Gayle Chong Kwan

Gayle Chong Kwan, Green Flash, 2006, photo copyright Gayle Chong Kwan

Gayle Chong Kwan, Manipulated Memory Tasting Booth, 2006, photo copyright Gayle Chong Kwan

Gayle Chong Kwan
As an artist-photographer, Chong Kwan works mainly with large-format photography, but also brings a variety of other media into her work including video, sound, performance, and interactive installations. A multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural background inspires the Scottish-Chinese Mauritian artist to explore issues around food, trade and tourism, related to aspects of history, the senses, memory and the personal and global politics of food, trade and tourism. These lead her to produce context-specific work, to create temporary communities, or involve people in rituals to exchange ideas.

Gayle was born in Edinburgh and currently lives and works in London, she has shown extensively in the United Kingdom and abroad: ‘Tales from the New World’, 10th Havana Biennial, Cuba; ‘Memoryscape Moravia’, Centro Cultural de Moravia, Medellin, Colombia; 'New London School’, Galerie Schuster, Berlin; ‘Utopia’, Museu Berardo, Centro Cultural do Belem, Lisbon; ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’, Platform for Art, London.


Green Flash
video & sound; 20 minutes; 2006

An emotional weather system of storms, lightning, and clouds in sound and video, recorded with the chefs in the kitchens of the Great Eastern Hotel in London. Tapping into the memories and sensory experiences of the chefs, ’Green Flash’ is created out of the leftovers from the kitchens and recreated into a miniature version of the secret marble Masonic temple, which was built into the centre of the hotel by the original owner.

Manipulated Memory Tasting Booth
cardboard, speakers, CD player, white plate, spring rolls; 180x180x60cm; 2006

The ‘Manipulated Memory Tasting Booth’ plays with authenticity and fashion in Chinese art, food and architecture. Visitors are given the opportunity to listen to recorded memories or fictional stories associated with the food, left by previous visitors. In the same way that ‘Chinese’ food undergoes a kind of translation or manipulation into other countries’ tastes, each memory or sensory recollection is a creative act affected by the circumstances in which it is experienced. The architecture of the booth is based on the design of Luke Lightfoot’s Chinoiserie Room, created for the quintessentially English Claydon House in Buckinghamshire in the 1760s.

Find out more in the Artist's website link on the right!!