Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) has announced internationally acclaimed sculptor Yona Lee as the recipient of its 2027 Judy Wheeler Commission, a prestigious annual initiative that champions the depth, diversity and bold innovation of Australian contemporary arts practice.

Born in South Korea and raised in New Zealand, Lee’s work ranges from tabletop objects to large-scale installations at museums and galleries. Her work has featured at the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art and Busan Biennale, and she has various pieces held in major public collections across Australia and New Zealand.

For the 2027 Judy Wheeler Commission, the fifth commission to date, Lee will create a site-specific sculpture that occupies PICA’s first floor and responds directly to its 1890s Federation-style schoolhouse architecture. Using her signature stainless-steel tubing, Lee’s work will wrap around the space as a continuous line, incorporating everyday objects and transforming the building into an expanded drawing.

Part artwork, part infrastructure, Lee’s installations reframe familiar objects in unexpected ways, creating new relationships between objects and architecture. Some works remain functional while others are displaced, inverted or placed beyond reach, playfully toying with expectations around form and function.

“I’ve been thinking about support structures and objects that quietly shape how we move through institutional spaces – handrails, seating, lighting, things that support the body while also directing it. For PICA, I wanted to work with that language and respond to the building’s history as both a former school and a contemporary art space.” Yona Lee.

“Each year, the Commission has produced a new artistic response to the PICA building and its surroundings,” says Tom Simpson, Judy Wheeler’s son and co-founder of the commission. “Yona Lee’s proposal brings a generous and lively sensibility to the program. It’s wonderful to see Judy’s legacy continue through a work that engages not only with the site itself, but also with the artists and public who inhabit it.”

The installation will be on display in 2027.

Top image: Yona Lee, ‘An Arrangement for a Room in Seoul’ 2024, installation view, Art Sonje Centre, Seoul. Photo: Seowon Nam. Courtesy of the artist, Fine Arts, Sydney, and Art Sonje Centre © 2024. Art Sonje Center all rights reserved.