The Stillness Within: anothermountainman x Shuho, Cang Xin, Huang Rui, Gerry Li, Fiona Pardington, RongRong & inri, Manit Sriwanichpoom and John Thomson

10 Chancery Lane Gallery presents a group exhibition of photographs “The Stillness Within” by 8 artists including anothermountainman x Shuho, Cang Xin, Huang Rui, Gerry Li, Fiona Pardington, RongRong & inri, Manit Sriwanichpoom and John Thomson.

 

Graduated from Hong Kong Technical Teachers’ College (Design & Technology), anothermountainman (Stanley Wong) is a renowned designer and creative artist. Wong started his career in the advertising industry and worked for many international advertising companies. In May 2012, Wong was also awarded the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards 2011/ Award for Best Artist (Visual Arts). Wong gained international awareness with his ‘red, white and blue’ artwork collection, representing the ‘positive spirit of Hong Kong. In recent years, anothermountainman has incorporated his studies of Buddhism into the artworks as his personal mission to spread dharma for the hope of world equality and harmony.

In 2010, Wong first met Shuho who is an Ikebana master, which is the art of Japanese flower arrangements. Shuho was having a show of ikebana at the Hong Kong University Art Museum. Inspired by the concept of “to exist is to treasure and respect”, Wong invited Shuho to do a collaboration of “reborn-ikebana”, a project to alter the traditional practice by starting with withered branches and dead flowers for her ikebana while Wong would take photos during the process. They agreed to do the photo shooting on 19/20 March 2011. However, Tōhoku (Fukushima) earthquake and tsunami happened on March 11th. They corresponded through email, in the midst of lamenting for the nation’s sufferings. They deeply believed that reborn-ikebana is a tribute to japan for their unwavering spirit. On March 29th, they arrived at ginkakuji temple in Kyoto. After drinking tea, chanting, and walking through the garden, they felt they gained the inner peace and purification needed to start their project. Shuho’s “reborn-ikebana” was developed in seven phases from withering and dying to rebirth and growth. It is a cycle of life.

Cang Xin was born in 1967 in Baotou, Inner Mongolia. Cang is a Beijing-based performance and conceptual artist. He entered the Tianjin Academy of Music in 1986 and began to paint in 1991. In 1993, he moved to Beijing’s “East Village”, where he began a series of performances such as the Trampling Faces, the Communication series, and the Identity Exchange series. His participating exhibitions include: "World Theater: China and Art after 1989 (2019)" at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and "Turning Point-Contemporary Photography from China (2019)" at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.

Cang Xin believes that his art inherits the spirit of "shaman" beliefs. His performance allows him to experience the world through his bodily senses. To him, art is a way of life that sits easily with his self-conception as a modern-day shaman, heir to the mysticism of nature tradition of his native Mongolia. In 2002, when Cang Xin traveled to the suburbs of Daqing in Inner Mongolia. He saw the endless green grassy plains, and decided to use his body to experience and communicate with nature. "I call it “Man and Sky As One.” This concept stems from traditional Chinese philosophy together with "Shamanism" of the nomadic people in northern China. Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner, a shaman, who is believed to interact with a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct these spirits or spiritual energies into the physical world, for healing and for human survival. “In addition to these concepts, I have added mathematical structures to my creation to showcase my interpretation of life, universe, plants, and original matter." Cang Xin said.

Huang Rui is one of China’s most highly regarded artists and one of the pivotal protagonists of the first non-conformist art groups to emerge from China in 1979. The Stars (Xing Xing 星星) Art Group, established in the late 1970s following the end of the Cultural Revolution, used art to promote social ideologies and initiated some of the first free art expressions in the Post-Mao era. His works have been exhibited and/or collected by The Guggenheim Museum, USA, The Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, The Samsung Museum, Korea, The Louisiana Museum, Denmark, M+ Museum of Visual Culture, Hong Kong, The Fukuoka Museum, Japan, among many others.

Huang Rui moved to Japan in 1984 until 2001 where he experimented on many forms of art including performance, installation, photography and abstract expressionist paintings in oil as well as ink. His photographic series done in the 1990s in Japan was triggered by the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995. Huang Rui explains that, “photography is a medium to restore the essence. The transformation of such essence must evolve from a cultural idea into physicality.” Huang Ru’s Japan years allowed him the freedom to experience art as a means of transcendence. He explains, “I was so eager to create a ‘Tao’ beyond the world of photography known for most people.” His works free your mind to touch the spirit that animates them. Tao is the natural order of the universe whose character one's human intuition must discern in order to realize the potential for individual wisdom. This intuitive knowing of "life" cannot be grasped as a concept; it is known through actual living experience of one's everyday being. Huang Rui has explored ancient Chinese philosophies throughout his 40 year career and these rare photographs are being seen for the first time in Hong Kong.

Gerry Li is a photographer, filmmaker, and musician. Graduated from Hong Kong Baptist University, he has directed a romance sci-fi short film Ideal Lover (2019), composed O.S.T. Stay In Memory (2019), and produced the photographic series Tracing (2018) and Exploration (2018). In addition, Li works as a sound supervisor for many short films.

Gerry uses his photographs to explore the theme of light and the present moment, which contains energy and vitality by way of nature as well as ones social surroundings. He hopes his works can enlighten other people who are in darkness. I often feel powerless in the darkness. Light lets me feel the meaning of life again and guides me to move on when I feel surrounded by helplessness in dark times. This series of photographs, “Eternal Light in the Darkness” is inspired by nature and certain profound moments with family, friends, or loved ones. He explains, “It led me to create rather than to destroy, to become rather than to escape. Long after, the colour will have faded, family will have gone, love will have vanished, friendship will have come apart, by the time my breath stops. Yet, there will still be light, shining for eternity,”

 

Fiona Pardington is a New Zealand photographer of Māori (Ngāi Tahu, Kati Mamoe and Ngāti Kahungunu) and Scottish (Clan Cameron of Erracht) descent, who is highly regarded internationally and nationally because of her inventive formats, unpredictable techniques and extremely varied range of thematic exploration. Her fields of investigation have been psychoanalysis, medicine, voyeurism, memory and the body, the history of the photographic image and the nature of the relationship between the photographer and subject, particularly as it relates to sexual difference, through the ambiguities of a simultaneous solicitation and resistance. She is best known as a specialist in ‘pure’ or analogue photographic darkroom technique, most notably hand printing and toning. Pardington in 2016 was named a Knight (Chevalier) in the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Prime Minister. Pardington is the first New Zealand visual artist to receive this honor.

In the work “Portrait of a life-cast of Madagascar,” Pardington photographs the life casts made by nineteenth century Frenchman Pierre-Marie Alexandre Dumoutier, moulded from the features of indigenous peoples. These casts were linked to the nineteenth century discourse of phrenology, a now discredited belief that intellect and personality could be read from the features of the skull. Under the systems of this pseudo-science, many non-European people were framed as inferior due to their facial and cranial differences. Through photography, Pardington revisits these casts and the ideology that motivated their creation. By photographing the casts she attempts to overlay a new and dignifying narrative to their original subjects.

RongRong (China) and inri (Japan) have been working together since 2000. Their works reflect the intimate world that they have created together, while pushing the boundaries of traditional black-and-white darkroom techniques. Their past critically acclaimed series of works, such as Mt. Fuji, In Nature, and Liulitun, focus on the beauty of the human body in nature and the urban environment. In 2007, RongRong & inri established the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in the Caochangdi art district of Beijing, the premier platform for international communication. They also started the annual Three Shadows Photography Award to discover and encourage China's most promising photographers. RongRong and inri's recent work brings attention to the beauty and value of new beginnings in their shared life and surroundings, especially amidst a rapidly changing world.

During the 2012, RongRong & inri went to Echigo-Tsumari in Japan to attend the Art Triennial. They transformed the gymnasium of a closed elementary school in the mountains into their venue to exhibit these outstanding photographs. They printed the images upon a light, diaphanous fabric that is reminiscent of local, traditional textiles-which they then suspended from the ceiling and allowed to naturally drape downward. The characters within the story merge with their surrounding landscape and the entire landscape seems to float in the space between passion and peace. If we say that this work is about memory, that would be an oversimplification. It is much more physiologic, imagery which seems to reach out to the long, distant place.

Manit Sriwanichpoom (b.1961) is a contemporary Thai artist who has widely exhibited across the globe. The artist is well-known for his pink man series which criticizes consumerism and the loss of values; many of his photographs are impregnated with a political and /or social element. Manit is actually not only an observer but is also very active partipant in the cultural and contemporary art scene of Thailand and Bangkok. He was a strong advocate for the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) and is a member of the Contemporary Art Bureau of Thailand. He’s passionate about photography and has his own gallery, Kathamandu Photo Gallery, in Bangkok where he curates exhibitions, conducts research and showcases photographs of his own but also many other artists.

Manit Sriwanichpoom did a photographic series of monks in 2009. He reconts the story of how the “Masters” came to be. "While I was held up at a red light one day in front of a religious icon shop around the Giant Swing in Bangkok, I noticed two life-sized statues of monks. The sight made my skin crawl. They were like living flesh. As if these revered monks had risen from the dead to sit there by the road, to demonstrate their meditation prowess to passers-by. These resin miniature humans had been made so life-like by their Thai craftsmen, they rivaled Madame Tussaud’s famous wax figures of celebrities. This being one more step by Thai Buddhist commerce in its manufacture of sacred icons, deftly copying and appropriating the Western celebrity cult for the Thai ecclesiastical world and its amulet business. No one knows when the worship of sacred icons of individual Buddhist Masters began. Since ancient times we have worshipped Buddha statues as a symbol of our great teacher and his teachings. The Buddha statue represents a concept rather than an indiviual. Worship of Masters emphasizes specific people and their reputed magical powers for worldly blessings, in direct contradiction to the Buddha’s message of self reliance and to focus only on the teaching itself. The more advanced the marketing and production techniques, the more intricate and fantastical their products, it seems to me, the further we travel from Buddha. Our vision becomes blurry, nothing is clear, including when we look to these holy masters," says, Manit Sriwanichpoom.