Ozasia Festival 2016 | RECORD LIGHT: KINGSLEY NG

ImageS:

1. Fleisher, A. ‘A Poetic Interface’ in Notes, Selected Works, 2005-2016 by Kingsley Ng (Hong Kong: 2016), pg 113-114.

1. Kingsley Ng, Galaxy Express (still), 2013, 10 channel video installation, duration 7:20 mins. Image courtesy the artist and Osage Gallery, Hong Kong.

2. Ng, K, Artist Statement, accessed August 13, 2016: http://www. kingsleyng.com/wp/about-2/

2. Kingsley Ng, Galaxy Express, 2013, 10 channel video installation, duration 7:20 mins. Image courtesy the artist and Osage Gallery, Hong Kong.

3. Kingsley Ng, Solitary Light, 2011, digital print on archival paper mounted on aluminium board. Image courtesy the artist and Osage Gallery, Hong Kong.

4. Kingsley Ng, The Sun over the Placid World, 2012, single channel video, duration 3:30 mins. Image courtesy the artist and Osage Gallery, Hong Kong.

This publication is published by the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA), Adelaide. © 2016 the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, the writers and artists. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.

This publication coincides with Record Light, an exhibition held at CACSA from 10 September – 16 October 2016.

IN PARTNERSHIP

Executive Director: Liz Nowell General Manager: Sarita Chadwick Author: Stephanie Cheung Layout: Logan Macdonald Designer: David Corbet Printing: Newstyle Printing Publisher: Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia Inc. Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia 14 Porter Street Parkside SA 5063 T +61 (08) 82722682 W www.cacsa.org.au E admin@cacsa.org.au

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ENDNOTES:

Adelaide Festival Centre & CACSA PRESENT: Ozasia Festival 2016 KINGSLEY NG

RECORD LIGHT is co-presented by the Adelaide Festival Centre’s OzAsia Festival and CACSA, supported by the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region: Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office, Sydney, the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and Osage Gallery, Hong Kong.

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The CACSA is assisted by the Government of South Australia through Arts South Australia and the Australian Government through the Australia Council and supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory governments.

10 SEPTEMBER – 16 OCTOBER Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia

Welcoming visitors to Kingsley Ng’s exhibition with moon. gate is bold poetry. The minimalistic piece, an in-situ rendering of projected shadows that might as well be taken as naturally cast through the door frame, is known to be a work that is frequently overlooked. To the attentive viewer, however, this moment of illumination is accompanied by an ambience. Tuning in, there is a correspondence between the rustling sounds and moving light – a tree indeed, swaying as the wind carries to the room broadcast content, from one radio station to another, about lives across this continent.

Subtle evocation is characteristic of the art of Kingsley Ng. The interdisciplinary artist, who has at his disposal a lexicon of audio-visual technologies, is after all a poet. He is never into technocracy but uses his science as a means to create aesthetic experiences for sensing what is essentially human. At the centre of in this exhibition, Record: Light +22° 16’ 17” +114° 8’ 59” and Solitary Light await the audience to reflect on silent sparks and flashes, captured from cityscapes in Hong Kong. The taciturn lights state nothing, but being there, one seems to hear at each flicker a story from the wanjia denghuo, a Chinese synecdoche for what dwells in ten thousand lit houses.

Ever since his professional debut at Le Fresnoy – National Studio of Contemporary Arts in Tourcoing, France, the

introverted artist has always been outward-looking in his subject matter. From reaching out to the lives of locals through prints on baguette paper, to bringing back to life a waning heritage through the modification of an antique, and subsequently years of site- and context-inspired creation, Ng’s art, as noted by himself, citing the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, is “a finger pointing to the moon.”

in Galaxy Express, the artist experiments methodologically with expanded cinema. The 10-channel video installation, combining monitors and projections, sets in motion a fictional train between a wall and its adjacent floor. The analogy of a train is not random. “The locomotion of framed scenery,” observes the artist, “reminds me of a filmstrip on a reel.”

The Sun over the Placid World was originally presented at the 2nd Land Art Biennial in Mongolia. It pays tribute to the eponymous traditional long song, which echoes the immediate connection between man and that vast land.

The sun itself serves as a light source, visually manifesting the undulating tune as it beams across a melodic rock form, like an elemental media player, from dawn to dusk. Also addressing our relationship with nature, Spring: Homage to Liang Qian is grounded in a very different source.

Besides saluting the senior painter, it was triggered by a plethora of bottled water in a supermarket, whose politics of consumption and extraction is abstractly encapsulated in a globalized sundial radiating from an ordinary glass of water.

Over the past few years, Ng has further expanded his practice into a variety of real-life settings. From immersive multisensory installations in historical buildings, to convivial participatory events in a zoo and a park, and cinematic rides on a tram turned into a mobile camera obscura, these ventures exemplify a search of relevance and what it means by new media. Ng is, of course, not alone in this quest. He is informed and inspired by the work of his predecessors – Bruno Dumont, Andrea Cera, Atau Tanaka, Muntadas, among others who see engagement as a priority; the concept of coexistence in eastern philosophy, and theories of relational aesthetics and even social innovation.

“These principles are driven not by a self-indulgent romance of art, but a belief that art can be socially relevant.”2

Alain Fleischer, internationally renowned artist and founding director of Le Fresnoy, describes Ng’s art as “transformation, metamorphosis and interface.” 1 As he uses the sun as a followspot and a glass to augment a screen,

Because of their context-specific nature, these recent projects are not included in this exhibition. A sense of this side of Ng’s practice can nonetheless be felt if one leaves through the printed compilation of Etudes for the Everyday,

a project that has brought together over one hundred Hong Kong cultural and art practitioners. Each contributed a small étude, a daily practice for heighten mindfulness.

The collection was then shared publicly in the forms of exhibitions, workshops, a website and this publication. The artist’s motivation for initiating this project was, in and for a city clouded by all sorts of discontents, a desire to spark off a different kind of energy through art.

As if writing an étude, Ng once came up with this haikulike practice: on the palm a moon Technically, it requires a hand that is capable of holding a filled cup with perfect stillness, so that a reflection of the moon stays afloat. Perhaps this is a practice for this exhibition.

Stephanie Cheung

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