The North-West Ceramics Foundation is pleased to announce Ying-Yueh Chuang as their featured speaker at a free public lecture Thursday, November 29, at 7:30 pm. The lecture will be held in Room 245 in the North Building of Emily Carr University of Art + Design (1399 Johnston Street, Granville Island, Vancouver). All are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Born and raised in Taiwan, Ying-Yueh Chuang came to Canada in the 1990s, attending and receiving a diploma from Langara College in 1997 and a BFA from Emily Carr Institute in 1999. She received her MFA in Ceramics from NSCAD University, after which she participated as an Artist-in Residence at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, where she continues to live and work, from 2001 to 2004. She has also participated in residencies in Jingdezhen, China (Pottery Workshop and Sanbao International Ceramic Residencies) and at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Chuang received the Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics in 2006 as well as a number of Provincial and Canada Council awards for her work. Her work is included in numerous public collections such as the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Burlington Art Centre Permanent Collection and the WOCEK Icheon World Ceramic Centre in Korea, and it has been featured in Art in America, Ceramics Monthly, Ceramic Review and Ceramics Art & Perception. She has participated in exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Hungary, Taiwan, Korea, China and Australia. In May of 2012, her work was shown in a two-person travelling exhibition with Eliza Au, Variations on Symmetry, at the Evergreen Art Gallery in Coquitlam.

Chuang scrutinizes the world around her, finding inspiration in things as simple as a grocery store, where the myriad forms and textures of vegetables suggest possibilities for exploration. Observing plants, she notices how structures and environments integrate and repeat to make complex wholes, which have the potential to expand exponentially. Much of her work incorporates complex symmetries, which she observes in nature, using hundreds of brightly glazed components assembled on site. Duality features in the work; prolonged looking dispels any sense her attractive components are benign; the curving tentacles seem like they might sting you, or draw you in only to feed on your flesh. Often organized geometrically, her compositions suggest scientific specimens, with figures pinned to a board rather than left living and free. Underlying the candy-coloured surfaces is an examination of order and freedom, both personal and social, which reflects her experience in both the populated, fairly homogenous culture of Taiwan, where rigid expectations govern family and social relations, and the sparsely populated and heterogeneous Canadian environment. Chuang values both, and her installations grow out of mediating the tensions between the two cultures.

The lecture will take place on Thursday, November 29 at 7:30 pm in Room 245, NB, Emily Carr University. We look forward to seeing you there. Note: For more on Ying-Yueh Chuang, please see her website at www.yingyuehchuang.com