Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies, The University of the South Pacific, Laucala Campus, Suva.
Shadow Lines and Silhouettes
Suva city when not glamourized as a tourist island destination is a space that resides under the blanket of colonial structures. The capital city metropolis of the Pacific will often leave you juxtaposed with its strong cafĂŠ, bars and diverse restaurant culture alongside archaic, historical buildings standing tall. The city, caught in the past and the promising future tells a tale of how an urbane space can often encompass in itself a rural dilemma. These spaces are the produce and fish markets, the bus stations, the dirty arcades packed with Chinese takeout cafes, bread bakeries, and apparel outlets selling cheap, power loom fabrics with pacific motifs plagiarized by large Indian retail companies. The same spaces become life like caricatures for a curious man who stands outside sporting venues when big games are held and with street food hawkers who sell food at night to nightclub revelers.
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This exhibition intends to personify this city that thousands of Pacific Islanders and expats call home, to de-construct the space and look at it from the eyes of our artist, Joseph Hing. Joseph forayed into photography 10 years ago, he began with professional journey with graphic design and gradually moved into other mediums such as photography, Acrylic painting, Pastel, and now ink. The artist, Joseph thinks there are two extremes of photographic interpretation that can legitimately be called art — the kind that uses photography as the medium only, but doesn’t play to its strengths (exact reproduction) or processes away from the real. The other is using it in mix media to create spectacular art pieces.