The HKUST Lee Shau Kee Library and Center for the Arts jointly present
“Plastic, plastic, every where,
The fish are all bereft;
Plastic, plastic, every where,
Not a soul is left.”
Plastic plastic, every where! portrays a dystopian future where a frenzy of human plastic consumption (e.g., life saver donuts, telephone hotdogs) leads us past the point of no return. This global craze originates from the 2084 annual meeting of the Great Five Industrial Nations. At this meeting, the delegate from the imaginary country of Contradictoria (in the form of a pig) proposes that if animals can learn to eat plastic, why can’t children?
This joint exhibition between the HKUST Library and Center for the Arts features new and never-been-shown works from Fung’s award-winning series Plastic, plastic, every where!, including a site-specific forty-foot mural, large hanging scrolls, the complete short film and over thirty original paintings.
2019 Official selection. 5th International Motion Festival, the European University Cyprus, Cyprus
2018 50 Best Books for Secondary Students, Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union
2017 Winner of the Young Writers’ Competition, Joint Publishing and Sun Hung Kai Properties, Hong Kong
2016 Award of Excellence. Fourth Greater China Illustration Awards. The Hong Kong Society of Illustrators
2015 The Grotto Award, Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University
Michelle Fung Kuen Suet’s Plastic, plastic, every where! began with the award-winning drawing installation at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Master of Visual Arts Graduation Exhibition a few years ago. The art form and content of the series have been expanding ever since, from painting, short film to illustrated book, which has been selected as one of the 50 best books for secondary school students, crossing the boundaries between visual arts and literature. The series combines ink paintings seamlessly with a fable-styled sci-fi worldview. With the fine use of Hong Kong-style expressions, the works present a unique visual style and aesthetics. Plastic, plastic, every where! reflects the artist’s continuous concerns over ecological and environmental issues. It is hoped that the large-scale display of works at HKUST Arts Festival will evoke the audience’s imagination of an energy saving and plastic-free life style.
Hilda Chan and Iven Cheung
Co-curators
Little did I know that a graduation project would turn into lifelong work!
Plastic, plastic, every where! was a murmur from a dream. In 2014, cradled by the whispering waves, I was drowsing off in a Tai O coffee shop. After twenty minutes, I leapt up, feverish and in a stupor, and wrote a story in one sitting. That was the beginning that began everything.
In 2015, I picked up a book inside the HKUST library. The back cover read “Young Writer’s Debut Competition”. I made a mental note. Two years later, Tin Hong Gaau Jyu was published under the same competition. Life sometimes does come full circle.
Fast forward to 2019, this story is again greeting the world in a fresh form. Cutout pieces are collaged into framed artworks; first attempt at a large mural; hanging scrolls set the sombre tone of that critical imaginary meeting in 2084.
I am deeply indebted to the HKUST Library and the Center for the Arts for this invitation to instil a breath of fresh air into old works and to exhibit never-before-shown original artworks. I also extend my gratitude to my curators for their indispensable contribution to the exhibition.
This story is still shifting and growing, expanding in unexpected ways. Maybe it is a story I don’t want to end.
Michelle Fung Kuen Suet
February 2019
Michelle Fung Kuen Suet is a visual artist and art educator whose ambitious ongoing oeuvre revolves around a grand narrative of a dystopian world set in the year 2084. With bold and unfettered imagination, subtle humour, and delicate pathos, she weaves acute observations of the early twenty-first century into an absurd, fantastical landscape populated with plastic-eating humans, flying elephants, and islands floating in the sky, and frequently alludes to literary influences such as Orwell and Swift. Her works present a fictional geopolitical map of a bizarre future, one impacted by changes in the Anthropocene. Fung’s works span a broad range of media including text, books, drawing, painting, printmaking, installation, performances and short films, each chosen carefully for its inherent historical and experiential implications.
Her most recent exhibition, Polluta, Floating Artist Colony in the Sky (2018) at Pro Arts Gallery in Oakland, California, USA, was the non-profit gallery’s first show by a Hong Kong artist and one of the most successful in its forty-year history. Her award-winning book Tin Hong Gaau Jyu 天空膠雨 (Joint Publishing, 2017) tells a cautionary dystopian tale of a future where a frenzy of plastic consumption (i.e., lifesaver donuts, telephone hotdogs) has led humans past the point of no return. Her work Plastic, plastic, every where! received the Grotto Award, Hong Kong Baptist University (2015) and Award of Excellence, Fourth Greater China Illustration Awards (2016). Her exhibition I Don’t Know if You Know How Much I Love You (2012) was the inaugural solo show at Hi Art, a gallery owned by Beijing art tycoon Wu Jing. She has participated in prestigious artist residencies including Banff Centre, Canada; Island Institute, Alaska; and Art Omi, New York (recipient of the Cecily Brown Fellowship).
1-2 pm
(Refreshments after Ceremony)
Tsang Shiu Tim Art Hall, HKUST
Officiating Guests
Ms. Anne LEE, Deputy Editor in chief, Joint Publishing (HK) Co., Ltd.
Mrs. Yvonne CHOI, Chairwoman of the University of Hong Kong Museum Society
Ms. Michelle Kuen Suet FUNG, Visual Artist
Professor Roger Shu-Kwan CHENG, Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning, HKUST
Dr. Anna KWONG, Program Director, Cetner for the Arts, HKUST
Ms. Diana CHAN, University Librarian, HKUST
Tsang Shiu Tim Art Hall (March 11 – 24, 2019)
LG1 Chevalier Learning Commons (March 11 – June 30, 2019)
