Video: Courtesy of Kazu Nomura
Note: Norm Yip is also known as Yip Fung or 葉灃
Art on Two Planes of Existence
Curated by Elizabeth Briel of Creative Kowloon
With Artists Bowie Lee and Yip Fung*
What makes a map a map? Bowie Lee’s work Over, Under, Over, Under navigates, mediates and reinterprets our physical movements in a city. Seeing maps as a conventional tool for locating ourselves, experiencing our landscape in an aerial manner, has created an alienation from the spaces we live in, the plane of Earth’s surface.
Reclaiming spaces for self by getting lost in society and making connections with people is the metaphor in her map-weaving practice, the mediation between our existence and landscape art. Her film and audio works documenting the creation and destruction of this and other works, as well as an installation traversing Creative Kowloon’s main space, will be on view to the public 10am-6pm Saturday 14th March
Offerings by Yip Fung | 葉灃
葉灃 Yip Fung’s Offerings exhibition and performance. The practices and rituals of Hong Kong, his native North America, and ephemeral works of Tibet have inspired Yip Fung to enact an event called OFFERINGS. The intention is to give back something to nature, a transference of energy from art that he has created, to the sky via the alchemical nature of fire, wood/paper and oxygen.
As a reaction to the coronavirus outbreak, Yip Fung created paintings of red fluid both streaming across and soaking into the surface of material to form its fractal patterns. The works will be exhibited then incinerated on Creative Kowloon’s rooftop space at 3pm.
Art Performance
T H E P R E M I S E
My cousin and I visit Wong Tai Sin Temple twice yearly: once before Chinese New Year to offer thanks or wan sun, and once at the start of the new year to jok fuk in hopes of good for the year ahead. We bring fruit and cooked meats and light incense to Wong Tai sin, in addition to the burning of paper money for him to spend in the afterlife. You can burn anything that you want for the departed, including clothing, houses, Ferraris or jet planes. It is a simple procedure as far as rituals go, but taken very seriously by those who follow.
– Taoism
Tibetan monks have long painstakingly created beautiful artwork using dyed coloured sand that takes days or weeks to complete, only to be swept or destroyed in a ritual ceremony afterwards. The idea is said to reflect upon the impermanence of life and of not becoming attached to the object, which is immaterial and only a construct of our reality.
– Buddhism
The native Indians of North America, where I was born have fascinated me. They didn’t understand how ‘white man’ could buy or possess the land when to them, the land possesses us. Also, the Indians made sand art to heal the sick. Art, singing and dancing were believed to be an intrinsic part of life and thus, would return the patient symbolically to the source of tribal energy. After a ceremony, the sand art too is destroyed.
– North American Native Indian
T H E O F F E R I N G S
Hong Kong has suffered months of civil unrest for nearly half of 2019 with protests and violence. With the start of 2020, coronavirus began it’s spread of an infectious disease, killing thousands in China. The world or earthly realm has in some ways become ill, sickened by natural causes of human intervention, so-called economic growth for the sake of progress. The natural resources of this Earth are being raped; we haven’t respected its place in the Universe. And the Earth is responding.
The above practices and rituals have lead me to enact an event called OFFERINGS. The intention is to give back something to nature, a transference of energy from art that I have created to the universe, to the sky from the alchemical nature of fire, wood/paper and oxygen. It will the first time that the destruction of art will take on more meaning to me, versus the regret of an unliked painting.
Photo: Kazu Nomura
T H E A R T
As a reaction and motivation to the coronavirus outbreak, I envisaged a series of painting of red fluid both streaming across a medium, soaking into the surface of the material to form its fractal self-simulating creations. The artwork is entitled Corona20. Some parts would reveal itself through a calculated move (intentional and controlled) and others would be accidental spillage (non-intentional and chaos). As a study and a reaction for investigations, I used paper that was meant to be discarded by my neighbour, who ran a printing company. The paper is most likely non-archival and will suffer in a very short time. As such, it made for the perfect opportunity for such a study. Meanwhile, the porous nature of the medium lends itself ideally for natural osmosis, the slow bleeding of paint in the fibres of the paper.
T H E E V E N T
Date: Saturday, 14 March, 2020
Opening Hours: 10am – 6pm; exhibition of artwork
The Offering: 3pm – selected artworks to be incinerated for the offering
Venue: Creative Kowloon, 9/F, 179-181 Ki Lung St. Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong