Mapping Macrocosms
Venue: ADM Gallery, School of Art, Design and Media
Curator: Michelle Ho
The geographical world, in its many forms of representation, has long been a critical subject matter in art-making. Seen as a singular macro entity, as micro-realities that determine the whole, or through the diverse lenses of history, this world continues to capture the imagination of artists up to contemporary times. Mapping Macrocosms presents artists whose practices follow a keen interest in examining some of the systems and structures embedded within the defining of notions of place and space.
Featuring artists from the disciplines of architectonic design, painting and sculpture, each artist in Mapping Macrocosms provides a unique entry point of artistic endeavours that charts out and mediates pre-established notions of the experience of our lived environments, thereby presenting a new model for envisioning our world. Each presentation emerges from a distinct practice, and all the artists in the exhibition all employ their own particular means of measurement, assessment and interpretation of historical or scientific data to convert knowledge into an aesthetic experience.
Tawatchai Puntusawasdi’s (Thailand) works take the 13th century travelogue, Book of the Marvels (also known as the Travels of Marco Polo) as a starting point to investigate how historical mapping had determined earlier conceptions of the world. The act of painting and the process of mapping intersect in Ng Joon Kiat’s (Singapore) works, providing us a broader scope, as well as an alternative visual language to perceive the geographies of urban landscapes. Philip Beesley (Canada) draws upon his research of interactive technologies that have the potential to reshape the future of living environment through combining artificial intelligence and nature.
Process as Journey; Mapping Relationships:
The exhibition identity explores mapping as a mean of how we perceive and make sense of the world we live in, an exploratory web of relationship; interconnected lives that are seemingly unrelated yet inter-influences. The visual elements of hand drawn lines and geographical coordinates as connections of thought processes, as well as metaphoric symbolism of the complex web of relationships.
Exhibition Booklet & Poster
Booklet when folded, poster when opened up.
