Gordon Cheung: “Here Be Dragons employs imagery from the Dutch still life movement that coincided with the Dutch Golden Age, which inadvertently convey the story of Tulipmania [the first financial bubble that emerged around the trade of tulip bulbs] through the shifting symbolism of the tulip within the genre. Whilst I draw on the Romantic symbolism of the fragility of life and futility of materialism, I am also interested in the historical significance of representing the birth of modern capitalism alongside the first recorded economic bubble. In these paintings the vases are exchanged for Chinese dragon pots, resting on the landscapes of the contested and partially artificial islands in the South China Sea. My aim is to raise questions around the trajectory of China’s transition to authoritarian capitalism, looking in the direction of where new economic bubbles might occur. The South China Sea is the site of the modern day maritime silk road, worth an estimated $3-9 trillion in trade every year. As the US flexes its superior military might and opens new bases in the region, its foreign policy – named ‘Pivot to Asia’ or ‘Encirclement of China’ – suggests that new geopolitical lines are being tested and drawn, delineating possible future hot and cold wars. The title of the painting refers to a cartographical term that was used to demarcate the edges of the known world, which has been adopted in the world of computer code as a metaphor for particularly complex areas for programmers to be cautious of.”