Exhibition
Cockaigne: Gayle Chong Kwan
19 Apr 2007 – 20 Jun 2007
Regular hours
- Thursday
- 11:00 – 17:00
- Friday
- 11:00 – 17:00
- Saturday
- 11:00 – 17:00
- Wednesday
- 11:00 – 17:00
Cost of entry
Admission free
Address
- The Forum
- Elmer Square
- Southend-on-Sea
England - SS1 1NB
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Southend Victoria/Southend Central
Cockaigne: Gayle Chong Kwan
About
Gayle Chong Kwan is a London-based artist. Her practice features photography, video, sound, installation and performance to explore aspects of history, the senses and memory. Chong Kwan's major focus is on the global politics of food and tourism.'Cockaigne' is a series of twelve large-format photographs, based on fourteenth century ideas of a glutton's paradise - a land made entirely of food, where all wants and needs are met. Hams and cheeses grow on trees, fountains run with beer, houses are roofed with pies. This work explores utopian ideals of paradise and the presentation of the exotic in the global tourism and travel industries, as well as European legend and the history of fine art. It brings together geographical, historical monuments and landscapes in one impossible and ultimately overbearing paradise island made out of food.
Chong Kwan has shown extensively in the UK and abroad, including the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris , the Netherlands New Media Institute, Amsterdam , the NOW Festival, Nottingham , VAIN Live Art, Oxford and the Gallery Los 29 Enchufes, Madrid.
