This piece of work was a continuation of my exploration of how to express the third space through aesthetics. It started with a digital collage in a similar way to the piece I did for the MA Interim Show in Part 2:
However, after I started this piece, my thinking took me to reflecting on how I felt about my work in the third space so far. My thoughts are captured in this blog:
Although this work did not start as the abstraction approach that I concluded on in my thinking, I have altered part of the image to be less illustrative and more suggestive as a start of this new exploration.
METHOD
A digital collage was created using Adobe Express comprising an image of present time Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong, a row of colourful Victorian houses at Bristol Harbour and a traditional Chinese junk. The images were manipulated so that the buildings forming the skyline of the two harbours were combined forming a continuous shoreline with the HK Harbour image changed to a subtle but bright two-tone effect whilst the Bristol houses remained vibrant and unchanged. Various colour effect experiments were carried out to achieve this final image:
I recently started to experiment with using old black and white family photos in my digital collages. For this piece of work, the photos formed a collage on the sails of the junk:
Whilst the previous work for the MA show was printed on silk, I feel this image would suit a woven canvas (e.g. a traditional cotton woven canvas). So my plan is to have this printed on canvas then add brush strokes in the style of Chinese calligraphy. The digital collage was exported to Adobe Freso where I used the painting function to try out different compositions. Below are two examples.
Example 1 – using an abstract image done in Chinese calligraphy style:
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Example 2 – using Chinese characters that meant ‘space’ (as in third space) with a red seal stamp drawn in:
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This is work-in-progress and I will order several printed canvases to try out the calligraphy experiments.
REFLECTIONS
I am happy with the progress so far. I like the way the two harbours came together as one continuous shoreline representing the different parts of my life coming together as a continuum. After my reflections on my third space work so far, my aim here is to create images that are more ambiguous so that both the viewers and I have to think deeper to see what’s there. I am not sure if I have managed to achieve it with this work. I will reserve judgment until the work is complete.
What I am also pleased about is that I am becoming less sensitive about using my family photos. I have always felt that they were too precious to be used, like mining a fragile archeological site. Although I have not used the very precious photos of my close family yet, I am feeling more able to consider the idea.
LEARNING
Since this is still work-in-progress, I’ll leave the full consideration of my learning until the end when the work is finished.
NEXT STEPS
– To order a minimum of four canvases printed with the image to experiment with adding Chinese calligraphy style brush strokes to complete the painting.
– I will go for A1 size to start with; it gives a reasonable area for expression without having to commit too much costs or materials. If I like the outcome then I might consider printing more canvases on a larger scale.
– Other experiments to consider are:
a. Covering the image with a top layer of oil and cold wax abstract painting then complete the painting by scraping off areas to reveal the image underneath.
b. Spray painting in street art style to show further Bristol heritage.
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ADDITIONAL REFLECTIONS
After publishing this blog and giving more thoughts about my blog on the elusive third space, I decided not to take this piece of work further. This is because I feel this image is still rather illustrative with images of only ‘A and B’ (as explained in ‘The Elusive Third Space’ blog). So I’m going to leave this for now and focus on the Cheongsam series which may give me more exploration opportunities. I may come back to this later but I’ll leave it here for now.
I ordered the silk printing from Contrado who provided an excellent service. The image I used was the final outcome from Part 1 – the Clifton suspension bridge, hot air balloons, Chinese lanterns and family photos collage. This blog describes the process I went through to do the Chinese painting on the printed silk. The largest Chinese painting I have done up to now had been A1 size and I ordered 1xA1 and 1xA0 for this experiment. The A0 piece was therefore by far the largest Chinese painting that I have attempted. The plan was to use this piece of work for the MA Interim show if it worked out.
Here is the finished painting and I will use it for the MA show:
METHOD
Since I have not done a Chinese painting of A0 size, I wanted to practice on paper before doing it on the silk. As mentioned in some of my Chinese painting blogs, Chinese brush painting is very unforgiving, you only get one go at doing a stroke, hence practicing was important.
Here is the set up with scrolls of Xuan paper stuck together to form a large sheet:
Using the brushes I selected in Part 1 and the composition that I practiced on A4, here is the attempt on A0 size after completing the wild plum tree branches:
Then the plum blossoms were added:
Finished trial painting on paper:
When ordering the printed silk, I had to decide whether to print a border. So I trimmed one of the printed samples to see what a borderless image would look like. I was happy with it and the prints were ordered without border, i.e. printing the image right up to the edge. I also ordered the option of hemmed edges.
Sample image cut without border
In addition, I ordered a small piece of printed silk to test what backing should be used (a piece of felt which is typically used as a backing for Xuan paper painting or just use Xuan paper). Also to test the amount of brush loading and how the brush glided along the surface.
I was not happy with the felt backing because the moisture was not being absorbed fast enough and the silk therefore retained the moisture for too long and started to spread – as can be seen in the close up photo:
So the decision was to use Xuan paper as the backing material for painting on the silk. I started with the A1 piece as practice. Since I do not have a stretching frame for silk painting, I taped the whole piece onto a large board to stretch the fabric.
Below is the finished A1 painting. I was not happy with the painting because the brush loading was too heavy for the branches and as a result, the painting overly dominated the piece. I was disappointed in this but was pleased that I learnt this before doing the A0 piece.
I used the ‘stuck together scrolls’ of Xuan paper from the earlier practice as the backing for painting the A0 piece. It also gave me some rough positions of the composition. The edges of the silk was taped down to ensure the material was sufficiently stretched.
After doing two strokes, I could see the ink picking up the seams of the paper underneath which was not good at all. Once I started painting I was reluctant to stop because it would interrupt my ‘energy flow’, however, I had no choice but to put down my brush and lift up the tapes partially to pull out all the Xuan paper underneath. This was not ideal but had to be done.
With all the backing paper removed, the painting process could resume but with no backing paper to help absorb the ink, there was only the MDF board underneath which was a risk because I hadn’t experimented on MDF before.
It worked fine and I reduced the brush loading as well as the number of branches planned for the composition because I didn’t want to overwhelm the overall image with too dark brush strokes.
The plum blossoms were then added. I also reduced the number of blossoms and tucked some between the balloons and lanterns. I wanted to leave sufficient negative space on the left of the painting to create tension on the canvas juxtaposing the busy right hand side of the image.
After completing the Chinese brush painting, I had the choice of finishing it there, or adding some spray painting. I like adding street art style spray painting to my work because of my home city of Bristol being home to many great street artists and the city is full of beautiful street art. Hence street art is a big part of my heritage.
I was mindful that the canvas is already filled with images and I didn’t want to overdo it. Also I didn’t know how my spray paints would perform on silk. So I experimented with the A1 piece first:
I sprayed some two tone black and white stencilled letters on two lanterns saying ‘3RD SP’ for Third Space:
I was happy with the outcome so I started to lay larger stencils on the A0 piece:
‘3RD SP’ was too much, so I went with just ‘3RD’. I masked off the area and proceeded to spray one letter at a time.
It worked out fine and to take further risk, I added a ‘#’ to proceed the lettering to add a contemporary feel.
After spraying, I found that for some parts, the spray paint seeped through the thin silk and nearly glued the material to the MDF underneath. The silk was rescued in time and was safely lifted off the board.
The finally finished work:
Since I have decided to use this piece for the MA interim show, I had to work out how to hang it.
I have chosen to hang it off a piece of 1 metre x 10mm diameter wooden dowel. this means I had to sew the header of the silk to make provision for the hang. I wanted to minimise losing the images at the top especially to avoid losing my father’s face on the top right photo, I added a piece of silk material ‘tape’ at the top as follows:
The sewing was complete and the silk painting was hung off two metal brackets to simulate how it would hang at the show:
One of the reasons for choosing a thin 38gsm silk material was that I wanted the image to be visible from both sides if it was hung in free air. This is how it looks from behind and I am happy that the image is still visible:
REFLECTIONS
This whole piece of work has turned out to be a much larger undertaking than I imagined because of:
– Using family photos in my digital collage: aside from the emotions involved (which I have not fully resolved yet), there was much work involved in ensuring the resolution was good enough for printing on A0. The print company Contrado was excellent in checking through my design before I placed the order.
– Using new materials: I learnt a lot from choosing the right kind of silk material but it was also very risky because I had not worked with silk before and the thinness of the fabric made it very fragile to work with. The whole process was new to me and I had to make it up as I went along. Due to the costs and lead time involved in purchasing the printed silk, I had to take extra care in the experimental process to minimise wastage of materials as well as time.
– Going large: I wanted to challenge myself to create something new for the MA interim show, hence I went for A0. I found it very challenging because I am still very new to Chinese brush painting and that lack of experience made the process much more stressful than if I had gone for medium that I’m familiar with such as oil paint or acrylic.
What I was happy with:
– I learnt a lot in making this piece of work, documented here and in Part 1. I learnt about new methods, materials and processes. All the practices and trials were essential.
– Starting to use old photos in my digital collage. I still have many photos in my archive that I could use when I feel ready and able to. I have to manage the emotions and fragility involved in using such precious materials. But I have made a start.
– I was happy with the final outcome and was relieved that I have something for the MA interim show.
What I was not happy with:
– I should have anticipated some of the mistakes along the way, it was all useful learning despite being stressful at the time.
– Since the A1 silk experiment didn’t go well with the branches being too dark (overloading of the brush), I was overly cautious with the subsequent A0 piece. Also, my paint brush was not quite large enough. It was one of my mother’s brushes. There was a larger one but it would have been far too large, also, its bristles were starting to fall out and I didn’t want to damage it further since I want to preserve my mother’s brushes as much as possible. So I made do with the smaller sized brush. I would have wanted thicker branches for the A0 piece. Additionally, I could have loaded the brush a little more but I was worried that it would turn out like the A1 piece. Hence I was being overly cautious. It all comes down to my inexperience with Chinese brush painting. I hope this will improve over time with more practice.
Further reflections:
I have spent much of my MA first term developing methods to work with oil and cold wax, however, when it came to the MA show, I went back to an earlier method of transcultural layering where digital collages were printed onto a thin fabric then a Chinese brush painting was layered on top. I thought I would be more familiar with this latter approach but the change of fabric to thin silk and going large made it more challenging than I expected. I am pleased I went with this because it has renewed my enthusiasm for this transcultural layering method and now I have several other ideas in mind to try. I want to continue to pursue both ways of transcultural layering for my practice, namely:
1. Western medium as the lead with oil or oil and cold wax as the top layer, scraped back to reveal images pre-printed on the canvas. The canvas here would be robust such as woven linen/cotton or board.
2. Chinese medium as the lead with digital collages printed on silk and Chinese brush painting or calligraphy layered on top.
Which one to use will depend on the context and the kind of painting I want to make. My current plan is to continue to work on both methods.
LEARNING
– I learnt a lot about working with silk and will continue to use this material. I need to look into buying or making a silk stretching / painting frame that can accommodate large pieces of silk, A0 or larger.
– I gained confidence with my Chinese brush painting and there are no short cuts there – practice and planning are key.
– From the aesthetics exploration perspective, I learnt a lot from the mistakes in the A1 painting. It’s easy to overwhelm an image and it showed once again for me that negative space is so important. Often less is more and leaving space on the canvas creates tension that engages the viewer. I was hesitant in adding the spray paint but I really wanted to do it to bring in that aspect of my Bristol heritage. I am pleased that I did it and managed to reign it in.
NEXT STEPS
– Look into a better set up for painting on silk such as a large stretcher frame.
– Source a few larger good quality Chinese paint brushes for larger scale work.
– Do a new piece of transcultural layering work with a new digital collage of family photos for use with another silk painting or oil and cold wax.
Following on from a previous piece of digital art work where I researched and experimented with Procreate and Adobe Fresco, I chose to use Adobe Fresco for this piece of work because I found using my MS Surface Pro with the MS Stylus worked well; it was an enjoyable way to create art that is new to me.
This is part of my narrative development work from memory, where I make work when thoughts or scenes come into mind. In this case, it was a childhood memory. The trigger for this memory came from researching into Homi K. Bhabha’s book, The Location of Culture, where he talked about ‘mimicry’. Bhabha asserts that the colonised people would try to mimic the behaviour and culture of the coloniser in order to be more accepted by those in authority. According to Bhabha, the coloniser wanted the colonised to mimic them because it was a form of imposing soft power making the colonised adopt the coloniser’s culture and habits as a higher standard. To reinforce the power structure, the coloniser would demonstrate their power by judging good and bad mimicry. The coloniser did not want the colonised to be great at mimicking because it was important to maintain a differentiation between the two to justify the act of colonising.
Understanding Bhabha’s explanation of ‘mimicry’ reminded me of an incident that happened in my childhood in Hong Kong on a bowling green… It was a case of bad mimicry and I got into trouble for it.
There was a pristine lawn bowling green in front of our apartment block where the British would bowl on sunny weekend afternoons. As local kids, we were not allowed to go onto the green – it was forbidden. However, it was too tempting so one day, my siblings and I (three of us) went to play on the lawn. We were soon shouted at by a white British man. We didn’t know what he was saying but he was clearly shouting for us to get off (shouting and waving his arms dismissively). Kids innocently playing on grass where they shouldn’t do was no big deal, it happened all the time everywhere in the world. But on this occasion, our father who worked for the British HK Government was angry when he heard about what we did. He wouldn’t usually get involved with discipline for us and certainly not for something so trivial, that side of parenting was left to our mother. But he personally told us off as soon as he was home from the office. The fact that he scolded us as soon as he got home meant that he was informed of the incident at work; the news somehow reached him through an official channel. Now in hindsight, I believe we made him look bad at work because we showed that his family were poor mimics, we didn’t respect the bowling green like good British people would. Our poor mimicry as kids must have undone the good mimicry work that my father was working so hard to portray at his work. We were bad kids and made him look bad in front of his superiors.
Researching into Bhabha’s idea on mimicry reminded me of that incident and I wanted to make a piece of work about it.
Finished work:
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METHOD
Adobe Fresco was used for this work. Below are images showing the layers that were created – some were imported images and others were painted or drawn using the software. The three little sparrows were metaphors for me and my siblings. There were always lots of small tree sparrows on our balcony when we were young and I like using that as a metaphor for me as a child in my narrative art work.
The base layer image was a scene I found online of the said bowling lawn dated back to WWII during the 1940s – the lawn in the image is mostly obscured by the Prison Officers’ Club house in the foreground. My father worked for the HK Crown Prison (Correctional) Service and the apartment block on the left was where we lived – it was called Block K. Out flat was on the middle floor on the left side of the block. Seeing the photo brought back so many memories of my childhood at Flat No. K3.
The base layer photo was found in this blog and the blog details some very interesting history about the area which was used as a POW camp during WWII and our Block K housed Dutch and Norwegian POWs.
I have found Bhabha’s book, The Location of Culture, very insightful and I continue to enjoy using his theories to help me to make sense of my lived experiences as a transcultural person. This incident was an example of how this part of my learning worked.
I also enjoyed working with Adobe Fesco. I found the tool straight forward to use. I particularly like the fact that I can work on my phone on the go, then refine and build on my work when I’m at home with my Surface Pro. So I’ll continue to use Fesco as my go-to digital art tool.
Researching Bhabha’s theory of mimicry helped me to understand the incident and why my father was upset by what was a rather trivial act by his kids. A question I am asking myself is – how does doing narrative art work like this one help me? I do not have an answer yet but I want to note down this question as an ongoing enquiry.
LEARNING
Researching Bhabha’s work has inspired me to make work to develop my narrative. This is what I had hoped would happen so I’m happy with this progress and will continue this path of learning.
Adobe Fresco is a useful tool that I like, I should continue to explore its functionality.
I was unable to answer the question that I posed myself ‘How does my narrative work help me?’ – Why am I doing it? I need to give this more considered thoughts.
NEXT STEPS
– Keep going with research on The Location of Culture.
– Do another piece of work using Fresco, perhaps try the painting functions and not just drawing.
– Start to articulate my thoughts on how my narrative work helps me. I expect this to be a slow enquiry process…
UPDATE ON ENQUIRY
I have been thinking a lot about the above since posing those questions to myself ‘How does my narrative work help me?‘ and ‘Why am I doing it?’. In a recent Group Tutorial during our weekly MA online session, my group helped me to explore those questions. They also asked some additional useful questions, such as ‘Who am I doing it for?’ and ‘Has art ever solved any other problems for me?‘
Reflecting on the Group Tutorial, my latest thoughts are:
Firstly, ‘who am I doing it for?‘ My immediate answer was ‘for me, I am doing this for me’.
Why am I doing it? My response was that the exploration helped me to understand more about myself, my behaviour and response to situations.
How does my narrative work help me and has art ever solved any other problems for me? For this, my answer during the Group Tutorial was that art had never solved any problems for me but there have been cases where by exploring my narrative through my art practice, it had helped to crystalise or pinpoint a problem and brought better clarity. However, after the group discussion, I reflected further and felt that in fact on occasions, my art and practice research have helped me to find answers. Such as this case of the ‘bowling lawn incident’ – through my art making and research, I had a better insight into the colonial soft power structure that my father had to work in therefore giving me a better understanding of his environment and helped to explain some of his behaviour that impacted us all.
Although I have made some progress, I am aware that these answers are still quite close to the surface and I want to take more time to continue this line of enquiry, hence it is still ongoing…
As part of my research on The Third Space (Ref. The location of culture by Homi K Bhabha), I have been seeking out ‘third space’ phenomena from my memory and surroundings in order to gain a deeper understanding of the concept. To this end, I decided to research and do a project on the street names of Hong Kong.
When HK was a British colony, many streets were named after British Governors or officials sent to manage HK. Their English names were converted into Chinese (Cantonese) using transliteration*. As a result, the street names when pronounced in Cantonese are meaningless and often nonsensical. Since street names are such a fundamental part of daily lives, those strange sounding streets names have become a natural part of the day-to-day language without anyone questioning their nonsensical nature.
This project is to highlight the transliteration of HK street names as an example of a third space phenomenon from a place that has deep personal relevance for me.
Finished painting – HK Street names 1 – oil and cold wax on inkjet printed paper, size 18.4 x 12.8 cm.
METHOD
This is the first step and an experiment to test out the idea and process.
I researched online images of street signs in HK and picked out those that were transliterated from British names. Since the HK street signs nowadays are of a new design that I am not familiar with, where possible, I have chosen images that were from the 1960s, 70s and 80s – the period when I lived in HK and when HK was still under colonial British rule.
A digital collage of the road signs was made using Adobe Express then inkjet printed onto paper.
Teal colour oil paint was mixed with cold wax in 50:50 ratio and the printed image was covered in a thick layer of the oil-wax mix.
My iPhone was set up in video capture mode to record – I gradually scraped off the paint revealing most of the street signs one by one as I read out in English then Cantonese each street name. The purpose of the voice over was to enable viewers to hear the Cantonese transliteration.
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REFLECTIONS
This was an experiment to test out the concept on a small scale before taking it onto a large canvas to create a painting. The aim is to ultimately create two pieces of work – a painting as well as a video accompanied by a piece of writing explaining the background of the street names used as part of my research into colonialism.
I believe the way these streets were named in HK was an example of how soft power worked in a British colony where the names of the colonisers such as Governors and Royalty were permanently imprinted into the day-to-day lives of the local people, serving as a reminder of the colonial power structure. The fact that road and streets were named in this way served as a constant reminder of who was in charge of the the land.
I started this project with casual research online, however, my interest in the topic increased as I went deeper into the research as it became clear the extent of the soft power exercised in these examples. As I looked at the street signs and read out each name, I could hear my late parents saying those names on a daily basis in conversation – which road had bad traffic jams, what was the shortest route to get to a place or giving directions to a shop. As a child, I listened to my parents using the transliterated and nonsensical street names like it was just normal. Everyone used those names without giving it a second thought. I left HK when I was a young teenager and never lived there as an adult. I now wonder what it was like for my parents to live their whole lives in a colony, to live, work and bring up children as colonised subjects. Doing this project has caused me to think about that more deeply. I always feel conflicted when I think about this topic – HK was a British Colony with in-built structural injustices that came with being colonised, but HK also became successful globally partly due to the commercial, legal and justice systems that were put in place by the British bringing prosperity to the city and stability for the people. This is a conflicted feeling that I will continue to examine – just like the transliterated street names, what seemed natural or normal once upon a time, now no longer make sense and I am still trying to unpack that conflicted feeling.
Regarding the art work, I was pleased with the outcome of the project, especially as an initial experiment. Through my research, I have found many more interesting facts about the naming of streets in HK, I could potentially divide them into categories and make several art work to create a series.
LEARNING
In the context of my art practice, this research project has helped me to gain a deeper understanding of The Third Space as coined by Homi K Bhabha. The phenomenon of the street names researched here is unique and only came about as a result of the English and Chinese languages coming together through colonisation. There is also the underlying cultural influences from both sides, e.g. holding military personnel in high esteem for the British and in the case of Bedford Road, the Chinese name reflecting the entrepreneurial mindset of the locals.
I am been struggling to make art through examining my third space – one that is personal to my lived experience. I have struggled to create images that is a result of that third space, instead, I have been layering together distinct images from the two cultures that have influenced me. To expand on this point with an example from the HK street names:
Example – take Wood Road that was named after John Roskruge Wood, an acting chief justice during the colonial period. If it were translated into Chinese, the character 木 for wood (as in wood from trees) would have been used. Instead, the phonetic sound of Wood was used in the transliteration, hence the Chinese character 活 meaning alive or living was used to get the closest sound to Wood. The Third Space phenomenon gave rise to a very different outcome.
Analysing the HK street names was the first time I found a concrete example of the third space phenomenon that is relevant to me and my heritage. So I will continue to research this topic as well as look for other signs of the colonial era in HK that may help with my personal identity research.
Whenever I struggle with creating images for my third space, I come back to researching the work of the artist Fiona Rae because I feel she has captured the essence of the third space well with her British and Asian influences. I will continue to research her work.
NEXT STEPS
– Repeat this work on a larger scale using proper canvas material to make a painting and a video.
– Test the video on non-Chinese speaking people to see if the transliteration sounds were noticeable, i.e. is the video voice over meaningful.
– Complete the piece of writing to accompany the art work.
– Research deeper into the HK street names to potentially make a series of work on this theme.
– Research further the history of HK to look for other third space phenomena to inform my personal identity work.
– Research Fiona Rae’s work and find more transcultural British/East Asian artists to add my list for research.
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH INFORMATION
Below is a table showing the background of every street name revealed in this painting and video – whom they were named after as well as amusing mistakes in translation or transliteration.
* What is transliteration?
Below are blogs and extracts explaining the meaning of transliteration in the context of this project.
Translation provides the meaning of words in a second language. Transliteration does not provide the words’ meaning but it makes it easier to pronounce them. Transliteration alters the letters from a language or alphabet into characters of a similar-sounding in a different alphabet. It is quite clear that there is frequently a demand for the transliteration of some languages, especially in this globalised world where people who do not share the same language can have some access to languages with a dissimilar alphabet.
A transliteration doesn’t tell you the meaning of the word, but it gives you an idea of how the word is pronounced in a foreign language. It makes a language a little more accessible to people who are unfamiliar with that language’s alphabet.
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