Biography | CV
Gayle Chong Kwan (b. 1973 in Scotland) is a London-based artist whose large-scale photographic works, installations, sound works and videos have been exhibited internationally. Chong Kwan works primarily with photography and installation to create fantastical mise-en-scene landscapes and environments out of disturbing arrangements of waste materials, sensory remains and documentary sources. Her work focuses on competing notions of landscape and highlights collective histories and the ambiguous relationship between reality, appropriation, the detoured implications of fictional contemporary mechanisms, and latter day myths in relation to urban development, master planning, and waste. Recent projects have involved her creating a fictional island on which house the sensory remains of the lost and destroyed buildings and places of Scotland (‘The Obsidian Isle’, 2011); working with communities involved in the allotment system in Berlin, focusing on plots held by recent immigrants as well as plots passed down generations, to explore connections between ingredients across cultures and time (‘Invisible Twinning’, 2011); developing new work in response to consumption and contemporary developments in tourism and at the sites of the traditional European Grand Tour (‘The Grand Tour’, 2007- 2009′); and creating an immersive and wrap around photographic billboard landscape, as a large-scale version of inner sensory personal landscapes, installed in tunnels and sites of the London Underground, developed through working with employees of LU, stall holders at Borough Market and Catering College students (‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’, 2007-9).
Chong Kwan’s work was shown in the New Forest Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, 2011; Giphantie, Galerie Alberta Pane, Paris, 2011; The Obsidian Isle, Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, 2011; Sensory Banquet, Artist in Residence, Samphire Hoe, UK; Green Flash, Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition, Taipei, Taiwan, 2010; Save the Last Dance for Me, Whose Map is it?, Iniva, London, 2010; The eyes see more than the heart knows, Peckham Space, London, 2009; Memoryscape Moravia, Centro Cultural de Moravia, Medellin, Colombia, 2009; 5×5 Castelló 09 Award, Espai d’art contemporani de Castelló, Spain, 2009; Tales from the New World, 10th Havana Biennial, Cuba, 2009; Utopia, Museu Berardo, Centro Cultural do Belem, Lisbon, 2009. Awards include: Vauxhall Collective Award for Photography 2009; Pepinieres Europeenes Pour Jeunes Artistes Award; Arts Council England International Fellow. Chong Kwan holds a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art, an MSc in Communications from Stirling University, and a BA in Politics and Modern History from Manchester University. Forthcoming exhibitions in 2012 include Festival of the World, South Bank Centre, London; Festival of the World, South Bank Centre, London; Double Vision, Peckham Space, London; Our Mutual Friends, Film and Video Umbrella, London; Sinopticon: Contemporary Chinoiserie in Contemporary Art, Plymouth Arts Centre; Intimate Revolution: Discourse on Disappointment, Various Venues, Shanghai and Beijing.
