Item NMC/2071 - Study of Mackintosh Building interior

Hock Aun Teh (郑 傅 安) (b. Malaysia), was the first graduate of The Glasgow School of Art’s Drawing and Painting Department from Asia, (studying 1970-1974). Teh was born to Chinese parents and grew up in Sungei Gedong, a remote village in Malaysia, and did not know where Glasgow was until he applied for a visa.

He was trained originally in Malaysia focusing on traditional Chinese ink painting, focusing on birds, bamboo, flowers and landscapes with waterfalls. He asked for extra lessons from his art teacher at secondary school, Tan Guan Hin and went to classes every Sunday at his house. When he arrived in Glasgow in 1970 he was fascinated by the variety of coloured paper available to him, hence many of his drawings were made on coloured paper. In his 1st year at GSA he was looked after by Mrs Josephine Davidson at 14 Banavie Road. Her husband was a soldier who had been stationed in Teh's hometown of Taiping in Malaysia. In his 3rd year at GSA he discovered Soutine and Willem de Kooning, then in his 4th year he discovered Clavé. He spent many weekends and holidays with the Barge family in Rhu near Helensburgh where he made many drawings and watercolours. He was involved with the GSA summer school in San Gimignano in Italy in the late 1970s and taught occasionally at GSA from 1975-1980.

In the early 1980s he worked mainly in collage. In 1985 he began working with acrylic gel, a technique he had learned from New York artist Edvins Strautmanis. He soon found it too troublesome a medium and abandoned it in 1989, returning to work on paper.

Teh considers his work to contain four different cultural elements: his sense of colour which is bright and strong, and is unmistakably tropical; the calligraphic effect, which is Chinese; the materials, which are Western, and his techniques, which are unique and personal to his ways of working. His works are in collections including GOMA and The National Art Gallery of Malaysia.

In recent years, Teh has begun to include sculpture in his oeuvre. This has resulted in several large-scale public commissions in mainland China, including a piece for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a 17.2m painted steel structure for Yantai Universal in Yantai (2010), a 4m bronze for the City of Tonglin (2013) and an 8m painted sculpture for The City of Chang Chun (2019).

Between 2013 until just before the Covid lockdown of 2020, Teh spent many months in Taiping, where he had been given a mansion to stay in which included a very big sitting room to use as a studio. He named it "Dragon Studio", as the mansion itself was called "Dragon Place". This accommodation at No.13, Lorong 4, Jalan Dato Sri Ahmad, Asam Kumbang, 34000 Taiping, was generously provided by an alumni of Hua Lian High School, Kim Leng Lee (also known to many of his friends as Kevin). He has been guaranteed by Kim Leng himself that the whole place will be at his disposal for as long as he wishes to use it, and most importantly, he has confirmed that he will never sell the property during his lifetime. This assurance has alleviated all Teh's concerns and misgivings that he might one day be compelled to move to another location. Following Covid-19, Teh has been going out to stay there at least once a year for a minimum of two months at a time. Many of his important works were created either there or at WASPS Studio in Glasgow, which he rented from 1979 until Aug 2024, when he moved back to his own house to work.

Teh holds Black Belt 6th Dan in Taekwon-Do and is the Grandmaster and Founder of Tukido.