Closer Together Exhibition and Public Program
20 JUNE – 12 AUGUST 2023
RMIT Gallery
Swanston Street, Melbourne
Closer Together
Closer Together reflects on the 25-year cross-cultural relationship between the Hong Kong Art School and RMIT’s School of Art. It is proudly one of the university’s longest running transnational educational partnerships.
The Chinese classic text the ‘Tao Te Ching’ suggests that the world is made up of what we know and what we don’t know, which are ultimately the same. Closer Together proposes that togetherness, creative dialogue and art-making can help us understand this – that through these processes we can come to better know the mysteries of the unknown. This exhibition shines a light on 15 artists from the Hong Kong Art School and RMIT community whose works celebrate connectivity and kinship and uncover new knowledge through exchange.
Artists include Kay Mei Ling Beadman, Movana Chen, Ryan Christopher Cheng, Kris Coad, Carolyn Eskdale, Daphne Alexis Ho, Jaffa Lam, Ivy MA King Chu, Sally Mannall, Drew Pettifer, Kate Siu Man Kit, Scotty So, Kwong San Tang, Fiona Wong Lai Ching and June Wong
Curated by Shirky Chan, Rachel Cheung and Tammy Wong Hulbert.
This project has been supported by the Hong Kong Art School (HKAS) and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO).
CURATORIAL TALK — Closer Together
Wednesday 21 June
12.30pm
RMIT Gallery, 344 Swanston Street, Melbourne
Join Curators Shirky Chan and Tammy Wong Hulbert for a curatorial tour of the exhibition, Closer Together. Hear about the fifteen Australian and Hong Kong based artists in the exhibition as told from a curatorial perspective.
RSVPs encouraged here
Register here
TALK: The art of Movana Chen
Thursday 22 June
12.30pm – 1.30pm
Join us in the gallery for an intimate talk between Hong-Kong based artist Movana Chen and Closer Together co-curator Shirky Chan.
Since 2004 Chen has been weaving people’s stories through KNITeratue — a genre that involves the deconstruction and reconstruction of meanings and content by knitting books. Her work is a multi-disciplinary fusion of media, performance, installation and sculpture.
To gain a unique insight into her fascinating practice, register here.
Movana Chen is a Hong Kong-based artist who studied fashion design at the London College of Fashion, UK; Fine Art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Hong Kong. Her works have been collected by the M+ museum, Hong Kong, CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile, Hong Kong.), Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Louis Vuitton, Cathay Pacific and private collectors globally. Her work has been presented at different exhibitions and art festival, from Hong Kong to London, Paris, Venice, Rotterdam, Beijing, Singapore, Seoul, Melbourne, Sydney, Istanbul to Siberia.
PANEL: Quiet Reflections through Photography
Friday 23 June
12.30pm – 1.30pm
Join us for a conversation about photography, togetherness and reflection, as Daphne Alexis Ho and Drew Pettifer explore their medium and artwork in the exhibition Closer Together.
Moderated by Associate Professor Kristen Sharp, discover how photographs can demonstrate a sense of intimacy and connection between both people and places.
To secure your spot, RSVP now
About the Speakers
Daphne Alexis Ho
Daphne Alexis Ho is a practicing photographic artist based in Hong Kong and her works have been exhibited in Melbourne, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Sanya and Hong Kong. Daphne captures the transcendental phenomenon of nature through an ethereal portrayal of landscape. Her interpretation of landscape is monochromatic and non-representational. In her photographs, Daphne focuses on the energy of nature such as balance, contrast and juxtaposition; fusing pictorial tension with aesthetic sensibility. Emotional aspects such as interaction, the idea of co-existence and infinite exchanges among different elements of nature are prevalent, allowing viewers to experience intensity and tranquillity at the same time.
Daphne is graduate of Bachelor of Fine Art (2011), Master of Fine Art (2014) and Doctor of Philosophy at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia (2018).
Drew Pettifer
Drew Pettifer is an artist, (non-practicing) lawyer and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Art at RMIT University. His art practice works across photography, video, print, sculpture, installation and performance and engages with histories of queerness, photographic theory, archival art practices, intimacy, and social politics.
PERFORMANCE AND ARTIST TALK: Scotty So
Thursday 13 July
3.00pm – 4.00pm
Join us for a performance followed by an artist talk from Scotty So, who is part of our current exhibition Closer Together at RMIT Gallery.
Scotty So is a Melbourne-based artist who works across media, using painting, photography, sculptures, site-responsive installation, videos, and drag performance. Driven by the thrill of camp, he explores the often-contradictory relationship between humour and sincerity within lived experience. Born and raised in Hong Kong, So graduated with BFA Honours at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia, 2019. So’s work has been shown in Hong Kong, China, and Australia. Scotty So is represented by MARS Gallery in Australia.
Register your attendance here
PERFORMANCE: The Invisible Child Grows Up
Wednesday 26 July
3.00pm – 4.00pm
Artist Kay Mei Ling Beadman invites you to The Invisible Child Grows Up, an intersection between performance and discussion.
Explore what it means to be (in)visible and how it relates to the individual, with a chance to stay and talk with the artist afterwards.
This lecture performance uses a tangled, multivocal combination of archival historical records, fictive responses, speculative texts, autoethnographic and interviewee accounts of lived mixed race experience in Hong Kong, as well as found photographs and wearables. It unsettles the origins and ongoing attitudes towards mixed race identity in Hong Kong, from stigma to fetishization, and how assumptions along that continuum are shaped by discredited but still prevalent racial hierarchical norms. In the bodily lived experience of mixed race, binary oppositions make no sense, there can be no fault line of ‘them’ and ‘us’ within the body. Not half but both.
Register your attendance here
Kay Mei Ling Beadman
Kay Mei Ling Beadman is an artist, researcher and co-founder of Hidden Space, an independent artist-run space in Hong Kong. She uses her own Chinese and English mixed heritage as an autoethnographic springboard to explore aspects of complex dual identity formation, drawing on embodied aspects of lived experience amid socio-politically and culturally constructed assumptions. Her practice is multidisciplinary and includes installation, video, painting, text and performance. Beadman was born in England, zigzagged between Hong Kong and the UK growing up, but has lived and worked permanently in Hong Kong since 1999. She has a BFA from the University of Reading, UK, an MFA from RMIT University, Australia, and is currently a PhD candidate at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.
Image: Movana Chen, Dreconstructing (detail), 2009. Image courtesy of the artist and Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong. Photography by Gyeonggi MoMA, Korea.