中學教材套 secondary school teaching...

中學教材套 SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHING PACK

Mobile M+: Inflation! Secondary school teaching pack

Notes to secondary school teachers:

This teaching pack is designed to support teachers in planning a visit to the

exhibition, “Mobile M+: Inflation!” with a collection of information about the

exhibition, the exhibiting works, the artists and some of the key concepts and

themes behind the show. The “Warm up” exercises are meant to get the students

thinking about some of the key elements of the works through engaging games and

activities, while the “Cool down” sections provide sets of questions and examples as

suggestions for teachers to guide the students’ discussion, with the aim to reinforce

their understanding.

Most importantly, materials in this pack are designed not to be conclusive. We hope

that these additional materials will act as a starting point for the students to

understand further how the artists live, observe and think; and as a result open up

new possibilities and angles as the students explore, interpret and engage with the

works.


“Mobile M+: Inflation!”: On inflatable sculpture

Let's probe into “Mobile M+: Inflation!”. Here we are showing artworks by seven

artists that will probably clash with your normal perception of what art is all about.

“Mobile M+: Inflation!” brings some of the most important works of public sculpture

created in recent years to the city, and features selections by internationally

renowned artists as well as newly commissioned artworks by local and regional

artists. Participating artists include Cao Fei (China), Choi Jeong Hwa (South Korea),

Jeremy Deller (UK), JIAKUN ARCHITECTS (China), Paul McCarthy (USA), and Tam

Wai Ping (Hong Kong), along with a performance piece by Tomás Saraceno

(Argentina).

This exhibition aims to pose questions about the notion of sculpture, the nature of

art in the public domain and the ways in which audiences might engage with it.

Situated on the undeveloped site of West Kowloon Cultural District, “Mobile M+:

Inflation!” invites members of the public to interact firsthand with large-scale

inflatable sculptures. Several of these are derived from everyday objects that have

been inflated to outsize proportions as a way of rendering the familiar unfamiliar,

and uncannily touchable than ever before. Other works in the exhibition question the

nature and potential of art and architecture in public space through installations that

evoke ephemerality and reflect on human relationships to built environment and to

the natural world.

By exploring the ever-shifting notions of nature and artifice, intimacy and

monumentality, temporariness and permanence, as well as beauty and the

grotesque that characterise these exhibits, “Mobile M+: Inflation!” will create a

diverse experience that probes the role of art in the context of an evolving and

endlessly mutating constructed landscape.

As a start ...

Warm up … Playing with scale

Have you ever turned familiar surroundings around you into something

extraordinary and unrecognisable? Play with distance and perspective, and take the

most imaginative pictures ever with your classmates with our large-scale inflatable

works.


Cool Down…

Look again at your creative photos! How does the change of scale affect your

interaction with the works? What kind of new meanings and imaginings would arise

from this transformation and treatment of scale?

The idea of playing with scale is a key element of the show. Discuss how each artist

has made use of this to achieve the message they want to transmit. How does the

notion of scale affect and correlate to elements such as the inflatable materials

used, the visitor’s experience, or the surroundings?

Art in the public domain takes notice of the surroundings and often emphasizes on

the interaction of the works between its immediate environment and the audiences.

How do the artists in the exhibition deal with this essential aspect of art in the public

domain differently? Discuss with regards to the key motifs of the works, their

presentation, their interaction with the surroundings and the audience.

With regard to displaying art in public domain, the expectation and interaction of the

public with the work is a key element in which the artist cannot control or predict;

yet this is the essence of art in the public domain. Stand and observe people’s

interaction with each work, compare the result and discuss. Do you think these were

the artists’ original intentions?

M+ will oversee the curatorial insight of the public art within the future Park at the

West Kowloon Cultural District. Look at the various types of projects across the

world and discuss the idea of commissioning art for the community; and issues such

as the concepts of “permanent” and “temporary” display. (Examples: Fourth Plinth,

London; The Sculpture Projects Muenster; Richard Serra, Titled Arc, 1981)


Cao Fei – House of Treasures (2013)

Cao Fei's photography, video installations and new media works look at aspects of

role play, fantasy and simulated reality within today's media-saturated society. Her

artistic practice poignantly captures the ways in which others imagine themselves

amidst the hyper-transformative and often disillusioning context of contemporary

China. Her recent project RMB CITY (2008-2011) has been exhibited in Deutsche

Guggenheim (2010), Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2009), Serpentine Gallery,

London (2008), and Yokohama Triennale (2008). Cao Fei also participated in 17th &

15th Biennale of Sydney (2006/2010), 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), Chinese Pavilion,

Moscow Biennale (2005), Shanghai Biennale (2004), 50th Venice Biennale (2003).

She also exhibited video works in Guggenheim Museum (New York), the

International Center of Photography (New York), MoMA (New York), P.S.1 (New

York), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Musee d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris (Paris), Mori

Art Museum (Tokyo). She was the finalist of Hugo Boss Prize 2010, and won the

2006 Best Young Artist Award by CCAA (Chinese Contemporary Art Award).

Inspired by places and moments in which people can bring their private imaginings

to life, Chinese artist Cao Fei has created House of Treasures – an oversize

inflatable suckling pig. Commonly found in Cantonese banquet celebrations, the

popular dish represents prosperity and abundance. In transforming this familiar

item into an inflatable structure that visitors can enter and walk around in, House of

Treasures offers a surreal experience of inhabiting the bowels of a pig.


Key words:

- Comic and ironic

- Fantasy and reality

- Re-examine familiar cultural experience

Warm up… Write a script

Create a bizarre script and act it out in front of the suckling pig. If possible, take a

video of the performance and share it with others.

Cool down…

You have probably tasted suckling pig at family banquets or festive events. Here

Chinese artist Cao Fei has decided to turn this familiar culinary experience into an

extraordinary fantasy. Instead of savoring this juicy piece of meat, you have been

transformed into the preys of this outsized suckling pig!

Cao Fei’s works often offer us chances to take a second look at our relationships

with familiar experience and usual surroundings, creating surreal scenarios at

home, and school or even surroundings we pass by every day.

1) Enter the of sculpture and imagine how the artist has transformed your

relationship with the suckling pig. How would you describe the experience?

Funny, attractive, disturbing, ironic … etc.? Why?

2) The artist mentioned that suckling pig as a motif was chosen because of the

cultural familiarity it would generate with the Hong Kong audience. What does

the suckling pig mean to you? Refer to your own experience at banquets and

events. Think about what the suckling pig represents, especially in different

cultural contexts.

3) Cao Fei’s works often reflect the contemporary state of our living through her

creations of various fantastical and surreal scenarios. Besides the experience of

being able to walk into the stomach of the oversized pig, what additional layers

and social issues do you think the artist is referring to, especially by choosing to

blow up the image of a suckling pig? Refer to the symbolic meanings of a

suckling pig you have discussed earlier.

Further information:

Cao Fei Webpage: <http://www.caofei.com/>

http://www.caofei.com/


Choi Jeong Hwa - Emptiness is Form. Form is Emptiness. (2013)

Choi Jeong Hwa is an artist and designer whose work moves between the disciplines

of visual art, graphic design, industrial design and architecture. Best known for his

large-scale inflatable sculptures - notably lotus blossoms - Choi's practice is

marked by an irreverent take on cultural icons and materials that permeate our

daily life. Using a broad range of media including video, moulded plastic, shopping

trolleys, real and fake food, lights, wires and kitsch Korean artifacts, Choi's

celebration of seemingly superficial objects honors the beauty of nature, and the

need for imagination when living in urban cultures with a diminishing natural

aesthetic. His playful practice comments on the privileged environment of art

institutions and questions the prized status of artworks amidst a consumer-frenzied

world. Choi has executed numerous public art commissions and has exhibited in

museums and galleries around the world including Marunouchi HOUSE, Tokyo, The

Hayward Gallery, London, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, 17th Biennale of Sydney,

Ilmin Museum, Seoul, 2005 Korean Pavillion, Venice Biennale, and Yerba Buena

Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa’s inflatable lotus flower carries deep associations to

spirituality and Buddhist iconography. Recasting this symbol of purity in a dark and

mechanised form, the artist hints at the disappearance and re-fabrication of such

virtues. By placing the work on a plot of land which is neither entirely natural nor

man-made, Choi points to hazy relationships between nature and artifice, urban and

non-urban space, and to the presence, or absence, of nature within Hong Kong’s

increasingly urbanised environment.


Key words:

- Nature and artificial

- Real and synthetic

- Surroundings, constructed landscape

- Consumer-frenzied and moments of contemplation

Warm up… Take a breath

Close your eyes, and try to listen attentively to the “breathing” sound of this gigantic

lotus flower before you. Blow into a balloon, and follow the rhythm of its breath.

Cool down…

Choi Jeong Hwa’s works disrupt the everyday settings within the urban

environments. Emptiness is Form. Form is Emptiness. is a gigantic, synthetic, man-

made black flower, pulsating in slow rhythm. Against the future site of West

Kowloon Cultural District – a plot of reclaimed land – Choi invites us to rethink what

is natural and what is artificial.

1) Were you really hearing the breath of this synthetic, man-made flower or were

you listening to your own inhale and exhale? Re-examine the experience.

2) When you close your eyes, can you hear the sound of nature? Look again at the

surrounding and the site, West Kowloon Cultural District is a plot of reclaimed

land, in the process of being developed into a future park within the city. How

does the work probe notions of artificial and man-made landscape?

3) By placing the artificial flower in a “natural” setting, how does this work impose

a notion of contrasting presence? What do you think is the artist’s stance

towards the clash between nature and man-made? Are they necessarily

opposing in nature? Re-examine this idea with regard to your personal

upbringing, and your relationship with nature and man-made materials in your

life.


Choi Jeong Hwa Webpage: <http://choijeonghwa.com/>

http://choijeonghwa.com/


Jeremy Deller – Sacrilege (2012)

Over the past two decades, UK-based artist Jeremy Deller has been highly

influential and instrumental in pioneering new methods of making art collaboratively.

His interactions with artists, musicians, historians, collectors and performers have

yielded multi-layered video and installation works that push our understanding of

social and cultural phenomena, as well as transgress the divide between the artist

(or artwork) and the audience. In 2004, he won the Turner Prize. He has presented

solo exhibitions worldwide, including the Barbican Art Gallery; London (2005), the

Palais de Tokyo; Paris (2008), and The Hayward Gallery; London (2012). In 2010 he

was awarded the RSA Albert Medal, Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts,

Manufactures and Commerce, for 'Procession', Manchester 2009. In 2012 his

monumental artwork 'Sacrilege' toured the United Kingdom, commissioned for the

Cultural Olympiad - planned to coincide with the London 2012 Olympics. He will

represent Britain at the 55th Venice Biennale, opening 1 June 2013.

As a reproduction of the prehistoric monument Stonehenge in the form of a life-size

bouncy castle, Sacrilege encapsulates British artist Jeremy Deller’s interest in the

generative spirit of public participation. By reprising this icon of England – closed to

direct public access since 1977 – as an interactive sculpture, Deller allows

audiences to reacquaint themselves with history in a high-spirited and entertaining

manner. The clever title confronts its amusement-park qualities and addresses its

irreverent attitude towards the monument’s sacred origins head-on.


Key words:

- Reality and fantasy

- Access and limits; sacred and untouchable

- Culture and heritage

- Building up narrative: past to present

- Participatory

- Copies and reproduction

Warm up… Can’t touch this!

Hop onto Sacrilege, a bouncy castle created by British artist Jeremy Deller. Pair up

with one of your classmates; without any physical contact, your task is to obstruct

him or her from touching one of the standing columns on this life-sized inflatable

replica of Stonehenge for the duration of 5 minutes. If you succeed in doing so, you

win the game! Now switch role with your friend, and see if you can succeed by

touching the column.

Cool down…

How does it feel when you can touch an artwork? In reality, we are rarely allowed to

touch a piece of artwork or historical object in a museum or gallery setting. Artist

Jeremy Deller intends to question the untouchable quality of an artwork, and

particularly the sacredness of the Stonehenge, an important prehistoric monument

from Britain. For the first time, everyone is invited to enter this world of fantasy, and

reacquaint “with ancient Britain with your shoes off” as expressed by the artist.

1) Do you enjoy the game? Do you think it is appropriate to turn a historical

monument into a playful game? What is the intention of the artist when he turns

the Stonehenge into a bouncy castle?

2) Imagine you are allowed to transform a heritage site or a piece of historical

artifact into something fun. What would that be? Does it propose new

interpretations? How? (Other examples where artists create interventions with

ancient heritage sites: Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Because We Never Stop

Loving Silently Those We Once Loved Out Loud; Xu Bing, Ghost Pounding the Wall;

Christo and Jeanne Claude The Pont Neuf Wrapped and the Wrapped Reichstag

etc)

3) Why do you think the artist named the work as Sacrilege? Made in the UK, the

work toured with the country, it embodies a poignant critique within the local

cultural context. Do you think you would understand the outrageous nature of

the work, coming from a different cultural background? Find more information


about the Stonehenge in order to better understand the meaning behind this

work. Using House of Treasures as a comparative example, discuss how cultural

context affects the experience of encountering a work, can you think of more of

such examples?


Jeremy Deller Webpage: <http://www.jeremydeller.org/>

Sacrilege, 2012 Webpage: <http://sacrilege2012.co.uk/>

http://sacrilege2012.co.uk/


JIAKUN ARCHITECT – With the Wind (2002/2009)

Liu Jiakun is founder and principal architect of JIAKUN ARCHITECTS. Liu's

architectural practice is characterized by an exploration of constraints - of materials,

construction skills and building processes. Active in China since the mid- 1990s, Liu

embraces a stripped-down, rugged sensibility in his work as a way to counteract the

high gloss of most commercially oriented structures. Projects he has designed have

been selected by "Chinese Young Architects' Work Exhibition" in Germany, "Chinese

Contemporary Architecture Exhibition" in France, "NAI China Contemporary

Architecture", "International Architecture Exhibition in Russia", and "International

Architecture Exhibition" in Venice Biennale, and many other international exhibitions.

He won the Honor Prize of the 7th ARCASIA, Chinese Architecture & Art Prize 2003,

Architectural Record Magazine China Awards, Far East Award in Architecture and

Architectural Design Award from Architectural Society of China. The projects have

been published by architectural magazines such as A+U, AV, Area, Domus, MADE IN

CHINA, AR, GA, etc., and he was invited to give lectures at MIT, Royal Academy of Art,

Palais de Chaillot in Paris and many universities in China.

Chinese architect Liu Jiakun engages in material-spatial manipulation, and employs

architectural thinking to create temporary installations, that embody a rugged

sensibility. With the Wind is an installation that repurposes readily found,

inexpensive materials to create a viable communal public space. Using helium filled

spheres to suspend a netting material (normally used by farmers for sun-shading)

over a spread of bamboo chairs, Liu produces an area reminiscent of a Sichuan

teahouse. With the Wind simultaneously inhabits light and robust qualities,

and merges Liu’s rural sensibility with the urban landscape of West Kowloon.


Key words:

- Ephemeral and permanent

- Boundaries between sculpture and architecture

- Readily found, inexpensive materials

Warm up… A DIY umbrella /shelter

Under the temporary canopy of Chinese architect Liu Jiakun’s With the Wind, let’s

build our own umbrella! Look for readily found discarded objects such as sticks,

posters, magazine papers, or plastic bags that seem to be interesting materials for

the purpose. Put together a unique personal DIY umbrella for yourself.

Cool down…

In a culture and time of mass production, we produce, use, and discard great

volumes of material. Liu Jiakun, an architect who lives and works in Chengdu, China,

is interested in exploring alternative forms of architectural practice. The architect

explores and uses readily found and inexpensive materials to construct his

buildings – often transforming constrains such as limited budget into opportunities.

With the Wind is an extension from “2009 Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale for

Architecture and Urbanism”. It is a temporary architectural structure that gives

shade and shelter to visitors but it is also a sculpture with round floating spheres

hovering above.

1) Can a building be considered as a piece of sculpture? (Examples: Frank Gehry's

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao) As a structure, both a building and a sculpture

deal with space differently. Could you describe and discuss such differences or

similarities?

2) Structures can communicate quietly, using materials, size or colour to suggest

an idea. How do you think this work communicates? What messages do you think

it is trying to present?

3) With the Wind is radical as a structure as it defies notions of sturdiness,

robustness, and concept of solid supporting system within construction. How are

the elements of portability and temporariness being played out in this work?

How does the architect turn constraints into opportunities as he constructs?


Liu Jiakun Webpage: < http://www.jiakun.com/>

Paul McCarthy – Complex Pile (2007)

http://www.jiakun.com/


Paul McCarthy is arguably one of the most celebrated and influential American

visual artists working today. As an educator, McCarthy has been profoundly

influential to multiple generations of artists through his more than two decades of

teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles(1984-2003). His

groundbreaking oeuvre has been central to discourses on American performance

and video art in the 1970s and 1980s, and has helped to pioneer the use of satire and

sarcasm in the global language of contemporary art. He received degrees from the

University of Utah, Salt Lake City (1968-69); the San Francisco Art Institute (1969)

and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (1972). His work has been

shown in major exhibitions at California College of the Arts, Wattis Institute for

Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2009); Whitney Museum of American Art, New

York (2008); Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, 2007; Moderna Museet,

Stockholm (2006); and Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2005; among others. He has

participated in many international events, including the Berlin Biennial, 2006; SITE

Santa Fe, 2004; Whitney Biennial, 1995, 1997, 2004; and the Venice Biennale 1993,

1999, 2001. Paul McCarthy lives and works in Altadena, California.

American artist Paul McCarthy is widely known for using taboo subjects and

unsettling performances to infiltrate the well-mannered confines of the art world.

With Complex Pile – a sculpture that might resemble bodily waste matter – he again

pokes fun at the prudent qualities of public sculpture and our preconceptions

towards beauty and attractiveness in art. Following his other large-scale inflatable

sculptures, Complex Pile uses its massive size to disrupt our usual systems of

perception and redirect a clear interpretation.


Key words:

- Beauty and the grotesque

- Comic and ironic

- Bad taste and well-mannered art world

- Weightless and hefty

Warm up… Opposite attracts

In a group of four to five, stand in circle. One person starts with describing Complex

Pile with a single word. Following a clockwise direction, each person will come up

with an opposing word in response to the previous person. Come up with as many

pairs of opposing words as possible. Anyone who pauses for more than 5 seconds or

repeats any words mentioned previously will lose and have to leave the circle.

Whoever left standing will be the winner. Suggested categories of words includes:

1. Appearance; 2. Function; 3. Emotion; 4. Texture.

Cool down…

Paul McCarthy is an American artist known for his provocative multimedia

installation and video performance that touch on notions of conventions and taboos

within the society. McCarthy’s works challenge people’s usual system of perception

and interpretation. In Complex Pile, McCarthy mocks the confines of the art world

and pushes us to rethink common boundaries and preconceptions. Is it heavy or

light? Is it edible or unpalatable? Is it silly or serious? Is it beautiful or upsetting?

1) Recall how many pairs of opposing words your team has come up with and write

them in pairs on a piece of paper.

2) Can artwork have opposite meanings or qualities? Based on your list of opposing

words, discuss among your group how the artwork can be described by the

opposing words. Pick another artwork in the exhibition. Can you also describe it

with contradicting words?

3) How does the work interact with its surrounding with its sheer hefty presence?

What kind of emotions or reactions do you think it will generate? Why? Is that

the intention of the artist?

4) What do you think a pile of excrement represent or symbolise? Can you think of

other examples where artists have utilized human excrement as an element in

their work? Discuss the similarities or differences between such examples.

(Other examples: Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917; Piero Manzoni, Artist’s Shit,

Wim Delvoye, Cloaca, 2000; Christ Ofili)


Tomás Saraceno – Poetic Cosmos of the Breath (2007)

An artist trained as an architect, Tomás Saraceno is an internationally recognised

artist who creates inflatable structures and sculptural installations as speculative

models of experiencing the built environment. He deploys theoretical frameworks

and insights from engineering, physics, chemistry, aeronautics and materials

science to create inflatable and airborne biospheres with the morphology of soap

bubbles, spider webs, neural networks, or cloud formations. Tomás Saraceno is

currently the inaugural Visiting Artist at MIT's new Center for Art, Science &

Technology (CAST). Saraceno has exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA,

Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma, Italy, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Walker

Art Center, USA and the 2009 Venice Biennale. He has held residencies at the Atelier

Calder in France and participated in the NASA International Space Studies Program.

A time-based performance, Poetic Cosmos of the Breath reflects Argentinian-born

Tomás Saraceno’s interests in creating changable and mobile aerial forms that

respond to a complex network of human, material and natural agents. Staged at

dawn, as temperature conditions naturally shift, the ephemeral solar dome in

Poetic Cosmos of the Breath highlights the impermanence of public sculpture and

poses new possibilities for imagining humanity’s relationship with the natural

world.


Key words:

- The built and the unbuilt, the process

- Uncertainties

- Participation

- Human and nature

- Ephemeral and permanent

- weather

Warm up… Poetic act with materials

Using plastic bags, tin foil, and/or plastic wrap to create your artwork. Explore the

materials and turn them into a poetic piece of art. Think about how your classmates

would see, smell, feel, hear this piece of work.

Cool down…

Poetic Cosmos of the Breath is an artwork that alters and changes depending on the

weather condition. Staged at dawn, as temperature conditions naturally shift, air

inside the balloon is heated and the lightweight material slowly lifts off the ground

unaided by machines or electrical power. At the same time, sunlight cast through

the material creates a vibrant rainbow-tinged iridescent glow.

1) Like the artwork With the Wind, do you think an artwork and in particular a

sculpture, has to have a permanent state or form?

2) Natural condition is a key component that contributes to the forms of this work.

To what degree do you think the artist would have control over this performance?

With the uncontrollable qualities of our natural environment, how would the

artist deal with the unexpected outcomes?

3) How does he re-imagine the relationship between human and nature through

the performance? Artist embraces notion of uncertainties when he works with

the nature. What do you think of this approach?

4) As a performance piece the work does not have a physical existence. Discuss

notion of ephemerality and permanence in relation to performative artworks.

The essence of such work sometimes comes from its impermanent nature; do

you think acts of documentation could affects works of such nature?

Further information :

Tomás Sareceno Webpage: <http://www.tomassaraceno.com/>

http://www.tomassaraceno.com/


Tam Wai Ping – Falling into the Mundane World (2013)

Tam Wai Ping works in a variety of media ranging from photography and video to

outdoor installations that juxtapose notions of reality and fiction, home and identity.

His measured process and embrace of elemental forms emerge from the artist's

interest to uncover new or unexpected relationships between land, environment and

community. He obtained his BA (Hon) in Fine Art from University of Reading in 1991,

and completed his postgraduate study with distinction from the Slade School of Fine

Art, University College of London, UK in 1995. He is the chairman and one of the

founders of ArtMap. He serves as a BA Programme Coordinator and Lecturer at

Hong Kong Art School. Tam works in various media, and is notable for his

photography, installation and environmental artworks. Tam has participated in

various international exhibitions such as "Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2006" and

"Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival, 2001". His works have been

exhibited in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Macau, Japan, Sir Lanka, United Kingdom,

France and the United States.

Hong Kong artist Tam Wai Ping’s Falling into the Mundane World is a two-piece

sculpture that addresses underlying tensions he feels plague his immediate

environment and the world at large. The partially submerged insect and human

forms speak to a range of human emotions and qualities – from adaptability and

resilience, to fear and desire. Through their monumental nature, the sculptures

force a confrontation between viewer and object that elicit questions about present

anxieties in society.


Key words:

- Monumental and Intimate

- Ubiquitous stimuli and spectacle

- Desensitisation towards our everyday surroundings

Warm up… Creating madness

Using images that you find in daily newspaper and magazines, create a collage that

depicts an up-side down spectacle to illustrate the madness of the world you live in!

Cool down…

Hong Kong artist Tam Wai Ping is interested in dealing with people and public space.

The oversized female legs and cockroach sculpture, is placed upside down with

their foot pointing toward the sky. With their gargantuan objects, they cry out for

your attention; its upturn position also refers to the frenetic state of our

contemporary living environment.

1) Can you describe your reaction upon your first encounter of this artwork?

Describe your feeling towards the work again as you leave the exhibition, how did

your emotions and feelings changes as you get used to the enormous work?

2) What kinds of meaning do you associate with female legs and cockroach?

Describe from a personal perspective and from a broader symbolic aspect.

3) Why do you think the artist placed the objects in the upturned position? Have they

fallen down onto the earth in this position? Is it a reflection of the artist’s feelings

towards his immediate surrounding? By placing a fish bowl in front of the work, the

artist invites the audience to see the upturned work in a further reversed

perspective. How does this affect your experience of the work?

4) The artist has once described the work: “Cockroaches symbolise disgust and fear.

Legs represent a primitive desire. But they are not what I want to talk about, I am

referring to, as you encounter the two, that something that arise from between the

two.” The essence of the work lies in the juxtaposition of these two objects, and

what the audience extracts from between the two. How does composition affect the

generation of meanings in artworks? How important is the role of the audience, in

terms of the process of meaning-making? In pairs, each selects two

objects/symbols that are personal to you, and invites the other to create new

meanings out of the pair of objects.


This teaching pack has been developed by M+ Education Team in collaboration with

Dr. Vivian Ting, Assistant Professor of Hong Kong Baptist University, Academy of

Visual Arts and her student, Amy Chan.

© 2013 WKCDA All rights reserved

www.wkcda.hk/mobile-mplus

www.facebook.com/WKCDevents

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