*Opening hours on 09.05 will be 14:00 - 18:00

Landing on the East

‘Landing on the East’ is the first thematic exhibition by Tang Kwong San and Yuen Nga Chi.

A landing project imagined from the perspective of astronauts, in which the gravitational pull of the moon affects the tides and leads them upon a discovery of a Hong Kong we never know.

With photography, video and installation featuring the deserted borders of Tung Ping Chau and picking up on abandoned objects washed up on the tourist-filled beaches, the exhibition creates an otherworldly visual space through interspersing with objects, islands and the moon.

As the tide rises and falls, the astronaut lifts off again.

 - Curatorial Statement - 

LEE Wing Ki

Tung Ping Chau, a crescent-shaped island, is the easternmost outlying island of Hong Kong. During the Cultural Revolution, many younger generations swam through the Mirs Bay and illegally escaped from China to Hong Kong to look for new life, rumour has it. Tung Ping Chai is a transition between shores, the two territories, and the two very different worlds. In popular and cultural texts, Hong Kong has represented in many old-fashioned discourses and metaphors: a barren rock; a borrowed place, a borrowed time; Hong Kong’s dream. Rock, time and dream: all those dreams of that rock are only in temporal existences. What we are experiencing and having are part of a transition of transitioning. Transition, hence, is a keyword of Hong Kong. Amongst Hong Kong’s emerging and young artists, what and how do they represent such condition and emotion in their works? 

Landing on the East is the second collaboration of Hong Kong emerging artists duos Tang Kwong San and Yuen Nga Chi. Their very first attempt Somewhere in Time (2019) explores the colonial history of Hong Kong via images and found objects and narrates the history and the current situation of Hong Kong from a visual and artistic perspective. Somewhere in Time is selected as a Finalist of the WMA Masters Award (Light) 2019/20 and is currently exhibited at Peckham 24, London, in the United Kingdom. Landing on the East is the result of their journeys to Tung Ping Chau and through that to dehistoricise and/or deconstruct historical narratives of Hong Kong through visual images and imageries. Tung Ping Chau is commonly perceived as a tourist attraction because of the wave erosion landscape. The artists duos camouflage themselves as tourists, frequent the outlying island and research the history, stories, and their perspectives of the island like anthropologists who conduct fieldworks. Unlike anthropology that creates scholarly works, this exhibition does not rely on text but images and objects to construct a colourful fieldnote of Tung Ping Chau. 

We exhibit five new works by Kwong San and Nga Chi, including photography, video, installation, sound, and found objects and sculpture. The inclusion of many visual media is an exemplar of the duos’ expertise. East Land (2021) is a video projection documenting tourists wave-watching activities at Kang Lau Shek. The video is rendered into negative imageries that transforms an ordinary seeing into a ghostly representation: eerie tourists, petrifying waves, and the landscape is even more rock-strewn than how it actually looks like. Through the lens and the post-production effort of the artists, the leisure activities of Hong Kong people on the island are turned into a horror movie. Moon (2021) is not the moon, but an aged mooring buoy that the artists found on a shore on the island. Moss on the mooring buoy makes valleys of the moon. The artists duos employ the deadpan aesthetic approach to achieve such effect. Back to reality, the moon rotates and orbits the earth, the synchronous rotation makes the earth dwellers always see the same side of the moon. The video allows us seeing a new and revolving dimension of the moon. Slack tide (2021) is a slideshow and a juxtaposition of many found images and found objects in a diptych format. On the left side (of audience’s viewing) those are details shoots of found objects from Tung Ping Chau; on the right cultural texts and objects subjected to the colonial history and handover of sovereignty of Hong Kong. In the past year, Kwong San and Nga Chi collected found objects from Tung Ping Chau and other artefacts and cultural texts, for example, Made in Hong Kong (1997) by Fruit Chan, about the handover of Hong Kong. The artist duos were three years of age back then. Certainly, what happened in 1997 were vague impression to them. Now they reminisce Hong Kong through these cultural relics. The diptych arrangement of the slideshow allows audience imagining a connection between the left and the right images. Slack Side is as a piece to address the theme ‘transition’ in this exhibition. The exhibition abandons the usual historical-discursive narrative to pinpoint and connect ideas of ‘transition’, ‘Hong Kong’ and ‘Tung Ping Chau’. Rather the connection, the conduit and the very weighty subject matter are represented by rhythm and a sense of playfulness. The treatment is best achieved by the younger generation. Frankly speaking, a nostalgic way of thinking and creating artworks addressing the handover of Hong Kong by Hong Kong artists are cliché, just like an everblooming bauhinia. East, South, West and North (2021) is an origami play made by a map of Tung Ping Chau with the latitude and longitude of Hong Kong. It helps softening up the historical burden of the theme and connects the subject matter. There is a tiny, and now abandoned, Sacred Heart of Jesus church on the hillside and next to the ferry terminal of Tung Ping Chau. Surprisingly the interior is maintained bright and clean, almost sacred. Chapel (2021) concludes the exhibition by posting questions: are transition and transitioning redemptions? Emergency services? Or religions? The artists duos and the curator make no attempt to close a chapter of the beautiful Tung Ping Chau. There are still barracks, abandoned hostel, deserted houses, and reservoir on the outlying island for the artists duos to further explore and discover. 

TANG Kwong San

https://www.tangkwongsan.net/

Tang Kwong San received his BAFA from RMIT University, Australia, in 2019. His practice combines photographs, drawings, objects and video that trace intergenerational family memories and social history. Through reorganising and reinterpreting old belongings, family photo albums and documents in a range of media, Tang explores the subtle, intricate and complex connections between longing, loss and belonging. Tang has been invited to participate in various exhibitions, solo exhibition of ‘NIGHTBIRDS’ (Gallery EXIT); solo exhibition of ‘Wanding. At Sea’ (HiddenSpace).

YUEN Nga Chi

https://www.yuenngachi.net/

Through photography to explore the contradictions and gaps in society. As a family member, Yuen Nga Chi is aware of the formation of self-worth and social consciousness of parents in micro view, extend to the meaning of home. In recent years, she has observed the power and analogic relationship between humans and animals.

‘4 9 39 33 27 45 35’ Photobook was shortlisted in the 6th Singapore International Photography Festival Photobook Open Call in 2018. She received a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Visual Arts from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2019. and awarded the WMA Young Talent Award in the Graduation Exhibition of the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University.

Tang Kwong San and Yuen Nga Chi’s collective artwork Somewhere in Time is selected as a Finalist of the WMA Master Awards (Light) in 2019/20.

- Curator - 

LEE Wing Ki

LEE Wing Ki Kalen (b. 1981 Hong Kong) is a photographer, researcher, curator and educator. His works were exhibited in Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, USA, UK and many others. A recipient of British Chevening Scholarship and Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, he is currently an Assistant Professor at Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University and a curatorial member of 1a space, Hong Kong.