Episode 8: Steph Huang: A Great Increase In Business Is On Its Way

About

Originally from Taiwan and now based in London, Huang is interested in how trade routes and supply chains are informed by colonial legacies. Both an artist and a chef, she looks at food as a ritual, and as one of the oldest forms of exchanges between cultures.

Huang has spent time researching markets throughout London – including Ridley Road, Peckham, Deptford and East Street markets – as well as markets in Paris and Taiwan. She is interested in the unique traditions of each market and the diverse “cultural spirits” that inhabit them, as well as how they function as interfaces between consumer and capitalism. The imagery of market signage and architecture will be incorporated into her work, but also the rubbish and detritus produced and discarded by materialism and trade.

New works made especially for the exhibition will bring the formal language of bars, restaurants and markets into the gallery. A free-standing sculpture will echo the revolving clothing hanging structures typically found on stalls, while another sculpture will reference ATM machines but through a fortune-telling pig’s head. Huang combines materials such as wood, steel, copper, handblown glass, fabric, photography, sound and motors to create environments that are interactive and playful. She questions how our collective behaviours and superstitions produce a kind of surreal absurdity, and how this implicates labour, culture and the economy.