Gina Choy (Australian, b. 1978) treats traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy as a system-based, almost algorithmic practice, connecting its ancient mark-making techniques to contemporary neuroscience and digital art. She is based on the Sunshine Coast, Australia. In her own words, “all of my creative work is an exploration of the Chinese philosophical concept of li (cosmic principle or truth) through images of the natural world”.
Choy trained as a painter at Griffith University, graduating in 1999. She went on to earn First Class Honours in Art and Design from the University of Canberra in 2017 and a PhD in art and neuroscience from the University of Queensland. In 2010 she studied traditional Chinese painting at Tianjin University under Professor Dong Ya, on a Confucius Institute research scholarship. Her 2017 series Liminal Space, developed during her Honours research and exhibited at Onespace Gallery in Brisbane, grew out of Chinese calligraphic strokes treated as a system-based practice tied to the concept of li, or natural order. It comprises ink works on rice paper alongside large-scale oil paintings on linen, later minted as Liminal Space I and Liminal Space II.
