A PERFORMANCE and installation work, To Erect? To Wreck? And a Great Piece was instigated by artist Hay Young.
Primarily a neo-expressionist painter, Young has ventured into producing mixed-media assemblages and video work, and now his latest offering is a live multi-media performance piece.
The normal gallery space at the Fringe has been curtained off and the space is filled with a wall of television monitors showing footage of Young and company weaving through the streets of Hong Kong, costumed as two out-of-town aliens with sacks of clothing tied to their backs. There are sequences of playing football and chasing after buses, all of these overlaid with computer graphics referencing cyber-space technology.
Meanwhile, two performers develop photograms of a bamboo scaffold from glass negatives under desk-lamps. Laid out like a butcher's counter, one looks like a fashion-stylist's idea of a fish-monger. There is an idea running in the work where everyone is either photographing or being photographed, whether it be with a video or a toy camera. Processed prints are sent out on wire cables overhanging the space, dripping water, developer and fixer on the audience.
Meanwhile, Young is on the bamboo scaffold running off an expressionist painting within the closed space. He then proceeds to chainsaw the built structure, resulting in a cloud of debris and dust.
Young is directing the cultural anxiety and uncertainty of Hong Kong through a very linear representation in this work. The process of building, celebrating, documenting and then the destruction and its associated spectacle are seen through an energetic and vibrant form.