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HKFOREWORD 16

Exhibition details

Opening / Event Date:
1 September, 2016
Time:
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Closing / End Date:
22 October, 2016
Event Category:

(AUGUST 2016) HONG KONG –

10 Chancery Lane Gallery is proud to present HKFOREWORD16, an exhibition showcasing recent works by 13 Hong Kong art graduates. Now in its fifth year, the HKFOREWORD series, organized by 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, aims to actively promote and strengthen relations between the new generation of contemporary artists in Hong Kong and local art institutions. This year’s contenders were of particularly high quality and it is the largest group of HKFOREWORD artists to date. Four of the artists are male and nine are female, the highest female selection ever. The works include video, painting, ceramic, photography, mixed media and sculptural installation. Gallery Director, Katie de Tilly states, “This year’s group of graduating artists show real strength and integrity. Amazing in both thinking and execution, with great production techniques. Their ideas show originality and are relevant to the lives of their generation. I am very pleased to introduce such an exciting new group of artists onto the Hong Kong art scene.”

Artists in the show are recent Bachelor’s and Master’s graduates from The School of Creative Media at City University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Art School, Hong Kong Baptist University, and Savannah College of Art and Design in Hong Kong.

 

Karen Ka Man CHAN (b. 1994)

Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University

Painter Karen Chan plays with shapes and space to depict the atmosphere around her. Influenced by American painter Norman Lundin, Karen was inspired to concentrate on ideas of light, space, negative space and impression, looking to her surroundings for inspiration. Painted in oil on aluminium, Karen’s artwork “Shape of Light” overlaps shapes and textures, as the artist tries to discover every possible relationship between the four sides of the surface she is working on.

Artist Statement:

I like to observe light and the shapes of shadow in our daily life. It touches me when I see light swaying before our eyes. I try to capture the moment when light and shadow leave an impression on me.

  

Ceci Wing Sze CHAN (b. 1994)

Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University

Artist Ceci Chan’s exploration into the once bourgeoning and now declining neon sign industry in Hong Kong is a visually impactful and moving documentary on the neon light producer Lau Wan. A nostalgic record of Hong Kong’s iconic neon light signs, “Neon Reframed” was inspired by Ceci’s childhood enchantment by the neon light board outside the Chinese restaurant where her father worked which she likened to meteors hanging from the sky.

Artist Statement:

As a Hong Kong youngster, I am interested in studying Hong Kong’s local culture, which has had a profound influence on Hong Kong. I immersed myself in studying the industry of neon signs and made this the focus of my graduation project in 2016. My expectation was to discover more about the current situation and challenges that the neon sign industry are now facing in Hong Kong.

 

Ryan CHENG (b. 1978)

Hong Kong Art School, RMIT University

Ryan Cheng is a ceramic artist living and working in Hong Kong. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) majoring in ceramics from RMIT University in 2016 and was awarded the Jerry Kwan Memorial Scholarship (2015/2016). Taking much of his inspiration from the work of 20th century studio potters, Ryan enjoys the craft of making with clay and uses it to create functional and sculptural forms in a modern setting. Throwing on the potter’s wheel can be immensely satisfying. Concentrating on just the wheel and the clay brings about a state of balance and focus. Ryan’s pots and sculptural forms capture that essence and become a reflection of this state of being.

Artist Statement:

I am a romantic at heart, I believe in ideals, such as beauty, love, freedom or joy. At the heart of these ideals though is something more primary, an essence, a good, a truth, something singular and eternal. It is my wish to capture that essence and make it perceivable. Working in ceramics I create objects that are true to the potter’s wheel, the clay, and my own sense of life.

 

Ziki Kit Yin CHEUNG (b. 1991)

School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

Ziki Cheung’s visually arresting video installation “it is what it is” is comprised of 17 televisions and 8 DVD players, playing 55 videos on loop. The artist aims to rethink the value and meaning of a worthless object; making common objects strange is an easy way to achieve defamiliarisation. To the artist, it is not the objects in the video that are important, the crucial point is to provide a new mode of thought, and to unite people’s aesthetic experience, and experience with art, with the normal processes of everyday life.

Artist Statement:

In this work, I recorded my interaction with daily objects. Plant, CD, hotdog, paper, toilet paper, bread, macaroni, hammer, all the things in the video are trivialities. The project presents the exploration of daily routine in an extraordinary way, playing with our perceptions and undiscovered observations.

 

Mang Chung FUNG (b. 1990)

Chinese University of Hong Kong

The largest artwork in the exhibition is “A Forgotten Page” by Fung Mang Chung. Winner of the 2014 Australia China Arts Foundation Award, Fung’s artwork is vibrant and playful. He draws on diary and classroom notes, concepts from his previous creative projects and his own emotions to carve into the wooden panels, intuitively sketching and sculpting on the wood. Although trained in painting, he has moved away from this more traditional medium so as to free himself of traditional theories and the boundaries of mark making with paint. His work serves as a visual documentation of his artistic development and the roots and foundations of his artistic practice.

Artist Statement:

Artistic creation is the rediscovery of self and subjectivity. To confront oneself is to ruminate on the momentum of life. As Heidegger said, there is no absolute distance between our lives and us. We are our life, and the lucidity of our life is the nature of it.

 

Johnny GIN (b. 1964)

Savannah College of Art and Design, Hong Kong

Johnny Gin is a Hong Kong-based copywriter who has embarked on a second career as a photographer. His photographic interest lies in the examination of vernacular architecture and the built environment and the ways in which these spaces inform us about the culture and identity of a city. “Shan Ha Tsuen 1932” depicts an iconic Hong Kong village house in disrepair; its character-defining features still boldly visible. Throughout this series, the most commonly found detail is the year of completion proudly displayed on the pediment, and this unique element is used as a motif throughout the series for the way that photography reflects the passage of time in the materiality of buildings.

Artist Statement:

Vernacular structures and environments hold possibilities for deeper and broader understandings about our culture and society, and my aim as a documentary-style photographer is to focus critically on these spaces to reveal their embedded meanings and conflicts. The village houses captured in this series represent an architecture typology in decline, but they also reflect on the medium of photography and its intertwining relationship with architecture.

 

Karen Ka Lam HAU (b. 1993)

School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

Karen Hau’s installation “Greeting to myself” features wooden plaques engraved and embellished with geometric and colourful interpretations of Chinese characters, chosen from text “whatsapp” messages between the artist and her contemporaries over a period of one month. The collected words are deconstructed into a rule-based and abstract geometrical art form and provide an interesting insight into a generation born into a technologically advanced age.

Artist Statement:

To summarize my 4-years of university life and explore myself, I decided to collect the most-often used words from my text messages between my schoolmates and I. I wanted to breakdown, redefine and reconstruct the words I collected. A series of daily “text-word” pieces are generated to form a rule-based and abstract geometrical art. Through my work I aim to find out the truth and potential value of the words themselves and my inspirations from school life.

 

HON, Hilarie (b.1994)

Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University

Influenced by the Spanish romantic painter Francisco Goya (1746-1828), Hilarie Hon’s paintings are otherworldly and vibrantly colourful. Hilarie was the winner of this year’s AVA Keeper of Studies Collection Award at the Academy of Visual Arts. The painting “Hoc est simplicissimus” was inspired by Gabriel García Márques’ book “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. Drawing on the author’s magical realist style and her instinctual approach to colour and composition, the artist depicts the character Jose Arcadio who was tied to a tree, “barking in…[a] strange language and giving off a green froth at the mouth.”

 

Ho LAI (b. 1993)

Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University

Lai Ho is a Hong Kong based artist who works with ceramics, she is interested in investigating the plasticity of clay and the contemporaneity of ceramics in the contemporary art world. Her artwork “Hearts” is a touching and emotive installation of light-filled ceramic hearts suspended from the ceiling.

Artist Statement:

“the heart is constituted into a gift-object – whether ignored or rejected.”

(A Lover’s Discourse – Fragments by Roland Barthes)

I use porcelain, a tactile and strong, yet delicate and fragile material, along with a pulse of light, to make manifest the height, distance and beat of my own heart and the hearts of the people I love. Through depicting the physical distances of hearts and the dynamics of heartbeat, I take it as a metaphor to manifest emotional distances. No matter how hard it is, to be honest with each other in relationships, closeness and distance between hearts portray emotions.

 

Avon Nga Fong LEE (b. 1978)

Chinese University of Hong Kong

In 1965, the Hong Kong orchid tree, Bauhinia × Blakeana (洋紫荊) was adopted as the floral emblem of Hong Kong by the Urban Council, and since 1997 the flower has appeared on Hong Kong’s coat of arms, flag and its coins. According to the artist’s research, the name for this plant in Chinese used to include the word “foreign (洋)” in the name, and in 1990 the Government changed the Chinese name of this plant in the Basic Law. “Nicked Type Specimen III” by Avon Lee is a response to this hidden political history, and the myths and identity of Hong Kong. The five photographs in the work are depictions of five imaginary plant specimens, grafted together by the artist and presented in the traditional Chinese artwork format of the four gentlemen (四君子) or junzi.

Artist Statement:

I randomly grafted different plants and Bauhinia x blakeana together, and used Infrared light to ‘cultivate’ these five imaginative plants to record and respond the falsehood mystery of Chinese name of Bauhinia in the Basic Law. My potted landscape photos are not just a study of Hong Kong’s Bauhinia, but more importantly, reflecting the colonial history to the grand narrative of the transferring of sovereignty.

 

Benny SIN (b. 1993)

Savannah College of Art and Design, Hong Kong

Benny Sin is an emerging visual artist based in Hong Kong. Specializing in street photography and conceptual art, Benny is also an enthusiast, who loves to explore life through photography.

Artist Statement:

Inspired by Edward Hopper and Philip Lorca Dicorcia, I create mundane moments with theatrical lighting. By focusing on the mundane, we understand the humanity that exists in the city. With the incorporation of strobes, I am able to “paint with light”, to inspire in my audience an awareness of the psychology and emotion contained in real-life situations.

 

Yi Ching WONG (b. 1994)

Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University

Wong Yi Ching’s “After Meal” is a set of four abstract oil paintings. Inspired by the phenomenon of posting photos of food on social media, the paintings depict the feelings of the artist after observing groups of people dining together and raise questions on the impact of social media on everyday socializing and interactions. Are people more interested in social media than talking or making connections with those sitting right beside them?

Artist Statement:

Eating is an essential part of life to keep us alive, but it is not the main reason people dine together. They neither dine together simply because they are hungry, nor end the meals simply because they are full. The interaction among people during the meal is everything that matters. Through depicting the messy dining table, the gesture and the posture of those who have satisfied their appetite, I show the intimate relationships between them.

 

Jiaru WU (b. 1991)

School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

Wu Jiaru in an interdisciplinary artist who is currently studying for a MFA Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. Originally from Guangdong, China, Wu was awarded an Outstanding Graduate of Tsinghua University award for her undergraduate degree. “C Bacon” is a set of interactive, computer-generated, moving images based on a series of paintings on the theme of “Crucifixion” by artist Francis Bacon (1909-1992). Starting with the mysterious aesthetic language of Francis Bacon, this work attempts to build dialogues between the virtual and reality, postmodern technology and contemporary authorship, and between machine and human.

Artist Statement:

I am interested in exploring the boundary between advanced technology and conventional mediums in the context of contemporary art. I explore the use of creative media during the art making process, and I am influenced by related ideas and topics such as psychology, mythology, theoretical physics, technological convergence and digitization.

 

 For press enquiries and to arrange interviews, please contact Bo Kim on [email protected] or +852 2810 0065.

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