Brita Lee Miklouho-Maklai

Profile

Welcome everyone, thank you for taking the time to look at my art!
Also check out my website at click here

Since I was very small a love of the beauty of the world and nature has been linked with an almost obsessive need to draw or represent what I saw, felt and touched. I paint, draw and sculpt in clay. Photography has become an integral part of creating an image and I fluctuate between life drawing and more spontaneous intuitive image making.

I have travelled a lot in Southeast Asia, India, Indonesia in particular is very close to my heart and I have lived there at different times. My Masters thesis was about contemporary painters in Yogyakarta. Coming up against different ways of approaching art practice, different aesthetic values and different materials have all informed my art.

2008 I just moved to Adelaide.
2007 I participated in a Drawing Masterclass with Christopher Orchard at the Adelaide Central School of Art, amazing teacher and love his work too. Hung out with artist friends drawing. 2005-2006 I lived in Bridgetown for 2 years in the beautiful Southwest of WA, made some sculptures, did some portraits (pastel) and drawing (charcoal and mixed media). Challenged myself to make standing figures – couples dancing etc – in different types of clay. With varying success.

Went to Russia in July 06 for 6 weeks, architecture and bronze public sculptures in St Petersburg – amazing, mindblowing etc, at art school they still learn all the traditional drawing and painting techniques, went across Siberia, took lots of photos, loved it.

1998 -2004 Finished art school and Masters thesis, moved to Perth, went through post-art school floundering re painting, did lots of drawing (charcoal, etc.)

Master of Arts – Visual Arts/Indonesian Studies, by research. Title of Thesis: The Cryptic Image: The ‘Surreal’ om Contemporary Indonesian Art of Yogyakarta. The Flinders University of South Australia.

1996-1997 Studio Assistant, Painting and Drawing Dept, North Adelaide School of Art.

Advanced Diploma of Arts – Visual and Applied. North Adelaide School of Art.

1991 – Won an Asian Studies Post Graduate Research Scholarship. I spent over a year in Yogyakarta and other places in Indonesia doing research for the Masters thesis.

1988-89 Tutor, Indonesian Studies and Asian Studies, The Flinders University of SA

1988 – Diploma of Social Sciences – Asian Studies. My thesis was a study of Indonesian contemporary art under Suharto’s New Order, entitled Seni Rupa Baru and Beyond: Contemporary Indonesian Art Since 1966.

In 1986-1987 I was in Bali for about 8 months total, practicing my Indonesian language skills, learning about the culture and art, and doing some drawing and painting too.
1986 I completed my undergraduate degree at Flinders University of S.A. (Indonesian and Visual Arts).

PUBLICATIONS
Books
1998 Menguak Luka Masyarakat: Beberapa Aspek Seni Rupa Indonesia Sejak 1966, PT Gramedia Jakarta, 1988. Translated by Joebaar Ayoeb.

1991 Exposing Society’s Wounds: Some Aspects of Contemporary Indonesian Art Since 1966. Flinders University Asian Studies Monograph No. 5

Articles

1993 ‘New Streams, New Visions – Contemporary Art Since 1966’ in Sulture and Society in New Order Indonesia, Virginia Matheson Hooker, ed, Oxford University Press, Singapore.
1992 ‘Dadang Christanto’, University of South Australia Art Museum, Underdale.