Organized by Hong Kong Art School (a division of Hong Kong Arts Centre), this exhibition showcases the artworks created by four painting graduates of the School’s Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) programme, as well as a piece of poem by a local writer.
Residue does not refer to the left over in daily life. It is a psychological impact like ripples on a pond, formed by the unusual incidents which happen in history, entwinning and unabatedly echoing in one’s mind.
Residue is the detached part isolated from its main body. It is equivalent to either the fragments of brutal memories which are hard to look back on; or content which is buried or left aside intentionally or unintentionally.
Those dismemberments reveal themselves repeatedly in the form of scattered dots, broken lines and flaky layers; sometimes solid sometimes airy.
All artworks included in this exhibition are done with the most basic drawing mediums, graphite and charcoals on paper. Louise LEE has been collecting the mass media images since last year. With her proficient charcoal drawing skill, she has repetitively re-constructed and effaced the original until a paradoxical image has emerged. The urban wanderer Argus FONG leads viewers to his selected nameless places. They are murky and desolate realms which through his depiction allows the viewer to dwell and contemplate within. June WONG shows her sketches and drafts which supposedly serve the process of producing an animation. They are those provisional and primitive segments, sincere and enchanting. TANG Kwong San pays tribute to his lost mother by painstakingly drawing her belongings with a mechanical pencil. His drawing captures the weight and the physical interrelationship of these very personal objects.
At the same time, Louise Law was invited to make a poem which will be an added visual element in this exhibition. The poem, titled “A Chill Seeps into the Air”, was assembled from what she has described as “residue of emotions”. These “residue of emotions” are those transitional states of an idea, which lie between an embrace and abandonment. They often present ambiguously. One can only be aware of it in absolute stillness.
Louise LAW was once the editor of Fleurs des lettres, and currently the director of its publisher, Spicy Fish. As an editor, poet and manager of literary projects, she was awarded the Prize of Merit of the 3rd Lee Shing Wah Young Modern Poet Award and attended Singapore Writers Festival 2018. Her poetry collection, As if, is shortlisted in the 13th Hong Kong Book Prize under the category New Author.
Argus FONG’s work is like a collection of piecemeal fragments in his everyday life - a collection of seemingly unrelated bits and parts as in a photomontage. The work reflects his interpretations on identities and human natures. Inspired by the traces on the objects, most of his works are oil paintings on wasted materials, and are characterised by his expressive linear brushstrokes.
Louise Lee, graduated from RMIT, Melbourne. Lee obtained her Master of Fine Art in 2003, specialized in Drawing. Lee has participated in many solo and joint exhibitions in different countries including the "interlude", in Melbourne and “On Drawing” in Hong Kong in 2018. She is currently an Art teacher in Hong Kong Japanese School and a part-time lecturer in Hong Kong Art School. Lee's humanist impulse has been the major current in sustaining her art practice. She scans, examines and displays the harmony and conflict of human being under different circumstances.
TANG Kwong San received his BAFA from RMIT University, Australia, in 2019. His practice combines photographs, drawings, objects and video that trace intergenerational family memories and social history. Through reorganising and reinterpreting old belongings, family photo albums and documents in a range of media, Tang explores the subtle, intricate and complex connections between longing, loss and belonging.
June, WONG Siu Ling was born in Hong Kong. She explores the theme of daily life through stop motion works and drawings. She graduated in 2018 with a Bachelor of Fine Art from Hong Kong Art School & RMIT University. Also, she obtained her Bachelor of Nursing in 2010.
