Lee Hun Chung (born 1967) has an international reputation as an artist who has engaged with conceptualist approaches to practice. He often works with large-scale installations, that deliberately confound any demarcation between the various disciplines.

Art critic Chang Dong Kwang tells us that “Lee is a potter, sculptor, designer, architect, painter, installation artist, poet, and labourer, because he is full of raw human character”. Much of his work is multi-media, with large-scale ceramic sculptural forms at their heart. Running through all of this, is a socially engaged range of imagery. The artist tells us that: “it feels good to live as an artist as a member of society, no more, no less”.

 As part of this creative vortex of activity, the artist still engages with the vessel, and ceramic as a material of architectonic and design potential. Over the last period of years the artist has developed an extraordinary range of furniture, effectively by expanding the role of the thrown vessel. His chairs, stools, tables and daybeds are created from modelled and thrown ceramic. While there is subversive wit at work, the overwhelming feel is invariably of a joie de vivre, a gladness to be around, and alive.

The clay furniture will occupy the Elisabeth Frink studio at Messums Wiltshire. The Elisabeth Frink studio was reconstructed in the 13th century tithe barn in 2020 and revived as not only a historical record, but a source-point of creativity with a programme of exhibitions, residencies and performance. It is a malleable and transformative space; a fitting setting for Hun Chung who is an artist known for improvising space, for casually, even joyfully bending and twisting definitions and categories.