LIMINAL SPACE

Liminal Space (2017) marks the beginning of Choy’s focused engagement with Chinese calligraphic strokes and the traditional methodologies of Chinese painting, approached as an algorithmic, system-based practice. These strokes, rooted in China’s ancient and indigenous observations of nature, reflect what might be called the primordial algorithm of the natural world. With origins tracing back thousands of years—when painting gave rise to calligraphy and its formalisation in the Kangxi system—they are central to China’s landscape painting tradition and are understood as capable of expressing all phenomena in nature. When applied using the traditional techniques and underlying philosophy of Chinese painting, these marks become a language for expressing 天理 (li)—the principle of truth or natural order.

Developed as practice-led Honours research at the University of Canberra and exhibited at Onespace Gallery, Brisbane, the Liminal Space collection—later minted as Liminal Space I and II—comprises two parts of the same body of work: one created in ink on rice paper, the other translating its methodology and mark-making into large-scale oil paintings on linen.

In this body of work, Choy focused on the system of creation itself, exploring whether certain traditional Chinese practices had the potential to bring about an experience of the sublime in the practitioner. This investigation led the artist to engage with mark-making on rice paper as a biofeedback loop system, a process that subsequently sparked her PhD research at the intersection of art and neuroscience.