Duplicate State

About

Duplicate State

Yang-En Hume

Preview night : Friday 6th December 6-9pm  
The exhibition will remain open from the 7th to 20th December

Weekends 12-6

Weekdays: by appointment (yehume@gmail.com)

Found objects contain unknowable histories. Relics of anonymous lives, they become vessels for memories which can no longer be accessed. These objects are discovered randomly in flea markets, secondhand stores and garage sales, their previous owners, homes and contexts remain lost to us. In my work, found lace and fabric become mnemonic archives that invite viewers to speculate and imagine.

I collect items from flea markets to explore how personal histories are remembered and constructed. Flea markets are fascinating places, displaying overwhelming amounts of intimate ephemera: family photographs, letters, fabric, needlework and domestic detritus. Laden with household miscellany, they personify the unseen domestic craft and labour that women have undertaken for centuries. Objects are passed from family homes to the market, to be found by chance by a passing stranger. Intimate details of lives are revealed, yet the people who once owned these objects remain anonymous. Their absent bodies are merely hinted at in worn photographs and yellowing scraps of lace.

The works in Duplicate State draw on this presence and absence of information. I have been creating solar photograms from pieces of fabric and lace sourced from flea markets. The result is delicate, partially obscured prints which reflect the way that a found object is merely the residue of a once tangible existence. The time sensitive nature of this work, along with unpredictable weather patterns impacts the exposure and clarity of the photograms. Chance is given a significant role in determining the outcome of these pieces. Creating duplicates of objects begins a process of degeneration, where information is lost, and the function of the objects change.

Digitally printed fabric builds upon the photograms. Translucent layers of tulle, organza and silk construct palimpsests that distort and erase the original image. These overlapping forms reference the history that is embedded within the surfaces of found objects. The concealed imagery, along with the use of fabric and embroidery takes on gendered connotations, hinting at the lives of ordinary women whose identities have been lost to history.

Artist Biography

Yang-En Hume is an Australian artist based in London. She graduated as dux with first class honours from the National Art School, Sydney in 2013. Hume has held several solo and group exhibitions in Sydney and has been shortlisted for various Australian prizes. She currently works from SET studios in Lewisham. In 2016, Hume was awarded the National Art School Paris Residency, receiving an Australia Council for the Arts ArtStart Grant and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant to undertake the residency. Hume curated the exhibitions Pricked in 2016, Atrophy in 2014 and coordinated a team of forty volunteers for her 2016 exhibition, Diaspora. She was a team leader for the collaborative collage works, No Human Being is Illegal (In All Our Glory), organised by artist Deborah Kelly and presented as part of the 2014 Sydney Biennale.