osage

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PRESS RELEASE
To Arts and Features Editors
For Immediate Release
26th February 2016

Osage at Art Basel Hong Kong 2016
March 24-26, 2016 | HKCEC, Wanchai

Insights | Booth 3D21| AU Hoi Lam
Encounters | Booth 1E03 | Roberto Chabet| Booth 3E14 |Tintin Wulia
Film |3 pm , March 23|agnès b. CINEMA HONG KONG ARTSCENTRE |Tintin Wulia
INSIGHTS“AU Hoi Lam: Memorandum (_____)” consists of exercises in states of reminiscenceand oblivion, which are based on the artist’s ruminations over minute trivialities.
The paintings, mixed media work and objects relating to drawing can be likened to
notebooks that have been written in and over, or like a tableau waiting to be filledwith drawings.
The exhibition space is divided into three parts, symbolizing different states ofmind: a “Tabula Rasa” space with light pink walls, a deep magenta “Memento”
space and a pale turquoise space for “Oblivion”. The artist poses the questions:
could our thoughts be blank enough to wipe away the imprints of our heart so wecan start all over again? Are fleetingly profound memories most worth
commemorating? Such are the gestures of trying hard to forget, yet remembering
after forgetting.

AU believes that parts of her creative process are acts of purification, consisting oflistening to oneself attentively and exercises to get rid of distractions in one’s mind.
The gestures of this process, or the remnants left from it, results in the final piece.
AU Hoi Lam regards her art practice as a way of caring for oneself so as to always
stay vigilant. This belief derives from her study on French philosopher Michel
Foucault over the past ten years. “The Care of the Self” concerns an attitude
towards the self, others and the world. It requires a certain form of attention and oflooking, as well as one’s own transformation, ascetic and meditation.
The blank parenthesis appended to “Memorandum” represents a seemingly
contradictory yet normal state of having to both remember and forget. AU Hoi
Lam’s works are similarly narrative without saying anything. The exhibition
embodies AU’s immersion into the back and forth gestures of remembering andforgetting (Memorandum/Oblivion). Other than acting as a mnemonic for theartists’ memory, the works embody a material, intimate association for oneself, andcan act as an object for contemplation.
AU Hoi Lam graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (MFA 2004 & MPhil in Philosophy 2009). She works
and lives in Hong Kong. Participated exhibitions include Woman-Home: In the Name of Asian Female Artists (KaohsiungMuseum of Fine Arts, Taiwan, 2014), A Time For Dreams: IV Moscow Biennale For Young Art (Moscow Museum ofModern Art, 2014), Time Traveller, AU Hoi Lam and Sara Tse (Espace Louis Vuitton, Hong Kong, 2014), AU Hoi Lam: MyFather is Over the Ocean (Osage Open, Hong Kong, 2013), Open 15: International Exhibition of Sculptures andInstallations (Lido, Venice 2012), Definitions of Time: Paintings by AU Hoi Lam (Edge Gallery, Hong Kong, 2010), Lui
Chun Kwong. You Are Here, I am Not. (Osage Kwun Tong, Hong Kong, 2010), Reversing Horizons: Artist Reflections of theHong Kong Handover 10th Anniversary (MOCA Shanghai, 2007), Artists in the Neighbourhood Scheme III: When Words
are Sweet…Paintings by AU Hoi-lam (Hong Kong Central Library and Hong Kong Arts Centre, 2006) and the Hong Kong
Art Biennial 2003 (Hong Kong Museum of Art, 2003) etc. Her works have been collected by the Hong Kong Museum ofArt, M+, Hong Kong and private collectors. AU was recently awarded the Young Artist Award (Visual Arts) by the Arts
Development Council, Hong Kong.

ENCOUNTERS

Roberto Chabet’s Cargo and Decoy is colored by the artist’s experience during
WWII: he and his contemporaries looked up at the skies anticipating bombs fromfighter planes and the impending destruction they would bring. The material
choice of plywood is significant as it emblematizes reconstruction. Plywood’s
ability to flip-flop between being a surface and object is also fully embraced by
Chabet to suggest the problematic representation of art.
The title references the South Pacific cargo cults; oriented around the concept ofcargo, which South Pacific islanders perceived as the source of the wealth andpower of the Europeans and Americans, it was held that if the proper ceremonies
were performed, shipments of riches would be sent from some heavenly place.
Through Cargo and Decoy, Chabet questions realism, tradition as well as theshuffling of geopolitical powers in the construction of ‘modernity’.
Cargo and Decoy is exemplary of Chabet’s contribution to the development ofcontemporary art in Southeast Asia, embodying the challenge in reinterpreting
modernity in the Philippines and the complex questions raised that have since
shaped contemporary discourse in the region.

Roberto Chabet, widely acknowledged as a founding figure of Philippine conceptual art and one of the most influential
contemporary Filipino artists, was born in 1937 in Manila, and held his first solo exhibition in 1961. A graduate ofArchitecture from the University of Santo Tomas, Chabet is highly regarded for his experimental works, ranging frompaintings, drawings, collages, sculptures, and installations made out of mostly ordinary and found material. Breaking
away from the rigid formalisms of modernism, Chabet insists on a more inclusive approach to art, a search for thesublime not just in abstract ideas but also in the immediacy of the quotidian and the commonplace. In his works,abstraction and the everyday collide, creating spaces for new meanings.
Chabet was the founding Museum Director of The Cultural Centre of the Philippines(CCP) where he initiated theThirteen Artist Award in 1970, a prize that supports young artists whose works show “recentness and a turning awayfrom the past”. It remains one of the most prestigious awards to be given by a national institution to a young Filipino
visual artist. After his brief tenure at the CCP, Chabet led the seminal alternative artist group Shop 6, and taught for overthirty years at the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts and at key artist-run spaces in Manila.
Since the 70s, Chabet has been curating exhibitions of young and emerging Filipino artists. He is the recipient of the JD
Rockefeller III Fund Grant (1967-1968), the Republic Cultural Heritage Award (1972), the Araw ng Maynila Award for
the Visual Arts (1972), and the CCP Centennial Award of Honours for the Arts(1998).

Tintin Wulia: Five Tonnes of Homes and Other Understories

Five Tonnes of Homes and Other Understories is a set of mixed media installationby artist Tintin Wulia.
Like thick books with drawn covers, the massive bales of cardboard waste in FiveTonnes of Homes and Other Understories are physical digests of their route. Theycontain physical traces of people, stakeholders that make up the nodes of the route,attaching diverse values to the cardboard waste along the way.
The artist became one of these people in her intervention. Her traces are carried on
the outer layers of the bales. They are “murals” that she began drawing in early2015 while spending time in the Filipino domestic workers' temporary cardboard
shelters in Central.
The murals then became markers as the cardboard waste changes form along theroute. They enable the artist to trace and re-collect them at transit points before
the bales are shipped to China.
This installation is in turn a re-intervention into the art world.
Brisbane-based Tintin Wulia (b. 1972, Denpasar) was brought up in a music school, and trained as an architect and film
composer in Indonesia (B.Eng. Universitas Katolik Parahyangan 1998) and the United States (B.Mus. Berklee College ofMusic 1997). Practising as an artist since 2000, she recently completed her practice-based doctorate (PhD Art, RMIT
University 2014).
Wulia has exhibited in major international exhibitions such as Istanbul Biennale (2005), Yokohama Triennale (2005),Jakarta Biennale (2009), Moscow Biennale (2011), Gwangju Biennale (2012), Asia Pacific Triennale (2012), SharjahBiennale (2013) and Jogja Biennale (2013). Her films have been screened at prominent festivals such as the ClermontFerrand International Short Film Festival (2008) and International Film Festival Rotterdam (2005 and 2009).
She often works with interactive installations, game-performances and public interventions to engage with the complex
socio-economical structures of the imbalanced, globalising world. In late 2016 she will begin a new project during her
Jackman Goldwasser Residency at Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago.
Her work is part of public and private collections in Asia, Europe and America, including the Singapore Art Museum(Singapore), Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art (Australia), He Xiangning Art Museum (China) and Stedelijk
Van Abbemuseum (Netherlands) where it is part of the permanent exhibition.
Tintin Wulia is a recipient of the prestigious Australia Council of the Arts’ Creative Australia Fellowship 2014-2016.

About the project
Trade/Trace/Transit
Tintin Wulia 2014-2016
Public interventions
Cardboard boxes live long after they are disposed. In many places around theworld including Hong Kong, they travel from hand to hand during this long life,changing shape and intersecting varied lives. Along routes in Hong Kong, they aresold by waste collectors via the recycling collection points to the port. Their
lifetime reaches its end at paper mills in China.
Around Central, Hong Kong, this cardboard route is extraordinary. Filipino
domestic workers gather in Central for their day off, and re-use the cardboard
waste to build temporary shelters. In this decades-old tradition, a complex
informal economy is born. The monetary value of the cardboard waste ismultiplied through covert, hand-to-hand transactions. Meanwhile, the cyclical recollecting and re-selling amplifies the social meaning of the “waste" as it becomesinhabited by the lived experiences of the human agents of its journey, drawn froma multitude of nationalities.
Central is the focal point of the artist inTrade/Trace/Transit, a series of public
interventions into this route of the cardboard waste trade, primarily spanning theHong Kong island coastal strip from Sheung Wan to Heng Fa Chuen. The project is
supported by Australia Council for theArts' New Work – Mid Career grant, and isongoing. The next instalment is a solo exhibition at Osage Gallery, July 2016.
FILM
Proposal for a Film: Within the Leaves, a Sight of the Forest
Dir. Tintin Wulia, Australia/Hong Kong 2016
HD video, colour, stereo, 25'30”
English, Tagalog and Cantonese“Waste paper is like a forest. Paper recycles itself, generation after generation,” aman once told Zhang Yin, possibly the richest self-made woman in the world
according to Forbes magazine in 2006, who earns her wealth from recycling
cardboard waste.
This film envisages the cardboard waste forest from within its leaves, revolving
around the Filipino domestic workers at Central, Hong Kong. It poetically playswith the fractal notion in cycles and (re)generations by criss-crossing between theactual route in Hong Kong and an imagined circumstance in Mars.

The 6 short episodes of the film chronicle the artist's journey across the nodes. It
interweaves stories told through field recordings, text, real and reimaginedinterviews, images and composed verses to blur the identities of several subjects
by their request. It premieres in the form of a ‘proposal' in the art fair that is one ofthese nodes, described in Episode Four.
The filming is still ongoing.
COLLATERAL EVENTSART BASEL'S SALON
Encounters: New Materiality
Thursday, 24 March 2016, 6-7pm
Tintin Wulia will be part of a panel moderated by the Encounters curator Alexie
Glass-Kantor,
ASIA ART ARCHIVE'S OPEN PLATFORM
Cardboard Lives
Saturday, 26 March 2016, 4.30-5.30pm
Tintin Wulia will host this 'meeting without walls', gathering people from thedifferent nodes of the cardboard waste trade route. A follow-up meeting,
Cardboard Lives On, will take place during the Trade/Trace/Transit solo show.

ABOUT OSAGE GALLERYOsage Gallery was established in Hong Kong in 2004 and grew quickly tobecome one of Asia’s largest commercial gallery groups. Osage has become wellknown in the art world for its uncompromising support for the mostchallenging and critically thought-provoking contemporary art.
Osage Gallery is curatorially driven with a particular focus on contemporary
Asian arts. It aims to be a catalyst for the creative expression of the artists andthe active engagement of audiences by embracing a global, multidisciplinaryand diverse approach to the creation, presentation and interpretation of adiverse network of practices and works. It examines the questions that shapeand inspire us as individuals, and our cultures and communities through highquality programmes of research, exhibition and publication.
Osage operates a major space in Hong Kong in the fast developing central
business district of East Kowloon. Osage Hong Kong is in an industrial building,which can be configured for a variety of artistic encounters. The raw space
allows for the exploration and presentation of experimental and innovative
works in all media – including performance, installation, interactive multimediaand moving images. Osage Hong Kong combines 10,000 square feet of interior
gallery space with 5,000 square feet outdoor terrace. Osage Shanghai iscurrently used for an artist residency programme and is comprised of two
floors of space, totaling 10,000 square foot. Sporting a five-meter high ceiling,
Osage Beijing is a 1,500 square feet space that houses a studio residency
programme.
Osage Gallery has gained wide international recognition for the quality of its
programmes and was the first Hong Kong gallery to feature at the Statements
section of Art Basel, Basel in 2011, the Spotlight section at Frieze Masters in
London in 2012, Arte Fiera in Bologna, Italy, 2014, Art Cologne in Germany,
2014, and is one of the first Hong Kong galleries to participate in Moving ImageNew York, 2014. Osage has also participated in Art Hong Kong from 2008 –2012 and at Art Basel, Hong Kong for 2013 and 2014.
www.osagegallery.com
Media Enquiries:

Vesper Guo | vesperguo@osagegallery.com| +852 2172 1635
Please download high res images from the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xo7cvs8xy3a9ofw/AADEL2l8liK1ruDRWt4k3VRa?dl=0

AU Hoi Lam
Oblivion (From A to Z, Some Fragments)
2015 - 2016
pencil, colour pencil and acrylic on canvas
122 x 90 x 5 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Osage Gallery

AU Hoi Lam
Tabula Rasa (And Its Flaws)
2016
graphite , colour pencil and acrylic on canvas
122 x 90 x 5 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Osage Gallery

Roberto Chabet
Cargo and Decoy
1989/2010
plywood, acrylic, wooden sawhorses,
Dimensions Variable
Exhibition view at ICAS – La Salle College of the Arts, 2011.
Photograph by At Maculangan.
Courtesy of the Artist, Osage Gallery and King Kong Art Projects

Tintin Wulia
Five Tonnes of Homes and Other Understories
2016
Installation, mixed media (paper, metal, ink)
Dimensions variable
Image courtesy of the Artist and Osage Gallery

Tintin Wulia
Proposal for a film: Within the Leaves, a Sight of the Forest
2016
HD video, colour, stereo
25’30”
Image courtesy of the Artist and Osage Gallery