Irene Chou Rediscovered: Paintings from the MK Lau Collection reviewed by Enid Tsui for the South China Morning Post.
An untitled work sheds light on why one of Hong Kong's most talented artists has not received the credit she deserves.
We are standing in front of a 4.5-metre-wide artwork by the late Irene Chou (1924-2011) that art historian Catherine Maudsley encouraged local businessman Victor Lo Chung-wing to buy for his MK Lau Collection of Chinese ink paintings. The work is part of the ongoing "Irene Chou Rediscovered: Paintings from the MK Lau Collection" exhibition at Duddell's, in Central. In 2015, Lo - the chief executive officer of battery maker Gold Peak Industries - paid HK$375,000 for the painting at a Christie's Hong Kong sale, a significant premium over the estimate, even though its provenance was unknown.
The authorship was never in doubt - the style and motifs are immediately recognisable and Chou's signature and seal chop are clearly seen - but what was not known was what the untitled artwork was trying to convey and when it was painted. The foreground is a surreal, gloomy landscape full of menace, with the promise of shelter and warmth in the distance. The writhing tree trunks are reminiscent of Chou's 1970s painting Tree VII, which is currently on show at the Asia Society Hong Kong's retrospective of the artist.
Born in Shanghai, Chou moved to Hong Kong in 1949. In the 70s, she painted a series of trees because, as she explained in the catalogue of her 1986 exhibition at the Fung Ping Shan Museum (now the University Museum and Art Gallery) in Pok Fu Lam, she used to sketch in the countryside close to wherever her director husband, Yi Wen, was filming, and she had ambiguous feelings about the woods: both appreciation and fear. Maudsley points out that the terracotta-coloured oval in the embrace of the gently hills in the background reminds her of The Family, another 70s work by Chou that featured in the 1986 exhibition.
Text courtesy of the South China Morning Post.
Images courtesy of the MK Lau Collection.
Finding Irene | South China Morning Post
