Modern ceramics by Gu Yue, Fiona Wong and Caroline Cheng

Wanshou tiles, Caroline Cheng

Chinese Ceramics exhibition at Oi! Art Space

Oi! Art Space newest exhibit of Chinese Ceramics is titled The Charm of Colour: Travel with Ceramics Through Time and Space.

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Nestled in a serene square of North Point on Oil and Electric Street, the venue offers a verdant reprieve from the bustling city with its greenery and vegetable gardens.

This exhibition brings together the works of three prominent modern ceramic artists: Gu Yue, Fiona Wong and Caroline Cheng.

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Despite occupying a modest gallery space, the dozen displayed pieces reflect ancient techniques of Chinese ceramics and their evolution through these contemporary artists’ works.

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In the first display, artist Gu Yue presents four vases, each representing a different season and drawing on his traditional ceramic education at Jingdezhen University.

Spring and Fall vases in Quest for Flowers series, Gu Yue

The vases utilise techniques like sancai, susancai and wucai glazing.

Each vase features flora and fauna motifs evocative of its season and demonstrates a dynamic scene created with a limited colour palette.

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Following his predecessors’ footsteps, Gu captures the “world within a teacup” effect by depicting continuous scenes across all sides of his ceramics.

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Gu also references a traditional technique known as duidiao, which involves sculpting, carving and layering clay to form scenes on a vessel.

Quest for Flowers

His series Quest for Flowers innovatively interprets this technique through playful manipulations of weight, space and dimension.

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Instead of sculptural, rounded figures, Gu uses flat, abstract shapes and intricately painted details for his tigers, birds and flowers, creating a paper collage effect.

Winter and Summer vases in Quest for Flowers series, Gu Yue

Water lilies, tulips and poppies are charmingly placed in pockets of the vase rather than completely pasted on, a divergence from the traditional technique.

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The glass displays that encase the urns of the exhibit, too, seem to emphasise this theme of lightness in Gu’s ceramics.

The glass displays are painted with traditional, semi-translucent glazes that cast shadows across the exhibition room, adding dimension to what is traditionally flat, glaze and paint, and making what is traditionally dimensional clay and sculpture flat.

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The efforts create a whimsical display, adding a modern twist to the culture and expression of historical Chinese ceramics and pottery.

Modern Chinese ceramics

Gu’s ceramics are enthralling in its vivacity, and he is successful in hosting us in his lively, whimsical, Mad-hatter world for a while.

The next exhibit by Fiona Wong bridges history and space entirely differently. Her piece, The Sprawling Out of Nam Koo Terrace, comprises a map of Wan Chai and a series of 3D-printed tiles replicating patterns from the historic Nam Koo Terrace.

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To create this work, Wong collected soil and samples from Nam Koo Terrace itself, a building rich in history, once used as a military brothel by the Japanese during their occupation of Hong Kong (1941-1945).

Sprawling of Nam Koo Terrace, Fiona Wong

She reconstituted these raw materials into the clay she used, referencing ancient slip-painting techniques dating back to the Neolithic period to create an earth-toned palette of colours that merge in her artwork.

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Finally, she employed modern 3D printing techniques to craft the vibrant map of Wan Chai and the tiles inspired by Nam Koo Terrace.

Nam Koo tile components of Sprawling Out of Nam Koo Terrace, Fiona Wong

The effect is powerful, bridging multiple periods in Chinese history in Hong Kong – Neolithic, Japanese Occupation and Modern Day – into a cohesive mosaic.

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Perhaps it conveys a message of adaptability and resilience in cultural interweaving or even a reclaiming of cultural and spiritual identity despite the passage of time.

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Though Wong’s work is rather subtle at first glance, I found the layers of meaning in her work to evolve with the understanding of her processes.

There’s a profound depth in how she honours the past with remnants of the present and ties together that heritage in presenting her two components: the Wan Chai map and Nam Koo tiles.

The Charm of Colour: Travel with Ceramics Through Time and Space exhibition

In the next exhibit, I encounter the first piece by Caroline Cheng, Man and Dog. It is an apt transition from Wong’s exhibit, as both ceramic artists source and create their own raw materials.

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Though, in Man and Dog, Cheng has developed this theme one step further by using an upcycled ceramic material from ceramic waste, totalling an estimated eighteen million tonnes in China alone.

She developed the material so that it can be further adopted by other artists and continue to make a sustainable impact on ceramic art.

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Cheng says, “Being unique in innovation, without peer support, is always lonely. It is important to build up a community of like-minded people.

That is why I took up the challenge of using a new material for my work in this exhibition.”

Man and Dog timeless quality

This material has an earthy, speckled texture and natural tone that lend an archaeological quality to the sculpture, Man and Dog, where they might be figures from an ancient past or modern, abstracted icons – eternal and timeless characters.

Man and Dog, Caroline Cheng

Not only do the raw materials of the piece demonstrate Cheng’s commitment to sustainability in art, but the piece’s subject matter evokes a sense of human responsibility towards the environment, represented by the relationship of mutual care between the two figures.

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Cheng’s Wanshou Tiles, on the other hand, reveal the artist’s playful, sardonic side while embracing her upcycled ceramics material, starting with the name of the piece itself.

Wanshou traditionally means “long live”, translating literally as “ten thousand lives”, a term referring in Chinese ceramics to the underglaze blue of a wanshou vase.

Wanshou tiles, Caroline Cheng

This type of vase gained popularity during the Qing dynasty to honour Emperor Kangxi, who was considered the longest-reigning emperor in Chinese history.

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After encountering an original Qing dynasty vase at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Art Museum, Cheng created her version where the name instead means “ten thousand skinnies”, with the character for shou swapped out.

Her artwork whimsically portrays modern, slender men and women, using the same blue glaze on tiles.

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These tiles resemble the shape of a modern smartphone, with her caricatured figures flattening into the images we might encounter daily through social media – depicting and jesting on contemporary beauty standards.

Through her witty punning and historical underglaze blue, Cheng’s artwork invites us to reflect on past and present values, on what exactly in our culture today truly deserves honour and remembrance over time.

Wanshou tiles (detail), Caroline Cheng

Perhaps it is the grandiosity of emperors, the superficial beauty standards, the uniqueness and ubiquity of pop icons, or even the medium of sustainable ceramics itself, that are truly encapsulated in the art piece and most worth remembering.

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The rare convergence of three distinct modern ceramic artists in the Oi! Art Space is engaging, offering a meditation not only on Chinese ceramics history but on modern sensibilities and themes.

Each artist pushes boundaries in compelling ways, with their messages occasionally overlapping, which is exciting to experience in one venue.

Hundred Flowers Blossoms (detail), Caroline Cheng

All three artists share a love for nature in their art of Chinese ceramics: Gu with his detailed nature motifs and Wong and Cheng with their use and repurposing of soils and materials in the clay they work with.

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They connect through references to Chinese history and traditional techniques that persist today, and each plays with space innovatively: Gu creates light-and-shadow displays with ceramics; Wong uses 2D materials to print 3D structures; and Cheng crafts 3D plum blossom sculptures, traditionally painted in flat watercolour, in her Hundred Flowers Blossom.

Hundred Flowers Blossoms, Caroline Cheng

The exhibit’s curation highlights the interplay and collaboration among these artists, showcasing their rich Chinese ceramics knowledge.

Text Anne Jiao / Photos Anne Jiao & Cammy Yiu

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