Christine Ting - Huan 挺歡 Urquhart is a former Fine Art Painter and Sculptor working in Live Performance as a Set & Costume Designer and as an Art Director / Production Designer for Film. She has a continued interest in Artist Digital Commissons centred around discovering new forms of performance somewhere between Film, Gaming and Exhibition.
Her heritage is Taiwanese British which deeply roots her collaborations with the underrepresented and displaced. Furthering her artistic growth she spent 7 years of her career designing abroad (around Europe, Bulgaria, New Zealand, Australia, Canada) and is currently based between Glasgow, London and Toronto. She studied Fine Art at Farnham Art College and Cardiff Metropolitan University, then on to Theatre Design at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Her work questions viewpoints, histories and narrative structure through form as a Design driven interrogration, the body as a political statement and getting audiences out of black boxes to be witnesses to a different kind of event.
The Sanxing (三星 Three Stars) reimagined through a contemporary female gaze.
A ‘moving portrait’ film shown as part of Encounter Bow Festival 2021. Project concept and led artist - Eelyn Lee.
Performers and collaborators Eelyn Lee, Elisabeth Gunawan and Jacqui Bardelang. Cinematographer Winstan Whitter.
Stage.
She was Dora Nominated for an Outstanding Costume Design in Iphigenia and the Furies (On Taurian Land) with Saga Collectif costuming Indigenous, Settler and Black bodies in a reimagined Greek text. This piece has since be remounted as a film and will be released in February 2022. She was also nominated for Outstanding Set Design in Antigone 方 with YPT where she transformed a traditional pros Theatre into an In-The-Round configuration and viscerally placed the audience on the outskirts of a conflict zone.
She was most reccently short listed for the JMK Award 2023 for her proposal with Director Sam Hardie of a provocative production of The Girlfriend Experience by Alecky Blythe at The Orange Tree Theatre, London.
Her most traditional experience is at major repertory company Shaw Festival as a Design Assistant for a full season. She has been the recipient of a Lead By Design bursary project in association with Grid Iron and Design Association The Envelope Room, to develop her own work based on Stanislaw Ignancy Witkiewicz’s The Crazy Locomotive.
She designed mainstage season opener Cockroach 曱甴 at Tarragon, Toronto, directed by Mike Payette and written by Jeff Ho (Ho Ka Kai). Described as an ‘experimental choreopoem’, alongside choreographer, Hanna Kiel, she pushed the limits of how performers deliver text and encounter space in a physically dynamic and intense production. This has receieved a Dora Nomination for Outstanding Scenic Design in 2023.
She Designed Mulan Rouge, a drag - comedy - burlesque blend of Disney's 'Mulan' and Baz Luhrmann's 'Moulin Rouge’ with Writer and Director, Shay Shay, which was showcased at Immersive Events space ‘The Vaults’ in London.
Screen.
Her first Production Design Language was an experimental feature film examining and dissecting King Lear in parallel with performers who speak a second language, using intersected interviews about working in the Film industry.
Feature credits include body horror Lifechanger and South Asian led Footprints on Water following the story of an illegal immigrant Father and Daughter - asking questions about what happens when those deemed invisible go missing - and as Standby Art Director for Girl about a young Black woman coming to terms with her daughter becoming suddenly visible in their community in Glasgow.
In short film she has brought urgent stories to life around the tropes of rape and the portrayal of women in I Beat up my Rapist and The Case of the Massey Bodice Ripping.
She has created original stop motion short films manipulating scale and found objects, including commissions Granny Fenella with Imaginate and Little Spoon with Visible Fictions to delight Young Audiences.
She was a Designer in Residence with Surge in 2019 exploring Design in 360 degree film and Virtual Reality.
Space.
As an installation artist she was the Designer in Myers Park, Auckland New Zealand, occupying an urban space adjacent to a park. She was a core member of collective Take a Seat celebrating freelance artists and technicians in Scotland by occupying the foyer of the Lyceum Theatre. She Designed Tron commissioned 2020 Visions led by Creative Director, Nich Smith, occupying disused shopfronts with ‘Visions of the Future.’ Collaborating with local Visual Artists and responding to messages and stories from the public. The project recieved a ‘Build Back Better’ Gold award.
She was an artist in the research and development phase of Trigger Stuff’s project GROW - an international concept touring production. Provocated by a radical art and horticulture around the subject of biopiracy, she is joining the connection with academics, creatives and audiences from across the globe to unearth the tangled history of botany, plant use and ownership.
Other Space.
Her ‘double’ digital film Duck Rabbit with Chinese Arts Now and New Earth Theatre was well recieved. Creator Pamela Carter explored colonial heritage and mixed-race identity by offering two digital journeys using photographs inherited from her parents.
Chinese Arts Now as Film Maker, Performance Designer and Spacial Designer of CAN x Two Temple Place - a liminal digital space responding to the building Two Temple Place in London and exhibition artists. This project combined Theatre and Gaming mechanics as a new form of storytelling and was winner of a Digital Culture Award. She was also an Artist in Residence with CAN discussing ‘Critical Chineseness.’
She will be designing costumes with Kakilang in two continents - UK and Hong Kong - in dance performance HOME X that meets cutting edge technology with a live show that combines theatre, music, gaming and VR technology. It will be presented at Barbican in 2023.