White Tube
Ends Sept 29
The exhibition's title is a dichotomy of terms. It plays on the concept of the present, a fleeting moment, which inevitably turns into the past. Using photography, mixed media and video art, five international artists (Ellen Pau and Lukas Tam Wai-ping from Hong Kong, Bo Zheng from the mainland, Italian Paolo Mascolini and Singaporean Yew Seng Heng) present varied interpretations of reality - bringing together moments from the past and offering them into the present.
Tam photographed the construction of a life-size, blow-up temple, displayed near the gallery's entrance on a long scroll. The model is based on the Xia Hai City God Temple in Taipei, and Tam exposes the labour-intensive process for factory workers from concept to final stage, culminating at the site outside the temple.
Pau's emotionally charged, large-format photos, entitled Love Will Tear Us Apart, show clouds against stark, dark backgrounds. One billowing cloud in the middle comprises two parts held together tenuously.
Zheng's video Karibu Islands - If Life Goes Backwards is a collage of images from the John F. Kennedy assassination to a yogi sitting under a tree in India and graphic images of a woman giving birth. The images are viewed in reverse time. He asks if we'd be happier in life if we started from an old age and worked backwards to the womb.
