We’re really fortunate to have artists nnscya (Annisa Cheung) and Wong Winsome Dumalagan visiting London from Hong Kong this May. nnscya’s and Winsome’s practices are representative of the practical and imaginary responses to their lives in Hong Kong and the wider region. In terms of the media they work with—in Winsome’s case film and installation, and in nnscya’s, sound and music—I’ve always been struck by how meaningful and engaging the directions they take have been, their aesthetics reflecting a reality that allows for dream-like observations and a magical reinterpretation of mundaneness; in terms of the creative scenes of Hong Kong, they have feet in both the official and the underground, which is perhaps a characteristic trait of relatively small communities.
Continue readingCategory: Films/TV
That should really be DVD’s but I guess ‘Films’ is more generic.
EVENT: Mouthpiece & Trail Shoes: nnscya & Wong Winsome Dumalagan
While I’m in the UK, I’m taking the opportunity to plan some events for visiting artists – those I have worked with in Hong Kong either directly or who hold a relation to the spaces for experimental performance there that I have been documenting. In early May Hong Kong artists Annisa Cheung (aka nnscya) and Wong Winsome Dumalagan will be in town for a few days, and we have arranged the event ‘Mouthpiece & Trail Shoes’ on the 7th of May at the artist-run venue Eat the Sunshine . Down the Sun in South London. The evening will include a solo performance by Annisa, a screening by Winsome, a collaborative performance by them both, and finally I will join them for a conversation about their work. Hopefully we will meet there!
For more details and tickets: https://gel.now/events/286
ArtSlant: Moving and Still
Quote out of Context: Solo Exhibition of Yang Fudong (curated by Gu Zheng)
OCT Suhe Creek Shanghai, 1016 Bei Suzhou Lu, near Wen’an Lu, Zhabei District, Shanghai
30 September, 2012 – 3 January, 2013
Yang Fudong’s solo show in Shanghai shifts the balance of his work away from the video installations onto his photographs, in the process proving the intimate connections but also the disparities between his moving and still images.
The collection of prints that form the bulk of this exhibition include still shots from Yang Fudong’s films as well as his stand-alone photographs from across his whole career. Yang’s photographic work has always been a counterpart to his films, in that it also concentrates on the cinematic image, presenting scenes with a certain level of stylisation removing the subjects from “nature” and into the staged shot.
Yang’s work has also often played with the boundaries between the still image and the moving scene, setting up juxtapositions between a film which looks like a set-piece—maintaining a stillness within the frame that the subjects sustain even in their movement (the Seven Intellectuals series of films being archetypal of this)—and the still image which appears to be drawn from a larger narrative, held in suspension but always appearing to refer to the event within a larger narrative. The meaningful arrangements and glances of the protagonists in the photographic works Don’t worry, it will be better… (2000) and Ms. Huang at M last night (2006) record the events in their lives without really settling on any particular meaning or interpretation, leaving the audience in a state of uncertainty regarding the actual events being presented and the storyline that the individual photographs in the series depict.
ArtSlant: UCCA Blows Up
Zhan Wang: My Personal Universe
UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, 798 Art District, No.4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China 100015
26 November, 2011 – 25 February, 2012
In what might be read as a change in direction for Zhan Wang, the new large-scale installation at UCCA broadens his works’ outlook from the establishment of monuments to the creation of the universe as creative material. In the process the artist addresses some big questions about our place in the universe, but ultimately manages to lose his sympathetic connection with the human body.
His long-running Artificial Rock series of scholars’ rocks recreated in stainless steel now dot the world, playing with the role of the monumental in public space. Critic Huang Du sees them as existing between tradition and modernity, and these contemporary versions of the traditional stones literally and symbolically reflect the appearance of whatever is around them in their polished forms. But this trope has now become ubiquitous, almost a cliché, so how does the artist progress?
You must be logged in to post a comment.