Ting - Huan 挺歡 Christine 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 forms orbiting around new performance somewhere between Film, Gaming and Exhibition.
Her mixed Taiwanese British heritage deeply roots her collaborations with the underrepresented and displaced. She has spent 7 years of her career itinerantly creating work around Europe, Bulgaria, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and is currently settled between Toronto and London. 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 interrogation, the body as a political statement and getting audiences out of black boxes to be witnesses to a different kind of event.
Stage.
In the Shaw 2024 season she designed Orphan of Chao in her most politically entangled commentary on tensions between Ancient Empire and Contemporary Democracy through the Costume Design. They were described by cultural reporter Joshua Chong, as ‘costumes, which blend ancient and contemporary esthetics, it’s not difficult to draw parallels between the play’s story and the movements of political resistance that exist today, including the Chinese pro-democracy protests.’
She designed mainstage season opener Cockroach 曱甴 at Tarragon 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 received a Dora Nomination for Outstanding Scenic Design in 2023.
She was Dora Nominated for 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.
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 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.
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.
She was 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.
Screen.
Her Production Design for Language took place as a series of installations inside a disused commericial property. It 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, amongst a vast abstract environmental Design.
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 and how gaming mechanics could intertwine with live performace.
Space (and other Space).
She designed a durational performance art piece First Trimester with Krishna Istha, in their search for the ‘perfect’ sperm donor. The work explored human connection and parenthood and redefined what it means to create a family as a transgender person. Over 100 participants have been live interviewed for this work and it has toured the UK, Copenhagen and New Zealand, and is also in the form of a Netflix Documentary Sperm Donors Wanted.
She was an artist in the research and development phase of Trigger Stuff’s project GROUND - an international concept touring production. Provocated by a radical art and horticulture around the subject of biopiracy. She joined academics, creatives and audiences from across the globe to unearth the tangled history of botany, plant use and ownership.
She continues to collaborate with Artist Eelyn lee in an expansive project that reimagines diasporic East and Southeast Asian [ESEA] identities through contemporary myth-making.
As an installation artist she was the Designer in Myers Park, Auckland New Zealand, occupying an urban space adjacent to a park under a bridge, revitalizing a forgotton transitional space.
She was in artist collective Take a Seat celebrating freelance artists and technicians in Scotland through a curated installation in the foyer of the Lyceum Theatre.
She Designed Tron Theatre 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.
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.
With Chinese Arts Now as Film Maker, Performance Designer and Spacial Designer of CAN x Two Temple Place - a liminal interactive digital exhibition space in collaoration with Two Temple Place in London and exhibiting 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 designed costumes with Kakilang in two continents - UK and Hong Kong - in dance performance HOME X that married VR technology with a live performance across time zones. It was presented at The Barbican in 2023.