At a Still Point of the Turning World

Exhibition Period | 3 — 20 September, 2014

Galerie Ora-Ora, G/F, No.7 Shin Hing Street, Central , Hong Kong

Presenting Ray Chan’s ceramic works, Gabriel Leung’s mixed-media installations, and Stephen Wong’s series of paintings, “At the Still Point of the Turning World” is a depiction and materialisation of the artists’ personal means and journey of searching for the “still point” — a constant ritual, respite, or an oblique resolution in the face of chaos, crisis, or uncertainties of an ever-changing world.

“At the Still Point of the Turning World” is an exhibition of works by Hong Kong-based artists produced as part of “The Still Point” festival of art, faith and humanity, and in response to a traveling artistic collaboration entitled the QU4RTETS inspired by T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. The phrase ‘at a still point of the turning world’ comes from Eliot’s first quartet “Burnt Norton”. Written during the ravages of WWII, the Four Quartets represents Eliot’s artistic excellence and personal expression of his vision derived from the Christian gospel message, in which the “still point” is where the human experience of time evokes wonder, fear and longing for continuance and redemption.

First exhibition to kickstart our new experimental art space FLOOR 5½.

“And under the conditions of our contemporary product-oriented civilization, time does indeed have problems when it is perceived as being unproductive, wasted, meaningless.” ― Boris Groys

The exhibition Mode of By-production invites artists to interrogate their personal process of artistic productions, identifying thresholds between notions, impulses and unintentional events while juxtaposing with the questioning of their chosen means - tools, raw materials, and use of time.

Time is commodified in the system at large. Check-in, check-out, check-in, check-out, a routine of actions remarkably unchanged. Waking up to go through the same motion again in a subliminal limbo.

By putting in the hours, minutes, seconds, without any means, one fails to see the end product. Between this linear progression from start to finish, a by-product is like carbon dioxide released from burning waste. A by-product can be seen as secondary, otherwise it is equally just a part that informs the other.

Rather than evaluating time or a product wasteful, we are interested in creating meanings from them, that the whole is greater the the sum of its parts. Disruption of a routine, such as loading time, excessive repetition, staring at a fish tank, or in the case of an emergency, these moments may all well be constructive to contemporary society.

Mode of By-production hopes to expand our product-oriented society to reshuffle its hierarchy, by which artists, through their works, have diversely but consistently displayed an interest in embracing uncertainty, giving attention to moments of delay, and elevating the value of the undermined.