Italy in Sepia

Poetic in its approach, this series follows a journey through central italy exploring contemporary and historical themes through obscured and abstracted imagery. The impenetrability depicts a lengthy journey, the end point of which suffers from an extraction and unidentified source. Chiaroscuro is again experimented here to veil the exact location and process that only leaves few clues. The photo series provides a style similar to a documentary revealing a spectrum of public and private lives that range from mundane activities of walking and sightseeing to glimpses of artistic and political legacies of Roman civilisation. The series forms a visual diary of a holiday of a somewhat naive viewer and documents social and cultural reflections of their memories in Italy. The images sometimes stray from a recording of one’s surroundings to a manifestation of emotional responses. The lighting enhances this and further suggests the stereotypical prescence of romance throughout Italy.

Someplace Else

This artwork has a feeling of timelessness engendered by the remoteness of the landscape, its unfamiliar eeriness and the linger of clouds. An elongated flamingo drifts aimlessly across an impassable mountain range, alluding to the expansive panoramas and exaggerated creatures of Salvador Dali. Laozi’s Chinese proverb here takes the form of a transformative dreamscape inspired by surrealist painters. Influenced by my Chinese background, I have approached surrealism in the same way as a Chinese literati artist, the narrative style of the piece creates an increasingly hypnotic and meditative feeling.

The realistic detail of Someplace Else superimposes one layer of reality and mysticism on to another, creating a reflective atmosphere that intensifies a sense of wonder and subverts any idea of an objective reality.

千里之行始於足下

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

- Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

The facelessness of fashion

This photographic series deconstructs the notion of identity and challenges the responsibility of the ‘viewer’ in the fashion industry. Its chiaroscuro aesthetic casts a grim perspective on the integrity of the fashion world, and can even go so far as to say that it emphasises the detritus of glamour and vanity of contemporary consumer society particularly within a feminist context.As each triptych follows along a runway, the work takes the form of an acerbic social commentary, clarifying the tendency of humans to capacitate both the dehumanisation and exaggeration of the function of a female model thus shifting the identity of a fashion model.

In this series, the bold contrast of light and dark affect the whole composition and eliminates the identity of the model. This technique amplifies the ‘facelessness of fashion’ and whether the responsibility of a viewer is to objectify or personalise a fashion model.

His childhood, 1967

This artwork explores the containment of a boy’s childhood and extracts stereotypical images of ‘childhood’ itself. The images suggest that the legacy of this boy would lie in his childhood and that his past could be framed by his toys and playful habits. Extrapolating the style of Cherry Hood and Del Kathryn Barton, watercoloured drips and fineline add structure to each illustration, but also emphasise the notion of the past, how the representation of a person is more effective through old,innanimate objects. In this work, the boyish colours and almost computer animated images gives shape to lost memories that visualise the changing of childhood conventions, the modernisation of children’s toys and the structure of memory.

The Gweilo 鬼老 refugium

Gweilo 鬼老 = Cantonese for 'Pale Ghost'. 'Pale Ghost' denotes to a person of Anglo-Saxon origin, predominantly used to refer to the expatriate population of Hong Kong. The term is not derogatory and is used by both Chinese and Anglo-Saxon communities alike.

This artwork represents a sense of inertia pertaining to the constraints of cultural cycles, the restlessness of life, and the suspension of time, all in a veneer of the chinese cross-cultural composure that is the Hong Kong Bird Market. The birds of Hong Kong and their contained form implies alienation and a denial of communication between cultures, while their fragile suspension and enclosed placement suggest a frustrated but silent form of existence. Inter-cultural dependence is what the title imparts upon the viewer and the concept of unfavourable conditions under colonisation and the corruption cultural traditions. This piece forces the viewer to reflect on dominating stereotypes and the cruel entrapment of areas of the West and East that surround cultural paradigms. The watercoloured Moleskine, captivated within the bamboo cage, deftly combines the aesthetics of craft of Japanese paper cutting, with the The Gweilo refugium.This artwork represents a sense of inertia pertaining to the constraints of cultural cycles, the restlessness of life, and the suspension of time, all in a veneer of the chinese cross-cultural composure that is the Hong Kong Bird Market. The birds of Hong Kong and their contained form implies alienation and a denial of communication between cultures, while their fragile suspension and enclosed placement suggest a frustrated but silent form of existence. Inter-cultural dependence is what the title imparts upon the viewer and the concept of unfavourable conditions under colonisation and the corruption cultural traditions. This piece forces the viewer to reflect on dominating stereotypes and the cruel entrapment of areas of the West and East that surround cultural paradigms. The watercoloured Moleskine, captivated within the bamboo cage, deftly combines the aesthetics of craft of Japanese paper cutting, with the language of Italian, Chinese and British textile patterns alongside a myriad of cultural imagery.

The piece represents a cultural menagerie, suggesting that in order to understand distinct cultural paradigms, one must perceive them together and in a certain context. Thus the Gweilo Refugium critiques the universalising tendencies of contemporary notions of culture.

Analysis of Studio Practice

My studio practice focuses on my all-embracing theme: the notion of beauty. Much experimentation and exploration dominates my studio practice. The use of different medium in my artworks is an example of this. My studio practice acts as a personal expression of my theory work and vice versa, that is to say that I have developed and operated my studio practice so as to study the relationship between the meaning of my artworks and its significance in my theory investigations. A strong focus is on this relationship study, particularly in social and cultural domains, allowing for a critical awareness of my artistic process and idea development. I use my studio practice to develop and present my individual ideas to ‘Beauty’, in doing so, extending personal boundaries. I have experimented with various materials such as oil paint, acrylic paint, watercolour paint, chalk pastels, oil pastels, pencil, charcoal, clay, photography, etching, paper-craft and installations in the style of artists that I have researched in order to maintain a close relationship between my studio and theory development. I also use my studio practice to reflect on my own cultural background so as to become more aware of the expression of cultural paradigms in visual arts. Much of my studio practice is symbolic as a result of in-depth investigation and planning. That is to say that the thorough and lengthy relationship between my studio and theory work has created layers of meaning in my artworks.