Abstract objects are interconnected by joints, which sprawls like a stretched limb. The integrated web of handrails, bowling pins, and more infiltrates and interacts with the occupied architecture, as though the two are negotiating for their share of the space. While outside, you see and hear a conglomerate of pieces of equipment and their sounds, with radio antennas delivering familiar yet strange frequencies to your ears. Tingle of noises plus the view of the anthropomorphic installation demands your decoding, and you’ll soon find yourself trying to connect all the orchestrated elements which are happening around you.
My interest in this fluidity, or “plasticity” as mode of sculpture is developed out of my decade-long research of plastic as a phenomenon in contemporary society. – Shirley Tse
Shirley Tse: Stakes and Holders, is a response to the artist’s presence at the 58th Venice Biennale, 2019. Presenting two of her installations, Negotiated Differences, and Playcourt, M+ will be bringing new configurations of these site-responsive installations into the M+ Pavilion from July until October 2020.
These works not only uses materials and processes to reflect the way our world is intertwined, but it also demonstrates the artist’s multidimensional thinking, in which she is particularly interested in the concept of contemporary negotiation. With feelings such as empathy and sensitivity playing a vital role in our everyday life, Tse uses that to emphasize the need for us to “connect across differences while exercising our agency as individuals”.
This is particularly true during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of having the artist, the guest curator, and the installation team working in the same space, the exhibition has been forced into a lot of improvised and extensive conversations. This adds a second layer of meaning to the artwork, highlighting how urgent negotiations can be in the modern world. Her sculptures, therefore, are more than just a puzzle of tangible objects, rather, it is a project which embodies a concept, production practicalities, and its relationship to the rest of the world.
Hear Tse talk more about her works in the video below.
Shirley Tse: Stakes and Holders
1 July–4 October 2020
11am–6pm, Wednesdays to Sundays and on public holidays
M+ Pavilion, Art Park, West Kowloon Cultural District
Free Admission
Shirley Tse. Playcourt (detail), 2019–2020. Installation view of Shirley Tse: Stakeholders, Hong Kong in Venice, 2019. Courtesy of M+ and the artist. Photo: Ela Bialkowska, OKNOstudio
Screenshots from exhibition video here.