Ed Pien

Memento

Commissioned by the Chinese Arts Centre

 

Saturday 24 July - Saturday 4 September 2010

Preview: Friday 23 July, 6 - 9pm

Memento is a contemplation of the human condition: how we act and react to the inescapable forces that shape us. Memento has been developed out of research into the plight of illegal immigrants who often take great risks in the hope of living a more significant and meaningful life. It also shows his interest in the supernatural.

Examples include ‘snakes’ or ‘ghosts’ (slam term to Chinese illegal immigrants), those Chinese who remain hidden in society (the tragedy that beset the cockle pickers), the Faujis, from India as well as the “burnt ones” young Moroccans, some, attempting to cross the Straight of Gibraltar, perish along the way.

 

Memento is a walk-through installation and consists of ropes, cut silhouettes, sound and video. Memento transforms the entire gallery space into ‘a haunting environment’ that the audience is invited to physically engage with.

The network of patterns is also reminiscent of the human circulatory system, passageways and maps. The video shown within the structure depicts the artist negotiating the might of churning waves emphasizing human beings’ vulnerability as well as celebrating the strengths to confront and overcome difficulty. Memento is a continuation of Pien’s ongoing interest in the otherworldly, invisibility, disappearance, and journeys. It poignantly reflects on the displaced, forgotten and unseen yet remains poetically open-ended, embracing multiple interpretations.

 

Suki Chan’s practice combines light, moving image, electronics and sound within mixed-media installations to explore our physical and psychological experience of space. Using simple, repetitive and sometimes painstaking processes, abstracting familiar materials and objects, creating imaginary and uncanny narratives. Chan explores boundaries between private and public space and the relationship between an individual to the collective. A grain of rice, a house and bird are recurring motifs and subject matter in the work. Working with a spectrum of scale, from micro to macro, Chan’s enchanting and disorientating installations are loaded with symbolic references to time and place, questioning the nature of our inhabitation in the world.

Suki Chan was born in Hong Kong and lives and works in London. Chan graduated from Goldsmiths in 1999 and completed an MA in Fine Art at Chelsea School of Art in 2008. Her recent solo shows include Sleep Walk Sleep Talk, a major video installation commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, and Interval II, commissioned by the Chinese Arts Centre, supported by Film London.

 

Chan has been included in several group shows in the UK, including Futuremap, David Roberts Art Foundation, London and Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art. She has also shown work internationally in Spain, USA, Singapore and China.

 

 

In 2009, Chan was selected as one of six young British artists by Charles Saatchi to take part in the BBC’s School of Saatchi. Most recently, she curated a moving image show for the Jerwood Space in 2010.

Chan’s work is included in public and private collections including David Roberts Art Foundation, the Ingram Collection, London and The Celebrity Art Collection on The Solstice.