187x96cm Collection: The artist landscapesmoving towards aninteriorworld. In the 1970s she produced several unusual paintings which were more abstract and characterised by a fluctuating linear rhythm; later she devised an 'impact' textural stroke, achieved by splattering ink on the wet paper surface. IreneChounow employs the spontaneous application of ink implicit in Oriental/Chinese calligraphy as the structural basis for the brushwork in her paintings. T hey explore cosmic and metaphysical themes that are suggested in her titles. Lucy Lim in Six Contemporary Chinese Women Artists: Their Artistic Evolution (Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco, 1991) explains: Often baffling, ambiguous and paradoxical, [Irene Chou's) art hints at a spiritual realm for which there is no visual equivalent in the objective world. Her paintings are the untram- 69 The universe is within our hearts 111992 Chinese ink and colours on oriental paper 187x96cm Collection: The artist - � melled expression of her inner self - what she calls the 'universe of my heart'. Anne Kirker