Preface
The Art for All Society now presents the first exhibition for this year, around six months after its move to the current site at Art Garden. With much honour we have invited Ng Man Wai, a Macao artist currently living in Germany, to showcase her brand new installation works experimentally created.
The idea of this exhibition derives from her experience as a residential artist. Last year she engaged in her artistic creation in ArToll Kunstlabor, an experimental art centre located in Bedburg-Hau, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Strolling in the stretches of forests surrounding the art centre, the artist observed Nature carefully and depicted its creatures and objects in her paintings. This has led her to reflect upon the relationship of humans with nature. Every creature in the natural world has found its way to coexist and develop interdependence with the natural environment by adapting to it.
On the other hand, humans have built up their own fortress and created extensive infrastructure in order to survive. In the process, they have obtained resources from nature, and invented the tools and utensils needed to facilitate the ‘acquisition’. The plastic bag is the most convenient invention to be used as a carrier that perfectly embodies the relationship of humans with nature: it has facilitated human activities but at the devastating cost of the damaging the environment. Noticing such a symbolic feature, Ng decided to make the plastic bag the artistic container in her creation.
In this exhibition, the artist has packed the ambiance of nature in plastic bags. With her skilful black and white lines, she depicts on plastic bags the creatures and vegetation she came across in the woods - little animals, birds, fish, fruit, plants, among many others – as if to bring the whole lively natural habitat to the exhibition venue.
These ‘airbags’ of memories, carrying Ng’s mixed feelings for the forest, have filled and lit up the whole room, where you can certainly feel her love for nature.
Lai Sio Kit
Curator