20/20 meet the artists: Gayle Chong Kwan

In September, UAL announced the eight emerging and mid-career artists in the first of 2 cohorts of 20/20: a national commissioning and network project directly investing in the careers of a new generation of ethnically diverse artists.

20/20 was launched in November 2021 by UAL Decolonising Arts Institute, working with a network of 20 UK public collections, museum and gallery partners, and with funding from Freelands Foundation, Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants Programme and UAL.

We caught up with Gayle Chong Kwan about being selected for the first cohort of artists for 20/20. Her residency is taking place at Compton Verney, Warwickshire.

Tell us about your artistic work, discipline & background

"I am a British artist of Scottish/Chinese-Mauritian heritage whose photographs, sculptures, installations, public realm projects, and intimate and large-scale sensory ritual events are exhibited nationally and internationally. At the core of my practice is an expanded and embodied notion of visuality through which I explore interiority and collective experiences, whereby objects, people, and activities have the potential to be encountered in different configurations. I explore the politics of travel, waste, the botanical, collecting and categorization strategies, islands, and decolonization.

"In my work there is a tension between intimacy and detail with far away vistas through constructed environments, imagined futures, communal ritual experiences, collage, sensory registers, and sculptural pieces worn on the body, made of detritus, waste, food, or remains, with archival, historical, and documentary sources, and photographs. This develops out of an interplay of near and far, focus and blurring, which connects my own severe visual myopia with the mechanics of lens, imprint, focus, and framing in photography. I have just been awarded my PhD in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art on ‘Imaginal Travel: political and ecological positioning as fine art practice."

Why did you apply for the 20/20 project?

"I’m interested in bringing histories - particularly unseen or little known; temporary, sensory, felt, and lived – to life as a way of showing an amplified fuller picture of the past while highlighting contemporary issues. The work I will make will respond to and be an unsettling presence within the collection and will be a development in my practice in relation to ritual, temporal process, and the materiality of photography."

What conversations, thoughts or feelings do you hope to encourage amongst your audiences during your residency?

"I am interested in how absence, nourishment, scale, sustenance, visuality and embodiment can come together in institutional, ancestral, and personal hauntings. Through the work I would aim to disrupt and tilt the perspectives in the collection. I will develop activities around ritual, sustenance, ancestors and memorialising with communities/audiences at Compton Verney."

Follow Gayle Chong Kwan on social media:

Instagram: @gaylechongkwan

Twitter: @Gayle_ChongKwan

Website: www.gaylechongkwan.com