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Everyday Anomalies - Hong Kong Art At Phoenix, Brighton
By Marian Cleary
25/02/2008
Image: Photo of a hand holding a stone against a blue sky
Kam Lai Wan, Picking Up Stars, 2008. © the artist
Review: Everyday Anomalies at Phoenix Arts, Brighton, until March 22 2008.
I’m exhorted to ‘look up in the sky for a while, you will find the stars shine on you’; then there’s an invitation to take a nap; and later, a warning that if your shoelaces are too long, it ‘enlarges the risk of having a minor accident’.
There are some strange installations in this group exhibition by artists from Hong Kong, but they do get their message across. We just have to stop and listen and watch with them.
Connected by an appreciation of the absurd and the wonder to be found in the tiny details of everyday life, the artists' work has a surprising breadth of both context and scope. For instance, till receipts from Pak Sheung-Chuen’s shopping trips reveal a love letter and a quote from John’s Gospel. When placed alongside the objects he bought, you can’t help but notice the Darlie toothpaste man surrounded by a halo of transfiguring light.
By drawing our attention to such minutiae, they take us on wider journeys.
Kwan Sheung-Chi’s nap. Courtesy Phoenix Arts Association
The first item inside the gallery door is where you are invited to star gaze by Kwan Sheng-Chi. But you don't look up at the sky - you kneel and look down through a tiny brass fish-eye spyhole reminiscent of a miniature telescope eyepiece.
Whilst gazing at the meteor shower on display we realise that those stars shining on us are in fact the images of headlamps zooming across a screen beneath the floor. This realisation is not immediate, though, and one bright pinprick followed by racing lights precedes a slow rumbling soundtrack starting up. Is this how the artist imagines the sound of the night sky? It is an appealing idea but it's merely and really the sound of the Hong Kong traffic - our sense of perspective has been challenged.
The racing parallel stars/headlamps are emblematic of other themes in the show in that they suggest the way we normally operate in urban spaces. We are alongside people, passing people but not interacting with them.
Pak Sheung-Chuen attempts to make this connection through dialling random numbers found on a bus stop and speaking to whoever answers. This tiny act produces the conversation we hear over a backdrop of the bus stop itself.
Further accidental occurrences are to be found in Luke Ching’s video works. In one he brings the 'moon' inside in the form of crazy cartoon helium balloons featuring Minnie Mouse, Cinderella’s Coach and Tweetie-Pie – which, having carried them around shopping malls, he then releases them only to demand their return.
Reminiscent of the little boy in Le Ballon Rouge, he entreats security guards to help him reclaim his lost objects. They dismiss his concern - it’s only a balloon. However, on his leaving the scene of his intervention, in one instance, the security guard and an elderly man continue to gaze ceiling-ward at this 'moon'. And the balloons gaze down on the people below.
Ching takes this idea further of forcing people to interact through his absurdity. Like a scientist analysing the situation, he sets up his intervention: Hong Kong is very safe - he, however, is interested in ‘enlarging the risk’. Untied shoelaces can cause accidents. A very long untied shoelace therefore will increase this risk
It's an absurd analysis, but when you see the film of him dragging his jerking and dancing lace around behind him and you see passers-by politely waiting for this beast of a lace to cross their path before moving on, or gently telling him that his shoe is very undone, we can join in with this sense that it is possible for Kwan Sheung-Chi’s headlight beams to meet up.
Image: A man sits against the wall facing a wall of air filled bags blowing up another.
Pak Sheung-Chuen, Breathing Space, 2006. Courtesy Phoenix Arts Association
After his subtle clowning, it’s time to take a nap and there he is, lying next to ‘our’ bed. He looks very comfy, but then he is a photograph on a big long pillow. Accompanying this with a video of his sleeping in various locations, he continues to transgress normal behaviour in urban settings.
Just as he turned headlights into stars, Sheung-Chi again brings natural phenomena into the urban world for us. Now he brings us a way of appreciating the sea – a tiny book of pictures of waves in a plastic bag of seawater: ‘This pocket book is good for citizen to enjoy the sea’ he suggests.
All of this may seem very cerebral. However, the exhibition has balance in what it asks of the visitor: the pieces engage the viewer emotionally too. Kam Lai Wan’s delicate star series is a case in point. Her work explores picking up, touching and listening to the stars.
In the first piece she has imagined the constellations existing on the ground in Hong Kong, and goes to retrieve the stars from places such as drains, building sites or woods, documented in photographs. She holds them up against the sky. Her stars are, though, stones.
A Braille constellation map takes the sense experience of star gazing further and finally, we come to what was my favourite piece in the whole exhibition – delicate music boxes designed to play the music dictated by the shape and configuration of each constellation when read right to left. Truly wonderful.
Image: photo of a video being shown on a television screeen
Luke Ching, 2007. Courtesy Phoenix Arts Association
From the soulful illumination of Kam’s stars, we can visit a darker moment at home with Pak Sheung-Cheun. In a piece I found to be more disturbing than absurd or funny, through speeded up images we are drawn into an obsessive compulsive world where he fills his tiny apartment with transparent bags of his breath. They pile up and transform the place until there is no space left to breathe, like some immense bubble wrap nightmare. There’s beauty here, but I’m holding my breath by the end.
All of the artists here are professionals of renown on the Hong Kong art scene and it is a treat to have them present here such new and fresh outcomes of their exploration of urban space and behaviour. Whilst working very much in a Chinese tradition, they communicate a truth about urban living all over the world. It’s a crowded place and finding stellar moments sometimes requires us to engage differently with our world.
Phoenix Gallery, Brighton
10-14 Waterloo Place, Brighton, BN2 9NB, East Sussex, England
Open: Tuesday - Saturday 11 - 5
Closed: Sundays and Mondays
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