Left: Non Indigenous Skins, Wong Hoy Cheung.

One of the most prominent figures on the international art scene today, Malaysian artist Wong Hoy Cheong, is exhibiting his work at the Djanogly Art Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham, until February 23.

The artist focuses on the city of Kuala Lumpur, at the very heart of south east Asia, to explore migration, national identity and the distribution of power.

"It's brilliant to see contemporary artwork which looks intelligently at real issues," a visitor to the exhibition commented.

Wong Hoy Cheong's hand crafted objects use imagination and humour to look at serious social and political issues in Kuala Lumpur - a 'global' city, forging its post-colonial identity at the moment.

Right: Poison, Wong Hoy Cheung.

Pulp and fragments of books are used to subvert language and colonial history.

In Colonies Bite Back, the pages of two British school textbooks and The Malaysian Constitution have been fed to a colony of termites. The eaten bits suggest the break up of colonial power and destruction of its memory.

Other works, such as Non Indigenous Skins and Poison, were made using casts of the faces of Malaysians, covered with the dried skins of native and non-native plants. These explore the link between the migration of plants and foodstuffs and the history of human migration and colonisation.

This is the first solo exhibition of Wong Hoy Cheong's work in Europe.