Lam Tung Pang's solo exhibition, Lam Tung-pang x Old House at Wong Uk Village, is on view at Yuen Chau Kok, Sha Tin, as part of the Art Promotion Office's project Hi! Houses.
Buildings of a city reveal one's memories. Old houses are the most intriguing buildings from the past because they used to be homes, where memories and traces of the life of past inhabitants allow later generations to glimpse into the good old days.
Organised by the Art Promotion Office, Hi! Houses is an art project set out to re-think the use of space in old houses. The project has chosen four century-old historic buildings in Hong Kong, namely the Dr Sun Yat-sen Museum, Old House at Wong Uk Village, Law Uk Folk Museum and Sam Tung Uk Museum and commissioned four local artists, Wilson Shieh, Lam Tung-pang, Fiona Wong and Jaffa Lam, to lead their teams to create site-specific artworks to inject new life into them. The artists apply their idiosyncratic visual lingo to project how the past inhabitants lived and what stories they had in the old houses.
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The murals on the walls and the carvings on the eaves of Wong Uk stirs up Lam Tung-pang's childhood memories. When he was young, Lam used to pay regular visits to his ancestral home with his parents four times a year from the time he started primary school. His ancestral home in Fujian is similar to Wong Uk in many ways: both are two-storey, have a courtyard. There were also many relief sculptures, and he had a very visceral feeling when he was lying in bed touching them. He believes that many people in Hong Kong would also be able to find some resonance in Wong Uk, and rekindle such nostalgia.
Lam Tung-pang, who lives in Sha Tin, turns Wong Uk into a home. He sees Sha Tin as an extension of his hometown, thus re-conceiving the relationship between 'home' and 'native place'. He recalls his ancestral home in Fujian while seeing the courtyard at Wong Uk. By placing a little house with plants inside, he infuses liveliness into the old house.
Sha Tin was once known for natural indigo dyeing. With villagers' help, Lam Tung-pang found the forgotten wrightia laevis ("big blue tree") to make indigo dye and successfully realised the "Sha Tin Indigo".
Through art installation, Lam Tung-pang juxtaposes used furniture with modern ones, and re-enacts different scenes of everyday life with paintings and everyday objects. The blue magpie in the projection, which is a frequent visitor in Sha Tin, echoes with the bird painting on the screen.
Text and image courtesy of Art Promotion Office.
Learn more --
https://www.apo.hk/en/web/apo/hi_houses.html
