Fragments: Serge Clément, Hannah Bertram

 

 

Through the shadows and reflections of Serge Clément’s black and white photographs, we seep into the landscape of  “courants – contre-courants.”  Invited into the changing intimate moments of the world’s metropolises the artist’s powerful photographic plays draw us into the shadowy lights and reflective surfaces of the world.  Clément superimposes the murmurs of life without retouching and recomposing his images. They are instants of the invisible reality surrounding us. The artist stages are set before him under a film-noir mysteriousness that alludes to poetic imagery of a dreamlike state. He walks the cities of Europe, Asia and the Americas as a voyeur questioning his relationship to the urban arena. He comments that the perception and reaction of each viewer to his work with their own individual histories is his intention.  Clément’s works are a vibrant fresco of humankind on the third millenium’s threshold. It talks of him, of us, of what we are and what we will be.

Serge Clément was born in Québec (Canada) in 1950. He started working as photographer in the 1970s. Serge Clément is the recipient of many grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.  His works will be included in the Canadian Pavillion of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.  The book courants – contre-courants will be available at the opening.

 

Hannah Bertram’s work is elegant, precious, unique and completely unattainable except for the few moments it is beheld by the eye.  She is an unconventional artist whose work cannot be wrapped nor delivered. Hannah Bertram collects dust. Meticulously gathering the fragments of our surroundings she creates with precision and delicacy intricately shaped and mounted decorative displays.  Fragments whose lives are as fleeting as our own and whose visibility slowly deteriorates into the invisible.  It lives and then dies and the ease in which this transition flows is not to be dreaded but accepted as inevitable. 

Notions of time are ever present in her work. First in its making which, takes several days and many laborious hours and then, finally in the decay of the structured pattern. The idea of our own existence over millions of years with cities being built and empires crushed hits a note in our collective subconscious that universally points to our self-centered world of desires. In turn, she allows us to liberate ourselves from this attachment.  

Hannah Bertram completed a Master of Fine Art at RMIT in 2005 and lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. She recently received a grant from the Australian Arts Council and is working on “The Silence of Becoming and Disappearing,” a project of ephemeral site-sensitive dust works created and installed in 12 private homes during 2010. This is her first exhibition in Hong Kong.