Hong Kong Arts Center, Wan Chai｜Words Beyond The Literal — Exhibition at The Gallery of Hong Kong Art School

Description

“Words Beyond The Literal” is a group show which includes three Hong Kong local artists who utilize different materials, themes, and techniques to express their individual perceptions. This show represents the artists’ dialogue between the artists’ past and present.

“Everything Exists Because It Is Perceived” The theme starts from the artists’ personal feelings and focuses on specific moments in time, suggesting that the past, present, and future may coexist, creating an experience that transcends traditional concepts of time. Through mirrors, we glimpse the artists’ worldviews; the compositions in stainless steel stimulate the audience’s senses; and the exploration of everyday experiences delves into one’s sense of existence. The works raise questions about the boundaries of reality and imagine possibilities of existence beyond our familiar world. They explore the meaning of human existence, the boundaries between reality and dreams, and highlight the unseen elements that deeply move us, awakening new perspectives on how we view and contemplate the hidden possibilities of the universe.

Artists: Ella HO Yuk Ying, Miiu LEUNG Miu Ping, LUK Tsing Yuen

Bio

Ella HO Yuk Ying graduated from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (RMIT) and Hong Kong Art School in 2014 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, major in Painting. Her practice spans installation, painting, and mixed media, employing poetic and metaphorical visual language to explore personal experience, perceptual transformation, and the subtle conditions of human relationships.

Her practice is deeply informed by everyday life and the theory of relational aesthetics. She is concerned with how events are recorded, and how intangible emotions, experiences, and interactions may be perceived and represented within distant or shifting interpersonal relationships. Rather than treating narrative or metaphor as ends in themselves, her works engage a diversity of media and forms of expression to continuously investigate the complex connections between existence, relationships, and perception.

In her artistic methodology, she places emphasis on the processes of practice, exploration, and reflection, through which she develops an understanding of herself and the world around her. She is also attentive to the role of multisensory experience in art, using audience participation and interaction to expand the perceptual and interpretive dimensions of her works, thereby prompting deeper experiences and reflection.

Miiu LEUNG Miu Ping received her Master of Visual Art in Hong Kong and participated in a number of cross-territory projects in Asia. She takes an experimental len to explore the complexities of postcolonial and feminist identity. She approaches a variety of media, including installation, soundwork, environmental performance and ceramics, challenging and blurring the boundaries between media and spaces.

Her artistic practice synthesizes cultural narrative with quotidian experience, mobilizing art as a means to awaken viewers’ consciousness regarding their own existence and the pressing concerns of the natural environment. Her work is profoundly informed by existentialist philosophy, manifesting a sustained critical reflection on the complexities of contemporary life.

In an era that relentlessly propels us forward, She chooses to focus on the liminal moment in which an object’s utilitarian value dissipates and meaning begins to emerge, thereby revealing the affective and psychological traces embedded within. By stripping everyday objects of their functional roles, the artist recontextualizes materiality within an alternative semantic register. Her artistic process thus functions as a form of slow practice—a deliberate deceleration—that seeks to unearth the latent profundity and agency concealed within the ordinary.

LUK Tsing Yuen graduated from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (RMIT) and Hong Kong Art School, the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the Department of Fine Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2005, 2011 and 2013 respectively. In 2020, he participated in the Jockey Club ICH+ Innovative Heritage Education Programme, co-organised by the Lingnan University and Hong Kong Art School. In this programme, he practised the craft of galvanised iron and applied its skill in creating his contemporary craft.

In artistic creation, he focuses on creating three-dimensional works, exploring the possibilities of developing material and arousing the audience’s imagination. He likes to investigate materiality and re-invent the material world with a child’s mind and expects to create a new story of the craft of galvanised iron. He is good at using the craft of galvanised iron and casting skills with plastic and chemical reagents.

He has also been invited to participate in local and overseas exhibitions, including the local exhibitions ‘Art Basel Hong Kong’ (Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, 2021, 2022), ‘ICH+ Annual Showcase’ (chi K11 artspace, 2021; Hong Kong Arts Centre, 2022), ‘The Collectible Art Fair’ (Hong Kong Arts Centre, 2023), ‘Garden Fantasy – Contemporary Landscape Installation’ (Asia Society Hong Kong Center, 2023). He also participated in the overseas exhibition ‘Beyond Borders: Traces of Hong Kong Stories’ (CF Richmond Centre, Vancouver, Canada, 2022).