Everyday Anomalies features existing work and new commissions by four of Hong Kong’s most exciting and active artists:

Using performative strategies and interventionist tactics the city becomes a site of exploration for the four artists. They observe and highlight the minutiae of everyday life. Whilst their works are often nothing more than subtle interventions and shifts in perspective, they quietly question the habitual codes of behaviour in urban society.

Presented as videos, photographs and objects their practice is driven by a desire to understand their surroundings; how people connect and interact with each other, how they behave in public spaces. Applied to both familiar contexts in Hong Kong and unfamiliar ones during international residencies their works demonstrate a curiosity in encounters and the politics of everyday life.  

In everyday occurrences they find little anomalies, moments of chance, the absurd in the ordinary, creating works that are charming and playful. The exhibition presents objects, videos and photographs.

KAM Lai Wan presents a series of works about stars and constellations, an ever present but distant feature of everyday life. Through installations and music boxes she creates three-dimensional and audio manifestations of constellations, enabling the viewer to touch and hear these usually distant shining lights.

Luke CHING’s works are interventions in public spaces. Creating ‘accidental’ occurrences he highlights the limitations of constructed urban spaces and disrupts habitual behaviour. In a new work Shoelaces the artist trails his long untied shoelaces as he walks through urban spaces allowing them to brush by passers-by, playing with the notion of proximity and distance. Moon is a series of photographs and an accompanying video, documenting the ‘accidental’ releasing of a number of ‘moons’ in the form of helium balloon within the confines of shopping malls, it draws attention to the confines of the indoor environment.

KWAN Sheung-Chi is interested in the question of how meaning is constructed and how we might look at things differently. In Lake at the Crossroad, Kwan views a blue crossing on a road in Kanagawa, Japan as a blue lake. Taking the loose pieces of blue gravel he presents them as water spilling from a bowl, continuing the illusion of the gravel as water. Shining a torch onto the blue surface of the crossing at night, he creates the image of the moon reflected on a lake.

PAK Sheung-Chuen is showing a piece initially made for the Busan Biennale, Breathing House, a performative investigation into the everyday living situation of Busan as well as a sculptural investigation into the air-space which is defined as the negative space of the place. The documentation depicts the artist breathing into clear plastic bags using up all the air in the apartment. In Familiar Numbers, Unknown Telephone Pak takes familiar and shifts its context. Numbers from a bus stop and dials the combined numbers, reaching a mobile he then continues to converse with the stranger on the end of the phone. The other two works presented by Pak are itemised till receipts with surprising messages found on them. If the second word of each item is read from top to bottom it says ‘Whoever believes in him should have eternal life’. The other is a love letter the first words of each line read, ‘I am thinking of you’.

All of the artists are active in the Hong Kong arts scene, exhibiting widely and with several of them taking an active role in the setting up of Fotanian studios. They have undertaken international residencies and have been shown internationally. PAK Sheung-Chuen is also a regular art columnist for a local newspaper.