The work of Chinese/New Zealand artist Yuk King Tan, now living in Hong Kong, negotiates issues such as bi-cultural and multi-cultural identity within a constantly evolving post-colonial society.
Her work, which includes detailed drawings in ash and smoke residue, exploding fire cracker installations, photographs taken from rockets, and a giant cardboard HSBC lion pushed through the streets of Hong Kong is often poetic and frequently suggestive, connecting highly different subject-matters and mediums. The meta-themes in the artist’s work unveil interests in cultural delineations, global migration, and a personal relationship to world-defining issues such as value and economy.
Yuk King Tan will discuss her oeuvre within the larger sub-text of work from contemporary New Zealand and Asia Pacific, presenting some of the most exciting works from her installation practice as well as discussing the change in her work since moving to Hong Kong in 2009. The artist will also talk about her work in Seoul in the artist group ‘Okin’ and residencies in which she participated in Germany and Australia in the context of the shifting territories of installation art, politics, and context in the fault-lines of globalisation.
Yuk King Tan has had major solo and group exhibitions, most notably at the Camden Arts Centre, London; Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen; Museum Fridericianum, Kassel; Kunstverein, Hamburg; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Wellington City Gallery, New Zealand; Hong Kong Arts Centre; and Artists Space, New York. She has held residencies at Dunedin, New Plymouth, Queensland, Aachen, Sydney, and London and has participated in international biennials in Queensland, Vilnius, Auckland, and São Paulo. She graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University, New Zealand in 1993. She has taught and lectured at graduate and post-graduate art schools. She currently lives and works in Hong Kong.