A DECADE OF RED

It’s been a little over 10 years since RED HONG YI decided to pivot her career from architecture to art. Having initially dribbled her way into viral fame through a video of her painting” with a basketball, the artist came to realise her true calling and now finds joy in turning mundane objects into extraordinary paintings all without a single stroke from a paintbrush.

Have you ever looked at your socks and thought they would be great for a painting? No, not as a subject, but as the object to create the painting itself. Most likely no, but Hong Yi - or Red, as she is more widely known in the art community - has definitely had this train of thought and most impressively, has gone on to create a number of paintings using socks, among many other unconventional mediums.

That is one unusual way to paint, you'd think, and you'd be right. Red has carved a name for herself creating artworks using everyday objects that most of us wouldn't even perceive as art materials.

The 37-year-old has always had an eye for creativity, having grown up doodling cartoons ever since - at age five - she was introduced to Picasso via a reproduction hanging in her parents' bedroom and discovered how art can be created through a few strokes and lines. She did, however, initially choose to pursue a more conventional career back in her twenties for the sake of stability.

"I was not trained in art. I was trained in architecture. So, I have no idea what the art world was about," she confesses. After graduating with Bachelor of Arts in Planning and Design (2007) and Master of Arts in Architecture (2010) degrees at the University of Melbourne, Red left Australia for China in 2011 to begin her working life as an architect.

"When I moved to Shanghai to tap into my roots a bit, that was really what inspired me to create art because it was a change of environment," she says, adding that it was a "culture shock" for her as life growing up as a Sabahan of Chinese descent in Kota Kinabalu and life living among the locals in China were markedly different.