Deferral | Echo @ CCA Derry/ Londonderry 2023
https://www.ccadld.org/exhibitions/deferral-echo
by Anna Liesching
This body of work represents the push/pull between journey and stillness in Kwok Tsui’s practice and life. As a close witness to the development of Kwok’s work over the past year, it has been inspiring to watch him channel his own emotions and experiences through painting in new ways: ways that Kwok has perhaps distanced from before. Deferral, the feeling of missing milestones and moments, has been a constant in Kwok’s experience since he emigrated here in his early teens. The migration process, and the consequent lack of security, has delayed education, professional practice, childhood and even grief.
These paintings exist on a flat plane, echoing the influence of Kwok’s native Hong Kong. This dimensionality, or lack thereof, provides a depth of meaning in relation to Kwok’s personal journey and the disruptions and moments of stasis within. These experiences of movement, disruption, and stasis are now more evident in his work. It is a result of Kwok blending his multiple identities and sharing more openly that has led him to reflect honestly on the canvas.
These are not works meant to create negative feeling or isolation in the viewer but, in his own words, “hug you”. The paintings are experiential: you walk into them. They are fragments or echoes of stories - Kwok’s and, he hopes, the viewer’s. You, as the audience, are included in his experience; invited to relate or empathise to feelings of isolation and uncertainty whilst resting in a calm space. A break from the outside world.
Despite this comforting space, however, there is an edge beneath the surface. Kwok’s experiences point the viewer to the chaos and upheaval migrancy, detention and the lack of a home can cause. These works envelop the audience, providing a space to sit with these multiplicities. A deferral from the upheaval. In a sense the deferrals in these works are both positive and negative.
Kwok’s use of geometry has multiple connotations. He admits that this obsession with shape is about trying to fit in. In past works, these shapes have been more obvious abstract landscapes. What we see in this current exhibition have a more other worldly embrace, though they are still worlds to enter. For me, they represent the push and pull between isolation and safety. When circles are
placed together: does the bigger protect or cast shadow over the smaller? The diptych of one circle on each canvas represents Kwok and his mother: though they exist under the same moon and sky, their experiences are now worlds apart. Deferral is central to these experiences. Kwok’s childhood was deferred on moving to NI with his mother in his teens. His adulthood has been deferred as he grappled with a bureaucratic immigration system with no mechanism for emotional support, while his mother returned to her life in Hong Kong. The right angles in other pieces represent a precipice; possibly a literal representation of the paperwork and the isolation of not having the language to complete it. Kwok is on these dynamic plains and the, almost humming, surroundings represent the continuing life of others around him. His life. His potential. A life that he feels deferred from.
Though these works represent a journey, and the leap to a more personal output, they are also a beginning. Kwok Tsui is gaining momentum with each exhibition, each feeds into the next and, with this body of work, is a taking on more energy. While this work reflects on struggles and the universality of grief, these paintings also pose questions about changing identities and place. While Kwok feels he borrows from European and Asian cultures, he also questions why he is frequently encouraged to look to western art for inspiration. In this, and future work, Kwok seeks to echo both spheres of influence and thereby to engage with painting and identities more globally and fluidly.
Kwok has spoken to me about how he is, perhaps, hiding behind these works, protected by paint in the shadow of his circles. As a viewer I disagree. These works are inviting us in to have a conversation. These are not slight or subtle paintings but through their vulnerability, they are strong, bold and honest. Kwok is creating ownership of his practice through his heritage, new life and new identities. In doing so, he raises a wider provocation about the need to create a new visual culture that represents displacement, in all its emotional, physical, and mental guises.
Biography-
Anna Liesching is Curator of Art at the Ulster Museum, National Museums NI. She is primarily responsible for the national collection of works of art on paper, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Gifted Collection and Troubles Art Archive. Her two main areas of research focus on redressing the underrepresentation of women artists from 1750 to present and the essential role of artists as activists, recognising art as a facet of the material culture of social history. She also has a keen interest in interdisciplinary practice and sits on the steering group for the UKRI-funded Acts of Union: Mixed Marriage in Modern Ireland project at Queen’s University Belfast, and an advisory project panel for the Rural Community Network. Much of Anna’s wider curatorial practice explores partnerships and collaboration through loan exhibitions, and projects such as Ekphrasis: Poetry & Art with the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.
Border | Sky @ RHA, Dublin
17 November 2023 - 28 January 2024
Words by Artist, Joy Gerrard
To me, these are emotionally potent works. Much is contained within the four sides
of a canvas.
Kwok has used abstraction and rigidity to suggest the flawed and difficult parameters
he has faced as an immigrant in Northern Ireland. These works are both rigid and
flowing, formal and fluid. As viewers they might make us think of our easy freedoms
and how it is horrific and cruel not to have them. And then how joyful it is to reclaim
them. Between these polls of freedom and security exists sorrow, emotion, desire
and fragility.
These are materially delicate works. Paint, mark and tone are balanced between
repetitive lines and expressive gestures. The paintings are memorials to a time and a
portent to a more hopeful future.