Posts tagged: 2014

Artist: Annie Lai-Kuen Wan

Title: Lost in Biliterate and Trilingual

Year: 2014

Medium: Porcelain

Dimensions: Variable (18 small book-sized sculptures)

Accession Number: US2015-1

Acquisition info:

Annie Wan Lai Kuen is a Hong Kong-based ceramic artist.  She takes everyday objects as her subject matter and transforms them into beautiful objects injected with meaning.   

Lost in Biliterate and Trilingual comprises 18 small porcelain sculptures, each taking the form of a dictionary. The work was originally exhibited at the Harmonious Society exhibition at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, curated by Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) as part of Asia Triennial Manchester 2014. The title of the artwork refers to the language policy adopted by the Hong Kong government after the handover of the territory from the United Kingdom to the Chinese in 1997, which has meant that Cantonese, English and Mandarin all feature in Hong Kong political and daily life. In order to create this work, the artist took moulds from her own dictionary and those belonging to her friends; the resulting casts capture the bent spines, battered corners and creased covers of the books. However, in porcelain form, these sculptural books cannot be opened and remain mute, perhaps suggesting the limitations of translation and communication, or acting as monuments to the analogue world.  

Annie Wan Lai Kuen holds a Master of Fine Arts from Chinese University of Hong Kong, a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a Higher Certificate in Studio Ceramics from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in addition to a Diploma of Design. She is currently Assistant Professor of the Academy of Visual Arts of the Hong Kong Baptist University.  

In 2019, Wan will be exhibiting in a group show at Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, Japan. Previous exhibitions include: Zaan Bak Fo, Cheung Hing Grocery Store, Hong Kong (2018); PRESENCE: A Window into Chinese Contemporary  Art, St. George’s Hall, Liverpool (2018); Composing Stories with Fragments of Time, Karin Weber Gallery, Hong Kong (2017); Collecting Moonlight, performingART project, Oil Street Art Space, Hong Kong (2017); Evolving Images – Modern Hong Kong Printmaking, Sun Museum, Hong Kong (2017); What’s In Store?, Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Salford, UK; Flight, Feathers and Quilt, University of Salford, Salford, UK (2016).

Gallery representing artist: http://www.karinwebergallery.com/artists/annie-lai-kuen-wan/

Artist: Ma Qiusha

Title: Triptych from The Fog Series

Year: 2014

Medium: Watercolour on paper

Dimensions: 30 x 100cm each

Accession Number: US2014-5a, US2014-5b, US2014-5c

Acquisition info:

The Fog Series represents a common motif in Ma Qiusha’s work: windows. She sees them symbolically as a barrier, but at the same time a channel to understand the outside world.

From a distance the 3 panels of Fog Series appear to be monochromatic, however, on closer inspection, the dark surfaces are seen to be floral patterned and translucent, and rather than being inscribed onto the surface, the lines are in fact gaps between the areas of paint, revealing the underlying surface of the paper. This contrast between the delicate and domesticated, with the harsh sharpness of the black and white markings echo the ideas of Ma Qiusha’s work beautifully. Although better known as a multimedia artist, Ma’s Fog Series demonstrates her sensitivity to ordinary objects and the ways in which everyday materials may be emotionally charged. Ma used a lace curtain as a stencil, applying layers of paint to the fabric so that its pattern would be present but hidden on the paper. This painting explores the suppressed emotions experienced by many of her generation, as they seek to balance familial duties with a wish for personal freedom. The harsh white lines at once suggest a violent rupture and a fragile gesture of individuality.    

Ma Qiusha graduated from Digital Media studio of The Central Academy of Fine Arts. Beijing, China in 2005 and completed an MFA in Electronic Integrated Art, Alfred University, New York, United States in 2008. Recent exhibitions included: Joint exhibition History Repeats Itself, with artist Shen Xin at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough, UK (2018); PRESENCE: A Window into Chinese Contemporary Art, St. George’s Hall, Liverpool (2018). Recent exhibitions include Beijing Commune at Art Basel in Hong Kong (2017); Ma Qiusha: Wonderland, Beijing Commune, Beijing, China (2016); Not Early Not Late, Pace Gallery, Beijing, China (2016). 

Artist’s website: http://www.maqiusha.com/

Artist: Thomson & Craighead

Title: Corruption I & II

Year: 2014

Medium: Photographic lightbox print

Dimensions: h42.5 x w56.5 x d11.5

Accession Number: US2014-8

Acquisition info: Purchased in 2014

Corruption I and Corruption II  are from an edition of twelve photographic light boxes each displaying twelve frames taken from a corrupt video file found online – a file intended to put a virus onto the downloader’s computer but which appears pixilated, painterly and abstract when opened in a video player. In searching out these glitches, malfunctions and distortions, the artists represent them as aesthetic propositions, reminding us that the act of looking itself distorts our perception of reality. Lenticular printing enables the artists to show multiple images that animate as the viewer moves in space. They do not ‘playback’ or move automatically.

Artist: Chou Yu-Cheng

Title: from Geoff Molyneux Series

Year: 2014

Medium: Acrylic on canvas, framed

Dimensions: H194 x W130 cm

Accession Number: US2015-3

Acquisition info:

Chou Yu-Cheng specialises in the interplay between aesthetics and society. His practice place a conceptual emphasis on the procedure and operations behind his projects in their specific contexts, reflecting on the problems of reality and proffering alternatives to their corresponding benefits, organisations and histories.  As a conceptual artist Yu-Cheng is concerned with the systems and mechanisms of the art world. Acting as an intermediary, much of his work engages with institutions, art’s histories, and audiences, and not only seeks to reinterpret how and why artworks are displayed, but also to intervene in the gallery space itself. 

Chou’s from Geoff Molyneux Series, is a response to work by the Manchester-based painter Geoff Molyneux (b.1951) who Chou met when on residency at Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) in 2013. Chou plays with Molyneux’s abstract geometric painting, including repeating a particular colour used on the canvas as a background. In this display, Molyneux’s original painting is divorced from the time and place in which it was made – and cumulatively Chou proposes how the mechanisms for the display and contextualization of art may be questioned.   

Chou Yu-Cheng, from Geoff Molyneux Series. PRESENCE exhibition installation shot by Pete Carr.

Chou Yu-Cheng studied at l’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-arts de Paris. He has exhibited widely across the world and recent solo shows include exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Colorado; Galerie Collet Park, Paris; Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taipei; Kaohsiung Fine Art Museum, Kaohsiung and Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong. Group exhibitions include: PRESENCE: A Window into Chinese Contemporary Art, Liverpool, UK (2018); Share, Create, Unite, The Physics Room, Christchurch, New Zealand (2017); Tropical Cyclone, Kuandu Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2017); What’s in Store?, Salford Museum & Art Gallery, Manchester, UK (2017); Art, Ask About Asia, Daegu Art Factory, Daegu, Korea (2017); Asian Art Biennial, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2015); The Great Ephemeral, New Museum, New York, USA (2015); Queens International 2013, Queens Museum, New York, USA (2013); Aerobraking, Pier 2, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Taipei Biennial 2012, Taipei Fine Art Museum (2012).  

Artist’s website: http://www.yuchengchou.com 

Gallery representing artist: https://edouardmalingue.com/ 

Artist: Cao Fei

Title: La Town

Year: 2014

Medium: Single channel video (digital film)

Dimensions: 41m 56s

Accession Number: US2016-06

Acquisition info:

La Town presents a story of a changed, uncanny, metropolis. Turning to fantasy in order to explore the human condition, in this stop-motion animation Fei presents a mythical, post-apocalyptic city environment: The miniature, hand-made architectural sets are populated with figurines, dead animals, sea monsters and zombies. The camera pans around seemingly derelict low-rise housing blocks, gives aerial views of urban wasteland, and captures smoke billowing from a train that has crashed into a craggy mountainside. The film’s French dialogue is given in English subtitles:  “I see the daylight, I see my life and your death”; “Chaos will prevail”; “I myself, Lost in thought”. A sense of catastrophe pervades: this could be anywhere in the world, at any time. In the search for a happy social utopia, what is presented instead is a world of trauma.   

Everyone has heard the myth of La Town. The story first appeared in Europe, but after traveling through a space-time wormhole, reappeared in Asia and Southeast Asia. It was last seen near the ocean bordering the Eurasian tectonic plate, vanishing in its midst as if a mirage. La Town, struck by unknown disaster – where without sunlight, time froze. Polar night was all encompassing, so the few instances of white nights have been momentously recorded in the town’s history. Yet, through the drifting of time and space, various countries have rewritten La Town’s history, and details have been neglected. Now, the story of the small town’s past – love affairs, politics, life, demons and disasters – have all been sealed beneath the museum’s vitrines, the historical “specimens” becoming an authoritative but limited interpretation of this town’s history. Cao Fei.  

La Town has screened at PRESENCE: A Window into Chinese Contemporary Art, St.George’s Hall Liverpool (2018); What’s in Store?, Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Salford (2017); Lombard Fried Gallery New York (2014); 56th Venice Biennale (2015); State of Concept Gallery in Athens, Greece (2016) and the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art 30th Anniversary exhibition, CFCCA, Manchester (2016). 

2017 group shows in which Cao Fei exhibited included: Art & Life: Social Aesthetics Obscured, Tranen Contemporary Art Center, Hellerup; Utopia & Dystopia (Part II), MAAT Museum of Art and Technology, Lisbon; .com/ .cn, K11 Art Foundation and MoMA PS1, Hong Kong; Repousser le tigre dans la montagne, Centre d’art Le LAIT, Albi, France; Haze and Fog, Tate Exchange, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK; Rip it Up, 2nd Edition of Changjiang International Photography and Video Biennale, Changjiang Museum of Contemporary Art, Chongqing, China; Videobox Festival, Le Carreau du Temple, Paris, France; Mekong – New Mythologies, Hong Kong Arts Centre Pao Galleries, Hong Kong. 

Artist’s website: http://www.caofei.com/ 

Gallery representing artist: http://www.vitamincreativespace.art/en/?artist=caofei 

La Town trailer.

Poem by Dr Scott Thurston in response to La Town.

Cao Fei’s 2013 film Haze and Fog is also in the University of Salford Art Collection.

La Town was purchased with support from Art Fund.

Artist: Mishka Henner (b. 1976)

Title: Wasson Oil and Gas Field, Yoakum County, Texas

Year: 2013-2014

Medium: Archival pigment print mounted to aluminium

Dimensions: H:149cm W:258cm

Accession Number: 2015-6

Acquisition info: Purchased in 2015

Henner is one of the UK’s most significant artists working with and interrogating the photographic medium. Based on the collection and mediation of publicly available imagery sourced through the internet, satellites and television, his appropriative practice explores the use and value of photography and its relationship with contemporary experience.

Henner’s Oil Fields series of large-scale photographic prints are composed of hundreds of high-resolution satellite images of each location stitched together to show intricate detail.  The prints are reminiscent of vast Abstract Expressionist canvases and represent landscapes carved by industries meeting extraordinary levels of consumer demand for one of North America’s most prized commodities: oil. Sourced from Google Earth, these satellite images of oil fields represent a systematic intent to maximise production and yield in order to satisfy extraordinary levels of human consumption. The result is a natural landscape transformed into something akin to the circuit boards that drive the logistical operations of these industries, and ultimately, feed consumers’ appetite for these resources.

Artist: Mishka Henner (b. 1976)

Title: Cedar Point Oil Field, Harris County, Texas

Year: 2013 – 14

Medium: Archival pigment print mounted to aluminium

Dimensions: 149 x 258 cm

Accession Number: US2015-5

Acquisition info: Purchased 2015

Henner is one of the UK’s most significant artists working with and interrogating the photographic medium. Based on the collection and mediation of publicly available imagery sourced through the internet, satellites and television, his appropriative practice explores the use and value of photography and its relationship with contemporary experience.

Henner’s Oil Fields series of large-scale photographic prints are composed of hundreds of high-resolution satellite images of each location stitched together to show intricate detail.  The prints are reminiscent of vast Abstract Expressionist canvases and represent landscapes carved by industries meeting extraordinary levels of consumer demand for one of North America’s most prized commodities: oil. Sourced from Google Earth, these satellite images of oil fields represent a systematic intent to maximise production and yield in order to satisfy extraordinary levels of human consumption. The result is a natural landscape transformed into something akin to the circuit boards that drive the logistical operations of these industries, and ultimately, feed consumers’ appetite for these resources.