Queensland artist and fashion designer Grace Lillian Lee is not a household name. Yet. But Brisbane Festival 2024 may change that by placing her talents front and centre, giving her work the profile it deserves.

Lee is currently the subject of two exhibitions, both of which explore her family and cultural connections. And, excitingly for her international ambitions, her couture creation is a feature of festival headliner Jean Paul Gautier’s Fashion Freak Show.

So, who is Grace Lillian Lee? She might be best known as the producer of fashion runway shows at Cairns Indigenous Art Fair since 2013 and Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair’s From Country to Couture, 2017-2019. She is the founder of First Nations Fashion and Design, with her own progression as an artist developing in parallel. Her pioneering work was acknowledged with the National Carla Zampatti Women in Leadership Award in 2021.

Lee graduated from Melbourne’s RMIT with honours in fashion design in 2010. She lives in Queensland’s far north, close to the Torres Strait Islands (she is of Meriam-Samsep and Chinese heritage). Her presence at Brisbane Festival this year profiles, for the first time, some of her broader familial inspirations.

“My purpose is always to celebrate my culture,” Lee says. “That is what drives me, while I’m also pushing the boundaries of what that can look like. Since I was a little girl I’ve wanted to work with my hands. I am seeing bodies come alive and reflecting the Cairns environment in my work. It’s where the rainforest meets the sea. We have the Great Barrier Reef and lush, rich colour.”

It was in 2011 that Lee travelled to the Torres Strait for the first time with her grandmother, who had not been there for 57 years.

Lee approached artist and Erub Island elder Dr Ken Thaiday Snr to teach her the traditional grasshopper weave used in his contemporary dhari constructions (articulated dance masks and headdresses that are known for their innovation of Torres Strait islander customs). Thaiday became a mentor and since then Lee has developed the weave into body sculptures that can also be worn, drawing the contemporary close to the past around her experience.

In The Dream Weaver: Guardians of  Grace exhibition that’s now on at Brisbane Powerhouse Lee traces the influence of family in her work, with a sense of their protective and inspirational force.

It includes eight pairings of her work, Shield and Armour, colourful and striking, that pay tribute to the convergence in her cultural background – her European, Chinese and Torres Strait Islander heritage.

Lee’s parents, grandparents and each of her primary relationships are represented with human-size sculptures. They draw on motifs ranging from Lee’s totem the Koysemer (moth), her Chinese name Yuklan (Jade Orchard) and shapes and patterns like arrows that point north, south, east and west, noting the journeys that brought her antecedents together. Wings evoke freedom of movement and lace patterns are from her grandmother’s blouse.

In a darkened space at the Stores Studio at Brisbane Powerhouse the narrative is ambient, the strongly coloured sculptures are spotlit and a film by Chris Baker broadcast on the walls, which takes the sculptures (on bodies) into Gangalidda and Garawa country.

In an adjacent room a discrete group of other works describe a new direction (Lee, with partner Lomas) as the Chrysalis Transformation. Four new and equally sinuous woven forms are constructed like chandeliers that channel shape from colour and energy, illustrated further by a film that takes their drama into the landscape, with a soundscape by Jagarizzar.

The second exhibition, at Brisbane Quarter in the CBD, Exposed Resilience, includes three works in black-and-white that respond to old photographs of her grandmother’s wedding on Waiben (Thursday Island) in 1948. The wedding dress has a woven bodice constructed like a beautiful white sinuous armour, contrasted with a skirt falling like water. This smaller display is quieter, reflective and focussed, evoking love as formative.

The final element to Lee’s Brisbane Festival trifecta is her collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier. That was facilitated by festival artistic director Louise Bezzina.

“Louise invited me and it was unbelievable,” Lee says. “Gaultier is all about liberating people, creating spaces for people and voices to be seen and heard.”

Her contribution to Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show is distinctive and notable, with the cane foundation of her sculptural garments speaking to his interests in corsetry. After travelling to Paris to work with Gaultier earlier this year, Lee looks forward to returning.

“I dreamt of what it would be like if I went back to Paris and gave it a shot,” she says. “I am figuring it out.

“The showcase of my solo exhibitions, at the same time as working on travelling my solo show to Paris, is alignment that is massive for my career. My dreams are just blown out of the water, all from Louise Bezzina’s creative vision.”

Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show featuring couture collaboration with Grace Lillian Lee, Piazza, South Bank,  until September 15; The Dream Weaver: Guardians of Grace continues at Brisbane Powerhouse’s Stores Studio until September 21; Exposed Resilience continues at Brisbane Quarter, 300 George St, Brisbane, until September 30.

brisbanefestival.com.au

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