Local students travel to Australia to improve English

A group of 24 students from different Macau universities are travelling to Australia this weekend to further enhance their English language skills.  The Tertiary Education Services Office (GAES) has decided to extend this exchange program from three to five weeks this year, aiming to provide students with further opportunities to learn English with other foreign students.  The group will be visiting the Queensland University in Brisbane between July 21 and August 22, participating in different events, while meeting with students’ associations from Macau established in Australia. In a statement, GAES emphasized its intention to encourage students in broadening their horizons, while promoting cultural exchanges between Macau and Australia.

Local painter Luís Demée dies

The painter Luís Luciano Demée has passed away in Portugal, aged 85. His funeral was held yesterday in the city of Oporto. Demée started as an apprentice of the Russian architect and painter George Smirnoff between 1944-45. His first solo exhibition in Macau occurred in 1951, which was followed by several others in Hong Kong. The painter went to study in Portugal in 1952, where he initially attended the Lisbon School of Fine Arts, before going on to complete studies at the Oporto School of Fine Arts. Luís Demée “is the most important visual artist born in Macau,” wrote local artist António Conceição Júnior in an introduction to Demée’s last large exhibition in Macau, held in 2007. “Luís Demée is also one of the most important Portuguese painters of his generation, a man who chose the way of reservation and discretion to express himself, avoiding the all too easy limelight, which he always regarded as excessive,” Conceição Júnior added.