Brisbane audiences were invited to see artist Pak Sheung Chuen give a public talk on 29 June at 11am at the State Library of Queensland Auditorium 2.
The artist who represented Hong Kong at last year’s Venice Biennale, Pak Sheung Chuen, was in Brisbane during June 2010 to contemplate his next artwork: Making Thousands of Suns. Pak’s work comprises a series of small, yet insightful, gestures in response to his immediate environment and to broader social and political issues, prompting the labels ‘philosophical’, ‘poetic’, ‘witty’, ‘profound’, and ‘sensitive’ from international commentators.
While in Brisbane for his residency, made possible by MAAP – Multimedia Art Asia Pacific (MAAP) and the State Library of Queensland, Pak developed a body of work that engaged with his travels and the State Library site.
The body of work developed during this residency will feature in Light from Light, MAAP’s latest international exhibition co-presented with State Library of Queensland.
This Chinese conceptual artist has been recognised through significant exhibitions in China, Italy, New York and London. In the past, many of Pak’s works have documented performances dictated by the artist’s own simple instructions. His 2006 work, Breathing in a House saw the artist fill a rented apartment with his own breath (collected in plastic bags over ten days), until he could no longer fit in the space. For Alternative Tokyo Travel Project 2: Valley’s Trip (2007), the artist travelled from southern to northern Tokyo, but walking only in the areas corresponding to the middle folds of his map. His permanent solo exhibition at New York’s 58th Street Branch Library, Page 22 (Half Folded Library) was created by the folding of the 22nd page of every second book in the library’s collection.
“Influenced by the politics and identity of post-1997 Hong Kong as well as the tradition of Performance Art, Pak’s distinctive methodology towards ‘adaptation’ consists of inserting himself as the subject into the equation, adopting this position to question and explore the notion of individual identities against the new globalised societies and realities that are of extreme relevance to the ongoing modernisation of Asia’s mega cities”. (Press release, Hong Kong Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2009)
很快将有中文译文