Garden of earthly delights
Of Being There... is certainly Wyndham Social's most eclectic offering to date. As the curator notes, Tse's artworks "shed light on issues as diverse as nature, personal memories, natural history, geography, cartography, family, domesticity and displacement". It's a show whose disparate fragments invite reflection: on the history of Wyndham Street as well as the viewer's own experiences of Hong Kong's urban and natural landscapes.
On the side opposite the simulated subtropical forest - with the hustle and bustle of Wyndham Street discernible yet somehow kept at bay by more art on the windows - there is a small living room of sorts, with chairs and an old television set, playing videos. In the voiceover the artist is heard sharing memories of her primary school in Kwai Chung, now facing demolition.
Porcelain casts made from leaves collected on a pilgrimage back to the school are displayed on the wall. Among several video clips playing on a separate screen - including one of the artist sharing childhood memories with her own children - is a sequence in which a leaf drifts slowly to the ground, only to shatter on impact. It's made of porcelain!
Vintage illustrations of flowers, accompanied by paper flowers created by the artist and participants in a public workshop, form the centerpiece of the exhibition. The piece is a homage to Hong Kong's erstwhile Green Bank, a 19th-century botanical garden that served as a sanctuary for exotic plants. Later, some of these imported species found their way to the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens, and multiplied across Hong Kong.
