Quest for Quiet

About

Edouard Malingue Gallery (Hong Kong/Shanghai) is thrilled to announce the opening of ‘Quest for Quiet’ curated by Dr. Helen Pheby, Head of Curatorial Programme at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP), a leading international centre for modern and contemporary sculpture. The exhibition is the second of three projects in the gallery’s temporary London project space located in St Saviour’s, a Grade 1 listed building dating 1866 in Islington. ‘Quest for Quiet’ brings together the work of established artists Samson Young (b. 1979, Hong Kong) and Su-Mei Tse (b. 1973, Luxembourg) and emerging artist Tianyou Huang (b. 1992, China). Through video, photography and a site-specific installation, ‘Quest for Quiet’ explores how ‘quiet’ is not silent, and invites us to contemplate the murmurs and subtleties of the quotidian.

‘Quest for Quiet’ was born out of a discussion about finding pockets of calm and tranquility in general but more specifically in vibrant urban environments, such as London, Hong Kong or Shanghai. The search was contrasted to environments where nature abounds, such as Yorkshire, where there’s a form of sensorial suspense. As described by Dr. Helen Pheby in her acconomying exhibition text:

“As Head of Curatorial Programme at Yorkshire Sculpture Park I have the privilege of living and working in my home county but visiting London often. As the train approaches Kings Cross station I have noticed that I take a deep breath before being immersed in the life of the city, where the sky is only seen between buildings and the noise is relentless. On the return journey the concrete gives way to green and I breathe out. The space around me expands. I appreciate the breath in and the breath out. The duality. The exhibition Quest for Quiet is intended to be a space to breathe out, for calm and contemplation.

Quiet is not silent, it is not the complete absence of sound. It is to be in a situation where we can hear our own thoughts, notice the buzz of an insect and the wind in trees, be able to concentrate on a text, an artwork, a building. London is one of the busiest places on the planet – a cacophony of transport, machinery, and other man-made noise. Chatter. According to the anthropologist Keith H Basso, in Western Apache tradition it is an insult to chatter at someone because “persons who speak too much insult the imaginative capabilities of other people, blocking their thinking.”

Through the work of Samson Young, Su-Mei Tse and Tianyou Huang, ‘Quest for Quiet’ proposes different angles of exploration around this notion of finding moments of non-silent quiet. Samson Young, an internationally-respected artist and composer known especially for sound art and installations, will present in London for the first time his new piece The World Falls Apart (2019). A two-part video lecture presented back-to-back, the work analyses echoic mimicry through three research examples in relation to language, understanding, cultural difference and appropriation and the meaning of sound art itself. Samson Young says “in this context it refers to cases where mishearing is directed right back at the speaking subject, which the subject mimics, which in turn contributes towards the speaking subject’s sense of self.”

Similarly, with a background in music as a classically-trained cellist, Su-Mei Tse came to prominence aged just 30 when she represented Luxembourg at the Venice Biennale and was given the highest award of the Golden Lion. Presented in London for the first time are three photographic works Su-Mei Tse developed during her residency at the Villa Medici, Rome, in 2014-15. As written by Dr. Helen Pheby “The subject of each portrait bust has long since ceased to exist as flesh or idol, their permanent effigies themselves worn by time, and we are thus confronted with the fact that time is fleeting, including our own.” Each work’s title, however, from ‘Adriana’ to ‘Vera’ suggests a warmth behind the stillness, an empathetic connection.

Finally, Tianyou Huang was the 2018 YSP/Royal College of Art Graduate Award recipient and has just begun a PhD by practice at the University of Leeds. YSP’s Graduate Award programme provides vital support at the critical point of transition from student to professional practitioner. For ‘Quest for Quiet’ Tianyou Huang creates a site-specific installation that draws from The mirror in the water (2018), a work presented at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, for which Huang appropriated a mirrored wardrobe door and floated it on the river that runs through YSP, confusing the orientation and surface of material and experience, sky and water, up and down. The Third Space (2019) created specifically for the project space draws the eye, through a floating mirror on a body of water filling the chancel, across St Saviour’s, opening new pockets of sight. Huang describes the three spaces as being the physical space occupied by the elements of the work in their particular relationship; the second space being the visual one created through reflection and the third space as the mental space of contemplation and thought in the viewer.

Ultimately, ‘Quest for Quiet’, as summarised by Dr. Helen Pheby, “becomes a counterpoint to the echo chambers out in the noisy world that are contributing to increasingly polarised and ill informed thought and action. A space to consider and clear our thoughts.”