STORY: I like to create Chinese inspired art: Australian Lunar New Year stamp designer
SHOOTING TIME: Feb. 19, 2024
DATELINE: Feb. 20, 2024
LENGTH: 00:01:56
LOCATION: SYDNEY, Australia
CATEGORY: CULTURE

SHOTLIST:
1. various of stamps
2. SOUNDBITE 1 (English): CHRISSY LAU, Visual artist in Australia
3. various of Chrissy Lau
4. SOUNDBITE 2 (English): CHRISSY LAU, Visual artist in Australia
5. various of stamps
6. SOUNDBITE 3 (English): CHRISSY LAU, Visual artist in Australia
  
STORYLINE:

Australia Post has issued a new set of stamps to celebrate the Year of the Dragon. Chrissy Lau, 40 years old, is the designer of the stamps.

Lau, who was born in a traditional Chinese family and raised in the West, mentioned repeatedly the impact of her Chinese background on her works in the interview with Xinhua in Sydney.
SOUNDBITE 1 (English): CHRISSY LAU, Visual artist in Australia
"I feel really inspired by my Chinese culture, my background. I had a really good relationship with my father who passed away a few years ago. He was always really interested in my art so we always used to speak about the meaning of symbolism in Chinese art, the history, all the ceramics and everything. I felt inspired by those conversations, so that's why I like to create Chinese inspired art."

Lau has designed Chinese New Year stamps for Australia Post for four consecutive years since 2021. She said that the overall design of this year's stamps is inspired by the good memory of her parents giving her red envelopes during the Spring Festival when she was a child.

SOUNDBITE 2 (English): CHRISSY LAU, Visual artist in Australia
"This is quite nostalgic, the red envelope. A lot of people remember receiving the red envelope with the money in it.
I've designed three individual dragon stamps. The Fortune, the Lucky and the Happy dragon and they're all inspired by flowers as well. So they have like the peony, the chrysanthemum, the plum blossom in there as well."

During this year's Spring Festival, six kinds of flags designed by Lau to celebrate the Lunar New Year were hung in the streets of Sydney, with her Chinese name "Liu Dingqi" in the middle of the flag.

SOUNDBITE 3 (English): CHRISSY LAU, Visual artist in Australia
"I think it's quite nice to embrace your heritage and share your Chinese name. I think I'm able to create something that's quite western and eastern. I think that's my role to connect maybe the East and the West together in harmony."

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Sydney, Australia.
(XHTV)