New/Alternative Art Space
- LumenvisumGavin Au: Still Sitting on the Wall
John BATTEN
at 6:36pm on 11th April 2011
(原文以英文發表，評論《長騎 - 區家耀濕版個人相片展》。)
Gavin Au first attracted attention in Hong Kong’s photography scene when he built a simple camera using a scanner as a rough lens. His recent work uses another self-built model; a large-format camera capable of holding a wet plate from which he immediately - after exposure - develops in a portable outdoor darkroom to produce beautiful tintype photographs – which, with their chemical streaks and rough chiaroscuro, hark back to the 19thcentury.
However, Still Sitting on the Wall has a contemporary message that, with the detention of Ai Weiwei last week, is prescient. Au captures the mood of young people and a generation of politically informed Hong Kong artists tired of decision-makers in China and Hong Kong and their uncaring attitude towards individuals and freedom of expression.
Purposely naming this DIY camera “Mr Sad”, Au explains that the exhibition quietly reflects on an environment in which: “Catch; kidnap; arrest; elimination. In the past year…civil rights activists, human rights lawyers, dissident writers and journalists in China were repressed even more”, while in Hong Kong “…villagers in Kam Tin were defending against government outsourced guards…and human values are completely distorted”.
His photographs are composed in a landscape arrangement to reinterpret those done ten years ago by the Chinese photographer Weng Fen, whose optimistic images of a young girl sitting on a fence with her back to the camera, looks into the distance at a high-rise urban landscape in a blue-skied Chinese city. Au’s figure similarly sits on a fence, but looks out onto a blackened, industrial, mildewed and chemically ‘tintyped’ landscape whose seated figure is not an innocent schoolgirl, but a child-sized human skeleton.
The exhibition includes “Mr Sad” quietly placed in a corner for the audience to consider and an informative video that visually explains the technical processes of large-format wet plate photography accompanied by a musical soundtrack and a subliminal repetitive chant of “…one of these days; one of these days…’, exhorting the audience to not themselves sit on the fence.
Exhibition:《Still sitting on the wall – A wet plate art project by Gavin Au 》
Date: 2.4. – 24.4.2011
Venue: Lumenvisum, JCCAC
Enquiries: 3177 9159
A version of this review will be published in the “South China Morning Post”, 11 April 2011.
原文刊於《南華早報》2011年4月11日。
Gavin Au first attracted attention in Hong Kong’s photography scene when he built a simple camera using a scanner as a rough lens. His recent work uses another self-built model; a large-format camera capable of holding a wet plate from which he immediately - after exposure - develops in a portable outdoor darkroom to produce beautiful tintype photographs – which, with their chemical streaks and rough chiaroscuro, hark back to the 19thcentury.
However, Still Sitting on the Wall has a contemporary message that, with the detention of Ai Weiwei last week, is prescient. Au captures the mood of young people and a generation of politically informed Hong Kong artists tired of decision-makers in China and Hong Kong and their uncaring attitude towards individuals and freedom of expression.
Purposely naming this DIY camera “Mr Sad”, Au explains that the exhibition quietly reflects on an environment in which: “Catch; kidnap; arrest; elimination. In the past year…civil rights activists, human rights lawyers, dissident writers and journalists in China were repressed even more”, while in Hong Kong “…villagers in Kam Tin were defending against government outsourced guards…and human values are completely distorted”.
His photographs are composed in a landscape arrangement to reinterpret those done ten years ago by the Chinese photographer Weng Fen, whose optimistic images of a young girl sitting on a fence with her back to the camera, looks into the distance at a high-rise urban landscape in a blue-skied Chinese city. Au’s figure similarly sits on a fence, but looks out onto a blackened, industrial, mildewed and chemically ‘tintyped’ landscape whose seated figure is not an innocent schoolgirl, but a child-sized human skeleton.
The exhibition includes “Mr Sad” quietly placed in a corner for the audience to consider and an informative video that visually explains the technical processes of large-format wet plate photography accompanied by a musical soundtrack and a subliminal repetitive chant of “…one of these days; one of these days…’, exhorting the audience to not themselves sit on the fence.
Exhibition:《Still sitting on the wall – A wet plate art project by Gavin Au 》
Date: 2.4. – 24.4.2011
Venue: Lumenvisum, JCCAC
Enquiries: 3177 9159
A version of this review will be published in the “South China Morning Post”, 11 April 2011.
原文刊於《南華早報》2011年4月11日。