Redux

About

1a space proudly presents REDUX- A group exhibition by the Hong Kong Art School/RMIT University Master of Fine Art 2020 Graduates Exhibition.

Lockdown. 2020 is a year of lockdown. Travel is suspended. Face-to-face interaction is suspended. Daily activity is suspended. Humankinds are suspended in a particular vacuum of space and time. Artistic activity, however, is not and could not be so. We are suspended in our own concepts of space and time and, through that, to contemplate our own existence. Solitude, solidarity and contemplation. Artists often manifest these concepts through their works. In the time of lockdown and solitude, we bring together five very different artistic souls to 1a space at the Cattle Depot Artist Village. Redux. To bring together, to bring back, to revive and activate the souls, the space and the seeing. These keywords connect the curatorial concept and the exhibits and help us witnessing what this particular time means to these artists through their works.

REDUX presents five emerging visual artists from various cultural backgrounds across different geographical destinations; whereas Hong Kong is the melting pot for these artists to congregate and co-create new sets of languages of objecthood, imagery, sound and space for our viewers to contemplate. The works presented in the exhibition deal with a multitude of concepts and ideas including performative self and identity, entropic disorder and alchemy, traveling through image and sound, home and dislocation, and woman-made nature. These concepts and ideas seem disperse and distant and yet they all bring together a transformative process and/or outcome in the work, to the artist, and for the audience.

The exhibition begins with a staged and digitally manipulated photography work by Gwan Tung Dorothy Lau (Australia, Hong Kong) that accentuates a sense of surrealism through performance and exposure. The work boldly questions the idea of a singular and stable ‘self’ through repetition and reinterpretation. Walking into the gallery we encounter a set of ceramics work by Karen Wong (Hong Kong) that explores the alchemy of organic and inorganic substance from the kiln. The coral-like and flamboyant ceramics objects quietly await our attention to dispel the artistic-scientific treatment of clay and everyday life and household products that reaches an entropic disorder existence. Brian Smeets (USA) employs photographic image and sound to narrate travelogues of purely experiential nature. The works interestingly escape what tourists would be stimulated – the seeing, the hearing and the encounters; and through the lens and the microphone an abstracted way of traveling is presented. The cyanotype fabric tent that Louise Folliott (UK, South Africa) presented is a visual diary of her lockdown life in Southwest London. Employing an almost primitive photographic printing technique, the Sun Print, does not forbid us seeing the melancholy of days and weeks of constraint daily activity. The monotonous ticking sound created by a metronome expands the spatial and aural dimensions of the work and personal experience. The exhibition is concluded by a woman-made nature by Cordelia Tam (Hong Kong). Composed by paper pulp and Chinese ink, the work obscures the boundaries of spatial dimension and material; a three-dimensional ink wash landscape ‘painting’/installation is found.

Exhibition

Exhibition Opening: 10th July 2020, 6pm

Exhibition: 10th – 30th July 2020

Time: Tuesdays to Sundays 11 am – 7 pm; closed on Mondays

Address: 1a space

Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road,

To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Enquiry: 25290087/ info@oneaspace.org.hk

Facebook: 1a space
Instagram: 1a_space

Public Programmes

Artists-led Guided Tour

18th July 2020 3pm

Language: English and Cantonese

Artist Talk

18th July 2020 6pm 

Language: English and Cantonese

All public programmes are free admission. Walk-ins are welcomed! 

Exhibition poster and Image of artworks: https://bit.ly/2BL638B

Press interviews are welcomed

Press enquiry

Ms Eugenia Law

Gallery Manager, 1a space

Tel: 2334 1906

Email: eugenia@oneaspace.org.hk

Participating Artists (in alphabetical order)

Louise Folliott

Louise Folliott was born in South Africa, 1979. Completed a BA (FA) Hons in 2001. 2003 saw her first solo exhibition ‘Love and Fear’ in Cape Town. In 2004 Louise moved to London and in 2008 was featured in the Getty Images gallery after being selected as a finalist in a photography competition. In 2010 she completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at Byam Shaw, Central Saint Martin’s. Whilst raising a young family Louise was chosen to exhibit in the Threadneedle Prize at the Mall Galleries, London in 2010 and 2013. In 2013 she was selected for an AIR Residency in London and in 2019 Tropical Lab 13 Residency at Lasalle, Singapore. She moved to Hong Kong in 2017 and completed a Master of Fine Art from RMIT in 2019.

https://www.louisefolliott.com/

Gwan Tung Dorothy Lau

Gwan Tung Dorothy Lau is a contemporary artist working with digitally manipulated media and installation. She explores the natural compulsion for social acceptance and personal excellence with reference to Psychoanalysis theories. Adopting an autobiographical approach, she stages an internal dialogue to convey the perplexity of her social identity - an amalgam of her Hong Kong upbringing and Australian education. 

Lau completed her MFA with distinction at RMIT and Hong Kong Art School after receiving her BFA (Visual Arts) at QUT. Her works were selected in the HATCHED: National Graduate Show in Australia. In addition to being featured in international publications including Vice Creator and RealTime, Lau has participated in the Tropical Lab international artist residency, Creative Mornings breakfast lecture, and the BrisAsia Festival in Brisbane. Lau has exhibited internationally in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and the UK, notably at ICA Singapore, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and Metro Arts. Lau also provides art direction and consultation for Hong Kong music videos and commercials.

https://www.dorothylau.com/

Brian Smeets

Brian Smeets was born in New York in 1984. After completing degrees in sculpture and environmental studies from Washington University in Saint Louis, he pursued a career in commercial photography in San Francisco, California. His award-winning fine-art images have been shown globally; since moving to Hong Kong completed a Master of Fine Arts with RMIT University. Recently Brian formed a sound art practice in addition to showing photography and multimedia works. He continues to develop pop-up art shows as well as showing his work in the increasingly global art space of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

Brian Smeets's project investigates travel destination and their experiential qualities, intending to remove the spectacle of tourism. An alternative view of liminal spaces and travel sites is presented through large scale abstract photography and collections of selected sounds and images.

http://www.smeetsstudios.com/

Cordelia Tam

Cordelia Tam was born in Hong Kong and has studied and worked in Canada.  She received her Professional Diploma in Fine Art from Hong Kong Art School in 2017 and completed her Master of Fine Art program of Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in 2019. Cordelia explores the linkage between human and nature in her works, using everyday material combined with themes of conformity to inspire towards harmony in urban life.  Her works are multidisciplinary and include video, installation, photography and other media.  In recent years Cordelia’s works have been exhibited in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia, and during her residency in Taiwan in 2018 she co-created an art installation work which was awarded the 2018 Austronesian International Arts Award-Grand Prize. 

www.cordeliatam.com

Karen Wong

Karen Wong graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) majoring in Ceramics and Master of Fine Art from the RMIT in 2017 and 2019 respectively. Karen was selected as an artist of the IV. International Ceramics Triennial UNICUM 2018 in The National Museum of Slovenia. In 2019 Karen has been awarded by the Hong Kong Art Centre for a month Artist-in-Residency at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

www.karenwongceramics.com

Curator

Wing Ki Kalen Lee

Kalen is an artist-researcher based in Hong Kong. His artistic practice lies between documentary photography, artistic and archival research, and a contemporary take to analogue photographic practice. His research interest includes photographic practices in the East-Asian context, critical digital humanities and media archaeology. His photography projects were exhibited in Austria, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Latvia, Taiwan and the UK. He read history of art at the University of Hong Kong and receive a MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, supported by a British Chevening Scholarship. He is currently an Assistant Professor in photography at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University and a curatorial member of 1a space, an independent art space in Hong Kong.

https://leewingki.com/