Delighted to be part of ArtSG’s PLATFORM.
PLATFORM is a curated exhibition of dynamic, large-scale and site specific installations presented across the fair. These artworks showcase the latest in contemporary art practice and themes from around the Asia Pacific region and beyond.
"British-Chinese contemporary artist Gordon Cheung is set to captivate audiences at ART SG 2024's PLATFORM, presented by Richard Koh Fine Art. Cheung's thought-provoking installation, titled "Home," explores the intricate relationship between the family unit and the evolution of civilization in the relentless pursuit of progress."
The ‘Home’ window installation will be presented by Richard Koh Fine Art at Marina Bay Sands from January 19–21. Drop by Booth BC05 to see paintings, and Platform BP1 to view the installation in person. Learn more.
About “Home”
Traditional Chinese windows made from financial newspaper and bamboo refer to homes that were demolished for China’s rapid urbanisation. Here they hover between states of ‘being’, suggesting a ghost architecture that would have supported the windows. They act as a demarcation between the traditional and the modern. Gazing from the past through a financial frame into the future.
The word ‘home’ evokes the place where one lives, especially as a member of family or household. It also carries the meaning of returning by instinct to one’s territory after leaving it. Being both Chinese and British, Cheung witnessed the 1997 British to China handover of the then colonised Hong Kong. His dual identity prompts him to think about the definition of home, where and what it is, and the narratives of conquest. What is the meaning of home in an age where the world order is changing at accelerated speed? How can a domestic domicile be powerlessly torn down and replaced with a shopping mall or a skyscraper, all in the name of progress?
Hong Kong is often used as a backdrop in science fiction to explore the intersections of old and new architecture. The compressed futuristic city is composed of layered expressions of humanity, history and civilisation, forming a feedback loop that we collectively define but also simultaneously defines our identities. The existential questions of ‘who, why and what am I?’ are universal questions of consciousness, and also the germinating seeds of transformation that Cheung layers into his work.
“Home” is an installation of traditional Chinese windows to meditate on the relationship between the family unit and civilization in the name of progress. These windows, to me, are a symbolic demarcation between one era to the next in China. From communism to capitalist communism via the digital revolution through the metaphor of home embodied by the windows. “A few years ago, I went on a silk road trip from Xi’An through to Uzbekistan. It showed me that we had globalisation but at the speed of a camel. I wanted to try to find a way to capture the relationship between these enormous projects to homes – as units of civilisation. I used financial newspapers as a metaphor for the information space that we live within. I layer newspapers together, mould them into forms, and sand them back to simulate wood grain. It was a way of embodying our human experience in this virtual space that we have created on a global scale.”