Beautiful Life - Tour Catalogue

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

2

Beautiful Life: Memory and Nostalgia Exhibition Dates: 10 Sep – 13 Nov 2011

Venue: South Hill Park, Ringmead, Bracknell, Berkshire RG12 7PA, UK www.southhillpark.org.uk Exhibition Dates: 28 Nov 2011 – 13 Jan 2012

Venue: Creative Hinckley Gallery, The Atkins Building, Lower Bond Street, Hinckley, Leicestershire LE10 1QU, UK www.creativehinckley.co.uk Exhibition Dates: 7 - 29 April 2012

Venue: The Pier-2 Art District, Dayong Road, Yancheng District, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan pier-2.khcc.gov.tw Curator: Ming Turner silent.dust@btinternet.com Partners: Charnwood Arts, UK. www.charnwoodarts.com

South Hill Park, UK. www.southhillpark.org.uk

Sin Pink Art Space, Taiwan. www.sinpink.com This catalogue has been published in conjunction with the exhibition Kindly sponsored by:

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Contents Curatorial Conception My Nostalgia and Beautiful Life – Ming Turner ....................................................................................................................p 4-10 David Alesworth .......................................................................................................................................................................p 11 Magda Biernat .........................................................................................................................................................................p 12 Wen-Jen Deng .........................................................................................................................................................................p 13 Paul Gent ...........................................................................................................................................................................p 14-15 Khaled Hafez ...........................................................................................................................................................................p 16 Huma Mulji ...............................................................................................................................................................................p 17 Anna Lucas ..............................................................................................................................................................................p 18 Lala Meredith-Vula ...................................................................................................................................................................p 19 Chia-Wei Kung .........................................................................................................................................................................p 20 Josephine Turalba ....................................................................................................................................................................p 21 Kevin Ryan ...............................................................................................................................................................................p 22 Kevin Ryan + Natalie Chabaud ................................................................................................................................................p 23

Contents 3

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Curatorial Conception 4

My Nostalgia and Beautiful Life Ming Turner

Myth and symbol as sources of nostalgia appear more real than everyday experience, which itself is beset by ambiguity and flux. The past is compacted into a cohesive, unitary whole that appears as a kind of goodness-in-itself-totality, above reproach and criticism.1 Fabio DaSilva and Jim Faught suggest in their article ‘Nostalgia: A Sphere and Process of Contemporary Ideology’ (1982) that nostalgia isolates and mythicises selected objects from the past so that we feel we are enjoying a more tranquil and conflictless past. This nostalgic past is somehow not completely the reality, rather, it is ambiguous and is purified. DaSilva and Faught indicate that the past is usually perceived as more tranquil than the present. The nostalgic past ignores real material conditions and tensions, and embraces an emotional utopia. Nostalgia offers a comfort zone where we find a peaceful and conflictless past, and where we escape from the hectic and demanding real life in capitalist society.

The title of this exhibition is composed of two key terms, Nostalgia and Beautiful Life, both of which offer utopian imaginations of fantasy and myth. DaSilva and Faught argue that as nostalgia reduces our critical engagement with the past, history is not entirely real but is selected and mythical. Therefore, a beautiful life is based on either dreamy and subjective views of the past, or fantasy about the future. The inspiration for this exhibition came from the ideology of recalling the internal and utopian world of individuals – either a nostalgic past or a fantasised future of the participating artists, the visitors and myself.

1

DaSilva, Fabio B. and Faught, Jim. (1982). ‘Nostalgia: A Sphere and Process of Contemporary Ideology’, Qualitative Sociology, 5(1), p 56.

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Curatorial Conception 5

Another curatorial consideration for this project was to bring together artists from different continents, in the spirit of the forthcoming London Olympics in 2012.

The artists invited to participate in the project come from the Philippines, Egypt, USA, Poland, Pakistan, the UK and Taiwan. They have been specifically selected from established and emerging artists from diverse backgrounds who create their art through video, digital print, objects, performance, installation, painting and workshops. All of the invited artists either have cross-continental experience in some part of their lives or of portraying the ideas of travelling and moving between geopolitical borders. The work visualises their utopian imaginations about their nostalgic past, memories, shifting identities and diasporic experiences, either from a personal point of view or as an observer depicting others.

‘Diaspora’ as another key theoretical concern for the project, refers to ‘the voluntary or forcible movement of peoples from their homelands into new regions’.2 Migration and travelling across geopolitical borders have always been important elements of man’s activity throughout history, and in recent decades, owing to the rapid development of transportation, travelling across borders has become a more influential and critical issue in modern society. Moving between geopolitical borders has created the phenomena of displacement and hybridised cultures, and this contributes to the complexity of one’s sense of nostalgia and an imagined beautiful life.

Among the ten invited artists and one artist’s team, Khaled Hafez carefully combines memories of both his nostalgic childhood and of his family with strong political themes in his powerful seven minute video, The Third Vision: Around 01:00 pm (2008). The severe clash between part of the Islamic world (Egypt) and the West (USA) is depicted through several documentary films, which run parallel with Hafez’s autobiographical story. A very powerful, intense, yet humorous characteristic is revealed as Hafez deals with his personal story and the sensitive political discourse in Egypt. The Philippine artist, Josephine Turalba used several empty bullet shells to make a dress for Diwata,

2

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (1998). Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies. London and New York: Routledge, p 68.

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Curatorial Conception 6

who is a goddess and guardian of the place, Genius loci.3 Utilising empty bullet shells to create Diwata’s dress has a strong personal connection to Turalba as her father was shot dead several years ago.4 Turalba’s video, Diwata (2009) interrogates psychological and physical geographical boundaries, as well as exploring authenticity in identities before political colonisation in the Philippines.

The English-born and Pakistan-based artist, David Alesworth, has a long-term interest in the issue of environmental degradation, with a particular concern for the nuclear threat to humans.5 In Alesworth’s series of digital images, Domestic Displacement (2009-2010), he has created a sculpture inspired by the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi’s first atomic pile in 1942, which he has placed in various domestic spaces.6 Through a fisheye lens, the domestic scene becomes twisted as if being viewed via a spy hole. Domestic Displacement depicts a sense of discomfort caused by the atomic pile placed in domestic spaces, and it also reveals Alesworth’s concern about the impact of nuclear war on humans. It provides a critical view on whether nuclear power/weapons contribute to or have the potential to destroy our lives.

Another Pakistan-based artist, Huma Mulji is internationally well-known for her life-size stuffed buffaloes. However, instead of showing her sculptural buffaloes, here Mulji shows three extremely powerful digital images, Pardesi Pride (2008), White Cement and Marble Dust (2008) and Housing Scheme (2008), all of which juxtapose the images of buffaloes with Western-style buildings, signifying both modernisation and industrialisation. A sense of nostalgia is seen via these buffaloes, which symbolise Pakistan’s traditional farming culture. The view of deserted pseudo-Western buildings juxtaposed with the animals creates a rather odd and surreal scene, and it is this kind of discomfort that allows the viewer to re-consider the reality of what many Pakistanis consider an utopian condition, i.e. Westernisation.

From artist’s statements in the handout of the show and in the artist’s website, http://www.josephineturalba.net/state/Diwata.html, accessed on 5 Jan 2012.

Conversations with Josephine Turalba at Tranzfabrik in Berlin in August 2009.

5 Introductory information for the exhibition, HALF-LIFE, New Work by David Alesworth and Huma Mulji, Zahoor-ul-Akhlaq Gallery, National college of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan, 16 Feb – 4 March 2009.

6 Korp, Maureen. ‘Half Lives’ in The Friday Times, 13-19 March 2009, pp 16-17.

3 4

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Curatorial Conception 7

Polish-born and New York-based artist, Magda Biernat exhibited a series of her photographs in various sizes, The Other in Me (2010). By documenting diasporic people living in New York, Biernat captures individuality and the hybridised self. The Other in Me is exhibited as a large wall installation, with the photographs hung according to a specific design by Biernat. Ordinary everyday objects are captured in the photographs, but because they resemble cultural symbols of people, a strong yet poetic sense of nostalgia is manifested.

As a foreign bride, the Taiwanese artist, Chia-Wei Kung expresses hybridised identities from various different cultures, including herself as an East Asian woman and her husband who is ethnically South Asian who is a British citizen.7 With cheerful and festival-like music in the background, Kung parallels different bridal images with references to Chinese, Nepalese and British cultures, through which she examines the complexity of cross-cultural and cross-ethnic marriages.

In the triptych video, Adrift (2004), British artist, Anna Lucas shows her concepts of travelling by filming many different harbours around the world, through which a sense of melancholic departure and displacement is shown. Poetic, sombre but honest, Adrift captures the sound of people, birds, ferries, wind and thunder, all of which contribute to the rich and multi-sensory experience of travelling.

Sarajevo-born and UK-based artist, Lala Meredith-Vula exhibits a series of photographs, Shifting Borders (2006-2007), taken in Kosova, Albania and England.8 Meredith-Vula, dressed in traditional Kosovan costume in dreamlike scenes, looks as if she is lost in memory, the past and nostalgia. In the Shifting Borders series, Meredith-Vula has also juxtaposed the traditional and the contemporary, through which she has created an equilibrium while located in nature, historical relics or villages. A mysterious and disturbed quality appears in this beautiful body of work.

7 8

Conversations with Chia-Wei Kung in Taipei, Taiwan in September 2009.

Artist’s statement in Turner, Ming. (ed) (2010). 0&1: Cyberspace and the Myth of Gender. Exhibition Catalogue. Leicester: De Montfort University, p 112.

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Curatorial Conception 8

Having lived in France for nearly ten years, Deng Wen-Jen creates a zone of comfort and nostalgia in art by visualising a series of works embracing the themes of Taiwan’s popular culture, food and erotic desire. Primarily a combination of painting and textile art, Deng's works are highly decorative and characteristically full of iconographic metaphors, demanding the viewer's full attention to the detail and a meticulous eye for identifying the metaphors and symbols.9 Deng exhibits six new pieces of work, including Fried Chicken (2011), Pig’s Hoof (2011), Tann-ah Noodles (2011), Stinky Tofu (2011), Si-Siang-Fong (2011) and RiceMeat Dumplings (2011), all of which are named based on famous Taiwanese cuisine, constituting to her nostalgic vision of a ‘beautiful life’.

UK-based artist, Paul Gent shows a large multimedia piece, What Would You Take With You? (2011) and also created a body of new work based on workshops that he led with school children in the venues. What Would You Take With You? is created mostly with brown and gold, with some naïve yet bold brush strokes, illustrating figures of children. Inspired by Sue Mackrell and David McCormack’s poems, What Would You Take With You? demonstrates the relationship between children and the Holocaust.10 In response to the curatorial theme, a body of new work, Beautiful Life (2011-12), was specifically created by Gent during his workshops. Beautiful Life was predominately created with black-and-white drawings and texts shown on several pieces of timber, hung either on the wall or in-between columns at the venues. Gent’s Beautiful Life is an essential element of the show as it links all three venues together, while the artist himself has travelled between the regions and nations during the tour, which is itself a physical manifestation of the project.

Kevin Ryan and Natalie Chabaud from Charnwood Arts in the UK were commissioned to produce videos for the project: Beautiful Life: Bracknell (2011), Beautiful Life:

Further examination about Deng Wen-Jen’s work can be seen in Turner, Ming. (2011). ‘Food, Popular Culture and Representation: The Fantasy World Seen Through Deng WenJen’s Eyes’ in Modern Art Asia, Issue 7, Aug 2011, http://www.modernartasia.com/Ming%20Turner.pdf, accessed on 6 Jan 2012.

10 Paul Gent’s What Would You Take With You? was commissioned by Charnwood Arts for National Holocaust Memorial Day 2011, and was initially displayed at Charnwood Museum in January 2011.

9

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Curatorial Conception 9

Hinckley (2011) and Beautiful Life: Kaohsiung (2012).11 Ryan and Chabaud have interviewed people on the streets in Bracknell, Hinckley, and Kaohsiung (Taiwan). During the filming they asked questions related to the curatorial themes of the project, including ‘what is your happiest memory?’, ‘what are the most important events in your life?’, ‘what was your life changing moment?’, ‘what is your earliest memory?’, ‘what is beautiful about life?’, ‘what makes you feel nostalgic?’, etc. These rather light-hearted interviews, with people from various cultural, ethnic, age and gender backgrounds, were conducted by Ryan and Chabaud, through which they have encouraged the general public to consider and express their own concepts of nostalgia and a beautiful life.

Finally, it is essential to note that the selection of three venues for the project was based on a particular strategy. As nostalgia relates to individual or collected emotional reactions towards a symbolic past, it is important from my curatorial point of view that the venues themselves should also reflect this kind of psychological desire. The first venue, South Hill Park was originally built in 1760 for William Watts, following his retirement from service as a senior official of the Bengal Government.12 The Creative Hinckley Gallery was a Victorian hosiery factory, whilst the Pier-2 Art District in Taiwan is a former warehouse at Kaohsiung Harbour.13 The three venues are so-called alternative spaces, each carrying certain historical and heritage references of the region. The connection between these three cross-regional and cross-national venues indicates the concept of the link between different cultures and spaces which themselves have their own stories, and which create a sense of memory and nostalgia. Last but not least, the choice of venues also explores my own autobiographical journey between the UK and Taiwan, and thus my own nostalgia and expectations about a beautiful life and home.

Lower resolution of the videos can be seen from youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puyfbrSYNec&feature=player_embedded and https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=acXlaenkouY&feature=related, accessed on 7 Jan 2012.

12 Further information can be seen on the website of South Hill Park, http://www.southhillpark.org.uk/129/about-us/history-of-south-hill-park.html, accessed on 4 Jan 2012.

13 Further information about Creative Hinckley Gallery and The Pier-2 Art District can be found on their websites: http://www.creativehinckley.co.uk/about and http:// pier-2.khcc.gov.tw/e_content/about/about01.aspx, accessed on 7 Jan 2012.

11

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Curatorial Conception 10

About the Curator: Dr Ming Turner received her PhD in Art History and Theory at Loughborough University, with research interest in postcolonial and feminist theories. Her previous curatorial projects include Taiwan Digital Art Pulse Stream Plan: Body, Gender, Technology (2010-11), held at Digital Art Center Taipei; 0&1: Cyberspace and the Myth of Gender (2010), staged at the 501 Contemporary Art Centre, Chongqing, China; Simply Screen: Inbetweeners of Asia (2009), held at Tranzfabrik, Berlin and The Bhavan, London. She publishes widely internationally, including Women’s Studies in the West (Beijing: China Renmin University Press, 2011), Gender and Women’s Leadership (London: Sage, 2010), n.paradoxa (2010, 2012) and The International Journal of the Arts in Society (2009). She is a regular contributor to Artist Magazine in Taiwan and is currently curating a major show for the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, scheduled for late 2013. She lectures Critical and Contextual Studies at De Montfort University.

David Alesworth 11

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

David Alesworth www.davidalesworth.com

Following "12.2.42" the large site specific installation from the joint showing (with Huma Mulji at NCA,) entitled "Half-Life" in February-March 2009, the individual units were reconfigured to displace the living spaces of my home. The resulting photographic documentation was rendered into HDR images. The displacements were initially intended as the domestic impingement of nuclearisation and weaponization in the sub-continent. Besides the ever-present threat of nuclear war, there is the even more insidious threat of an invisible nuclear industry and its environmental fall-out. These disjunctures might also be read as an ideological displacement of the individuals’ living space in an increasingly theocratic society.

David Chalmers Alesworth is an artist, art educator and avid gardener (in its broadest terms). He has been living and working in Pakistan for the past twenty-two years and has a long history of collaboration and a deep involvement with the urban crafts and bazaars of Pakistan. He was a pivotal member of the decorated transport movement of Karachi in the 1990s and subsequently moved to Lahore in 2006. Over the years, Alesworth has examined the conventions and visual codes of Pakistani society and of urban life in particular. His work has often addressed the aesthetic of Pakistan’s urban street culture and through this speaks of his twined issues of nuclearisation and environmental degradation. These concerns resonate through a long career that continues to reinvent itself stylistically.

Domestic Displacement, digital print, 51 cm x 76 cm, 2009-2010

Domestic Displacement, digital print, 51 cm x 76 cm, 2009-2010

Magda Biernat 12

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Magda Biernat www.magdabiernat.com

In today's world, moving around has become cheaper than ever before, working nearly anywhere is possible and geographic boundaries are losing their relevance. Many of us today are in a state of constant movement, refusing to accept the static nature of the traditional way of living.

Running a semi-nomadic lifestyle, we move often from country to country as we would from house to house, creating new temporary homes consisting of an ever growing fusion of cultures with which we identify period. The Other in Me project explores the notions of displacement, belonging, nostalgia, identity and otherness. Due to geographic fluidity, being neither here nor there, many of us suffer from confusion about our cultural roots. While in a state of "in-betweenness" we search for a real connection to a place and a definition of our identity period.

The Other in Me, digital image, 2010

The Other in Me, digital image, 2010

A native of Poland currently based in New York, Magda Biernat (b.1978) is a multi-media artist whose works range from the architectural and landscapes to conceptual photography and video installations. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally and she has been the recipient of several awards, such as the TMC/Kodak Grant, the Lucie Award and Magenta Foundation Flash Forward. She recently earned her MFA in New Media from the Transart Institute. Her work is represented by Clic Gallery in New York City.

Deng Wen-Jen 13

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Wen-Jen Deng

Feast - Tann-ah Noodles, soft sculpture, made by fabric and embroidery, 53 cm x 45 cm, 2011

Feast - Pig’s Hoof, soft sculpture, made by fabric and embroidery, 53 cm x 45 cm, 2011

Primarily a combination of painting and textile art, Deng Wen-Jen's works are highly decorative and characteristically full of iconographic metaphors, demanding the viewer's full attention to the details and a meticulous eye for identifying the metaphors and symbols. The series can be seen as a paramount example of how Deng makes a connection between food and erotic desire. This series uses food-based metaphors to address issues concerning gender and sexuality, however, the pieces in the “Festin-Culture” series tend to be larger in size and use more traditional symbols and iconography, as they draw heavily on various food-based metaphors, including fruit, meat and vegetables, as well as images of male and female bodies, and even images suggesting sexual intercourse.

Deng Wen-Jen was born in Hualian Taiwan in 1970, and received a DNSAP. from the National Superior Fine Arts School in Paris in 1999, and a DNAP from Bordeaux Fine Arts School in 1996. She was artist in residence at CAMAC, Marnay sur Seine (2005), Stock 20 in Taichung, Taiwan (2002-2003) and La Source, Normandie (1999-2000). She has shown her work internationally, including the Hantoo Art Group 2.0, Taichung Creative and Cultural Park, Taichung, Taiwan (2010), Amazement and Astonishment – Hantoo Art Group's Adventure to the West, Chongqing Art Museum, Chongqing, China (2010), Akudou Power 2009 Hantoo Art Group, Lin & Keng Gallery, Beijing (2009) and Betel Nut Beauties, Point Éphémère, Paris, France (2008).

Paul Gent 14

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Paul Gent

What Would You Take With You? was commissioned by Charnwood Arts and was created in relation to a body of poems, 'Children of the Holocaust', by Sue Mackrell and David McCormack. The poems were created with year 6 school children from four schools in Leicestershire, UK. Paul used fragments of the poems to illustrate this series of works related to the Holocaust and other acts of genocide.

What Would You Take With You?, multimedia, size varied, 2011

Paul received a BA in Fine Art from Loughborough College of Art and Design in 1997. Paul is a freelance visual artist specializing in a ‘hands on’ approach to challenging social issues with young people in schools and the youth environment. His artist specialism includes drawing and cartoons, painting and 3D cardboard models, and game making. He has delivered projects in the UK and abroad, including in the Balkans, Rwanda, Gujarat and Palestine. His work typically addresses the themes of education, criminal and anti-social behaviour, health, identity, belonging and social inclusion.

Many of the projects that he has undertaken have demanded a fun and flexible attitude, while focusing on individual needs, and this has enabled him to develop a wide range of creative skills.

What Would You Take With You?, multimedia, size varied, 2011

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Paul Gent 15

Paul Gent

Leading a workshop with school children at Creative Hinckley Gallery in January 2012

Beautiful Life, mixed media, a gallery view at the Pier-2 Art District in Taiwan in April 2012

Paul Gent is a visual and community artist who has worked with Charnwood Arts on a wide range of projects since the mid 1990s. Paul studied the work of the exhibition artists and came up with a range of questions which participants chose at random and which they were then encouraged to respond to in text and drawing. The work produced at Bracknell for a single facing display was then transferred to Hinckley where it was hung between two pillars thus creating a double sided piece of collective art which emerged throughout the period of the exhibition. In the workshops Paul encouraged creative responses through drawings on paper that he then transferred in ink to the wooden slats that make up the piece, also called ‘Beautiful Life’. In Taiwan Paul worked with local schools and in the gallery space to create a new site specific work with people, along the same themes and through the same questions.

Khaled Hafez 16

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Khaled Hafez www.khaledhafez.net

The video work is a nostalgic narrative of visuals that I have kept in my memory for as far back as I can remember - in fact, for over forty years - memories that shape my practice today. In this work I use archival photographs from my own family album, photographs I have collected along my itinerary over the years as I was developing as an artist, as well as film footage, some extracted from VHS-recorded TV material and/or the Internet, isolated from its original context, and assembled in a hybridized manner to create a personal narrative. I used a narrator, myself, who substitutes vocal narration with a typewritten text, to hide the nature of the exact age of the narrator as well as her/his gender for as long as possible as it appears on screen. I tried to make The Third Vision: Around 1:00 pm look like the story of everyone, the everyone who keeps nostalgic memories of love, fear, family, war, death and playfulness.

Khaled Hafez was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1963, and he still lives and works in the city. He was visiting artist at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, USA (2005), the Ecole Nationale SupÊrieure d’Art, Limoges, France (2005), the Rockefeller Bellagio Center, Italy (2009), and the McColl Center for Visual Arts, North Carolina, USA (2009). He is an established international artist, and has regularly shown his work internationally, including Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain (2010), IN/FLUX: Awkward Conversations, the 17th African Film Festival, New Museum, New York, USA (2010), the 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale, Thessaloniki, Greece (2009), Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East, The Saatchi Gallery, London (2009), and the Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, China (2008).

The Third Vision: Around 01:00 pm, 7 minutes, still image, 2008

The Third Vision: Around 01:00 pm, 7 minutes, still image, 2008

Huma Mulji 17

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Huma Mulji http://humamulji.com

Pardesi Pride, digital image, 74 cm x 115 cm, 2008

White Cement and Marble Dust, digital image, 74 cm x 115 cm, 2008

My works broadly address the visual and cultural overlaps of language, image and taste that create the most fantastic collisions. Looking at this phenomenon with formal and conceptual irony and humour, the works are surreal juxtapositions of images. Rather than dwell on existing theoretical issues of living and working in a post-colonial country, the work for me is research into the realities of living in Pakistan. Arabian Delight plays with ideas of travel, transition, and the movement of goods and ideas, both legal and illegal, but also of the unacceptable, forced Arabisation of a south Asian country like Pakistan, away from its regional identity to a deliberate, religious one of the Middle East.

Huma Mulji was born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1970, and completed her Bachelors in Fine Art from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in 1995 and an MFA in New Media Arts, from Transart Institute, Donau-Universit채t Krems, Austria, in 2010. Mulji's participation in recent selected exhibitions includes Where Three Dreams Cross, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010), The Empire Strikes Back, The Saatchi Gallery (2010), Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan, Asia Society, NY (2009), Half-Life, Zahoor ul Akhlaq Gallery, Lahore (2008), and Farewell to Post-Colonialism, Third Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, China (2008), Desperately Seeking Paradise, Pakistan Pavilion, ART DUBAI, UAE (2008) and Arabian Delight, Rohtas Gallery, Lahore (2008).

Anna Lucas 18

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Anna Lucas Adrift is a video installation that transforms daily experience into epic drama or sensual intimacy, which was commissioned by the Chisenhale Gallery, London and Picture This Moving Image, Bristol and was supported by Film London.

Adrift focuses on travel, displacement and migration, and it combines film projections, still images and sound, forming cinematic interludes that are inflected with reverie and tenderness, disquiet and departure. In Adrift, visitors move through an assembly of Super-8 films and projected slides, shot by Lucas around the world. Images of movement and passage form a thread throughout the installation: ports, ferries and embarkation are soundtracked by Lucas’s field recordings of public gatherings, overheard music, birds, wind, helicopters and thunder. Lucas’s idiosyncratic film language is foregrounded in her long takes, a rich filmic sensibility and the use of classical framing. This is often combined with her depictions of imperfect landscapes, utilitarian architecture and temporary resting places.

Adrift, video (triptych), 18’37’’, still image, 2004

Adrift, video (triptych), 18’37’’, still image, 2004

Anna Lucas was born in 1970, and lives and works in London. She received her BA in Fine Art from Sheffield Hallam University in 1993. She has received several awards and residencies, including the Arlington Arts Centre, Washington State, USA (2009), A4E Grant (2009, 2007, 2000), the Wellcome Trust Fellow at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art & Dept, and at Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics Dept, Oxford University (2008), the Henry Moore Sculpture Fellowship, Spike Island, Bristol (2002) and the Clark’s Bursary Residency, Prema Art Centre Gloucestershire (1999). Lucas has produced numerous films, working closely with her subjects and collaborators, including: The Space Between Your Mind and Eyes (2001, commissioned by the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham); Viva Great Yarmouth! (2000, a collaboration with the poet, John Cooper Clarke); and Just a Moment (1999, Prema Arts Centre residency). Lucas has also worked with Channel 4, Resonance FM, Dance for the Screen and Poetry International.

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Lala Meredith-Vula 19

Lala Meredith-Vula www.lalameredithvula.com

Shifting Borders is a personal journey in two cultures, showing photographs taken in Kosova, Albania and England, evoking the story of one person’s life as emblematic of a wider diaspora - that of Albanians. I have an English mother and an Albanian Kosova father and was born in the former Yugoslavia. These photographs are snapshots from my subconscious. They are like stills from my interior world, being a mixture of nostalgia, dreams, longing for home and something more beautiful than the world of the present.

Shifting Borders, silverprint analogue photographs, 1 m x 1.5 m, 2007

Shifting Borders, silverprint analogue photographs, 1 m x 1.5 m, 2007

Lala was born in Sarajevo in 1966. She studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London University (1985/88) and Postgraduate Studies at Pristina University, Kosova (1988/90). She has represented Albania at the Venice Biennale, (1999 and 2007), and has exhibited nationally and internationally with many solo shows including: The Photographers’ Gallery, London (1991), Gallery Kohinoor, Karlsruhe, Germany (2003) and Placentia Arte, Piacenza, Italy (1999). Other shows include the Alberto Peola Gallery, Torino, Italy (2002 and 2008), the National Gallery of Albania, Tirana (2004 and 2007). Lala has also exhibited in many group shows, including Damien Hirst’s “Freeze”, London (1988), “Through The Looking Glass”, New York (1999) and “f – stop”, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland (2004). Further shows include the Museo di Belle Arti, Genoa, Italy (2004), Fries Museum, Holland (2008) “Freeze 20”, Hospital Club Gallery, London (2008), FotoGrafia, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2009). She won the Rome Scholarship at the British School Rome (2001). Her work is in public collections, such as the Arts Council of Britain, London; the National Gallery of Albania; Collezione La Gaia, Busca, Italy; the Teseco Foundation, Piza, Italy. Meredith-Vula lives in England and lectures at De Montfort University. She is represented by the Alberto Peola Gallery, Turin, and exhibited new work at Doria Pamphilj, Rome in March 2010.

Chia-Wei Kung 20

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Chia-Wei Kung Through a digital image collage, the work tries to explore the cultural differences and integration issues created by a foreign marriage under the context of globalization. In this video, three different bridal styles have been used to represent the three different cultures involved: China, Nepal and the United Kingdom. The images of the brides have been split in half and rapidly rearranged into an image of a bride with the left and right side of her body in different styles, describing the switching roles found in complex foreign marriages, as well as the mood transitions between anxiety and fun. After creating a strong visual impression by cutting the bride’s image in half, the artwork collages the elements representing the different cultures in the half silhouette space, with the intention to reinforce the audience’s direct associations of the concepts being elaborated.

A+B=?, video, 3’00’’, still image, 2009

A+B=?, video, 3’00’’, still image, 2009

Kung Chia-Wei was born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1974. She graduated from the Department of Multimedia and Animation Art at the National Taiwan University of Art. She has shown her work at the 2010 Women Make Waves Film Festival, Taiwan, Simply Screen: In-Betweeners of Asia, Tanzfabric Berlin and London (2009), and Interdisciplinary Horizon - The Exhibition of Lin Pey Chwen + Digital Art Lab, Taichung (2009).

Josephine Turalba 21

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Josephine Turalba www.josephineturalba.net

Diwata is a video installation of place, boundaries, maps ‐ investigating.

Territories, both physically and emotionally, a process of the mapping of memory and travel, both mental and physical. I am perplexed by the relationship between statistics, institutional documents, such as location maps, land titles and numbers and the actual place and people who live there. Diwata is a goddess and guardian of the place – the Spirit – Genius loci, but, I dressed her with bullets. Diwata has transformed into the critical reflection of the place by warning and reminding people of who they were before colonial times. She insists on questioning, investigating, transforming and re‐defining her people’s identity today.

Josephine Turalba was born in the Philippines in 1965, and lives and works in Manila, Philippines.

Turalba is an interdisciplinary artist who incorporates painting, photography, video, sound and installation to explore her subject matter. She received her MFA in New Media from the Transart Institute at Universität Krems in Austria in 2009. She has shown her works internationally, including at the 12th International Cairo Biennale, Cairo, Egypt (2010), Nothing to Declare, Yuchengco Museum, Manila (2011), The World Next Door, Malta Contemporary Art Center, Malta (2009), Tutok Krisis: Kalunasan Anong K Mo?, Blanc Art Space, Manila (2008).

Diwata, Performance and Video Installation, still image, 2’15’’, 2009

Diwata, Performance and Video Installation, 2’15’’, still image, 2009

Kevin Ryan 22

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Kevin Ryan Kevin Ryan is an experienced community artist who has been actively involved at local, national and international levels with this important international movement in art since 1976. He is a practicing photographer, maker of short films and a poet. He is currently the CEO of Charnwood Arts, a long-established community arts and media organization based in the East Midlands of the UK.'Surface Tension' is series of twenty large images, exploring emotional responses to debris and reflections in UK waterways, formed an additional element of the exhibition at Pier 2 in Kaohsiung.

I think about how life has been enriched by living near water.

The sea, a river, a stream, or, as has happened so often for me, living near one of Britain's canals, historic man made industrial waterways with a life, history and customs of their own.

My life has been punctuated by beauty found along countless miles of canal towpaths, both through the English countryside and through cities such as Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester, London and my own home town of Loughborough. All the places where these images were made.

My father walked into work six miles along the Grand Union Canal into Birmingham when I was a child and at weekends we would walk together the other way out beyond the city.

These are some of my happiest memories.

Then came a day and an event that haunts me still…even more than my own close encounters with drowning. My little cousin Rosie fell into the Grand Union and was drowned in its dark waters.

These waterways are so full of memories and I look back with nostalgia at the other country I walked in as a child…at the time before she died. There has been something a little too fascinating in those waters at times…some siren child beckoning me to join her…I still find canals quite emotional places to be.

My adult steps now so often lead me into the city, the opposite direction from my childhood…the detritus of city life collecting in those waters…

Surface Tension, digital photograph

she takes her last breath caught in the surface tension leaves form a loose wreath

Natalie Chabaud & Kevin Ryan 23

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

Natalie Chabaud & Kevin Ryan Natalie Chabaud and Kevin Ryan of Charnwood Arts have produced three films to accompany Beautiful Life: Memory and Nostalgia. The films were made in the locations of the exhibition, Bracknell, Hinckley and Taiwan. They involved engaging local residents with questions raised by Paul Gent through the participatory workshops. The films were included within the UK and Taiwan exhibitions through projection and on screen and provide a link through to the themes of the exhibition illustrating the preoccupations of participant’s own lives.

Beautiful Life – Hinckley, Video, still image, 2011

Charnwood Arts is a community arts and media organisation based in the East Midlands region of the UK. It was established in 1976 and has been responsible for thousands of public engagements ranging from workshops, events, short to long term projects, publications, short films and programmes of work in the UK and Internationally.

Beautiful Life – Bracknell, Video, still image, 2011

BEAUTIFUL LIFE: Memory and Nostalgia

24

28 Nov 2011 – 13 Jan 2012 10 Sep – 13 Nov 2011 South Hill Park, UK

Creative Hinckley Gallery, UK

7 - 29 April 2012

The Pier-2 Art District, Taiwan

25

Editor: Ming Turner Manuscript Reviewer: Colin Turner Designer: Wen Li Tseng, wenlitseng57@gmail.com Publisher: Charnwood Arts, 27 Granby St, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3DU, UK Published Date: August 2012 ISBN 978-1-903947-32-6 Š All images and text: Copyright of the authors/artists and with kind permission