OXFORD, UK.- The Ashmolean Museum presents Everyone's Life is an Epic: New Work by Qu Lei Lei, on view through July 17, 2005. For the first time in the Ashmolean's series of Chinese exhibitions, a show will be devoted to the paintings of a living artist, Qu Lei Lei. Renowned worldwide, Lei Lei will display a series of portraits depicting the very different lives of people living in different countries. From the paintings of a Tibetan peasant, a Chelsea pensioner and a young girl killed in Cambodia under Pol Pot's regime, this exhibition tells the story of people.

Since his move from Beijing to London in 1986, Lei Lei has become well known to British audiences as a teacher and author of Chinese brush painting. He has lectured extensively and has been a visiting tutor at the Ruskin School of Drawing and the V&A. Born in 1951, in northern China, he studied Chinese painting and calligraphy, followed by Western drawing and painting. He continued his education in anatomy at the Beijing Medical University and after his move to London; he spent two years at the Central School of Art and Design.

Lei Lei's fame as an artist comes from his association with the Stars Art Movement. In 1976 after the death of Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution, he became a leading member of the Stars (Xingxing), a Beijing based group of twenty-three artists who ardently campaigned for greater freedom of expression within the arts. In September 1979 they were refused an official exhibition at the National Art Gallery. As a result they hung their work on the railings outside. This caused a political outcry and the authorities removed their paintings within twenty-four hours. Two months later, the exhibition was staged at a nearby studio and was attended by a total of 200,000 people in over a week. The art critic, Li Xianting applauded the movement as 'The first truly iconoclastic avant-garde group'.

During the early 80s several of the artists left China for Japan, Europe or the United States. In 1989 the Stars launched their 10th anniversary in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and exhibitions were held at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Their contribution to the democracy movement helped to liberate and energise the art scene in China's major cities. Interest in their exhibitions led to the production of overtly political works by younger artists in the 1980s -90s. Moving on from his artistic response to social politics, Qu Lei Lei currently pursues the theme of humanity itself.