Space for a Living Art Form

 

“I have to create a space for a living art form. In this space, the original piece of work will begin its own life journey and this evolution is uncontrolled. The activity is only influenced by environment”.

 

Summer Zhuona aims to produce a life form through materials and processes as they develop and change over time. Zhuona’s work is inspired by contemporary Land art and references the materials fromsome traditional Chinese art. She is interested in the anima(the inner self) characteristics of art and individuals, and aims to encourage personal interpretations of her process rather than dictate understanding or manipulate comprehension, ultimately leaving the space for audience imagination. Therefore individual works are untitled.

She views this exhibition as a collaboration between herself, nature, chance and environment.How the viewer will feel when they experience this work, is uncertain. The work will evolve over the period of the exhibition, providing the opportunity to be viewed in different states, at different stages. The pieces are conceived and produced using various uncontrolled conditions, methods that involve the element of chance and natural organic processes.

 

The five artworks experience environmental interventions. All share the element of time passing. Both artist and audience can observe the current state/stage of change whilst in the space.Utilising the shrubs in her suburban environment, Zhuona delegates responsibility for the outcome to the partnership of wind and chance (1). Attaching drawing pens to branches, she placed the previously stretched paper on a board and easel close to the implements, and withdrew to observe the resulting documentation of movement in space, by the marks on the paper.

In another piece, she has made her own pigments from foodstuffs blended and then frozen in a tray. (2)She scatters the cubes of colour on the paper. As the ice melts the colours move around the watercolour paper revealing an image. She cannot predict what the reaction of decomposing foodstuffs will bring to the image.If the purpose of any contemporary artist is to be curious and offer possibilities, then Zhuona is on the right path. She is endeavouring to make work that is limitless, or unpredictable, without betraying the unconfined nature of art.

In the painted diptych (3) comprising canvas, oil paint, turpentine and linseed oil, Zhouna attempts to document the trace of the elements. Once the paint and mediums have been applied to the2 canvases, they are placed outside, adjacent to a bush in the artist’s garden or on a washing line, for several days. As the wind blows, they brush against the leaves and branches creating marks, allowing the paint to resist or interact with the rainwater.Blackberries, gooseberries, wild flowers, charcoal, dirt and dustare combined to make a compost-like living image (5).These materials were crushed and pounded with a hammer directly onto rough muslin cloth against a large stone, imitating traditional methods of producing natural pigments. From this point there can either be growth or decay.

 

This exhibition prompts us to attempt an articulation of the rather complex relationship we all have with natural science, ourselves and time.When rice paper is crumpled up into balls and placed/thrown onto the floor, Liquid colour is then suspended above. (6)Openings are made in the vessels for the colour to escape. The outcome is determined by where the colour falls or seeps onto the rice paper.

 

“The viewer will experience their lives when looking at the work………..they will reflect.”

Summer Zhuona, October 2015.

 

Zhuona is from Xiamen City, Fujian Province, China. She is a postgraduate student on the MFA programme at Wimbledon, UAL. She is determined to capitalise on the freedom currently afforded her whilst in London, to express her imagination, trigger reactions in others, provoke and challenge the perceptions of herself and her Chinese contemporaries.

 

Lorraine Devine, Curator.