What will you be doing in your residency?| Owen Leong | - Owen Leong's Breathe residency is at the Chinese Arts Centre until Weds 13 Sept
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"I will be premiering a new video work and two wall drawings in my studio when the Chinese Arts Centre holds its next preview on 13 July. In this video, I play a trapped man, held in stasis under a ring of dripping milk, who struggles to solve a puzzle of honey and plastic that binds my fingers and hands together. "I will also be producing a new video work specifically for the Breathe residency, in which I appear as an Asian man dressed in eighteenth century European clothing. Holding up delicate speaking cones, little holes will form on various parts of my body out of which will leak milk. This piece will be screened during the open studio at the end of my residency." What is your art about? | | Milk Ring (Owen Leong, 2006) |
"I am interested in the construction of race and the pervasive nature of whiteness in popular culture. My performances enact a staging of alternate identities within a space that blurs the boundaries between real and fictitious selves to explore how the body is physically, socially and culturally framed. "I’m interested in mobilising aesthetics of race, liminal states, abjection and transformation. In terms of materials, substances such as milk and honey recur in my work as indices of racial constructs: milk equals white, honey equals yellow. I am also preoccupied with the liquid nature of these substances and the fluid nature of identities; the way social constructs shape our perception and the way that we, in turn, construct ourselves. | "My work occupies a space of alien bodies, abject rituals, desire and repulsion." | | Owen Leong describes the nature of his art |
"My work attempts to break socially proscribed behaviour and short-circuit acquired thought patterns. My videos sometimes depict simple, glitchy and repetitive gestures. In ‘Second Skin’ (2003), shot in extreme slow motion, honey pours onto my head while my hands push and pull at my face in a hypnotic ritual of transformation. At once sensual and torturous, it is ambiguous as to whether I am in pain or pleasure. "In ‘AUTOevacuation’ (2005), antlers cast in white sugar sprout from the sides of my head. Bandaged and wounded, I lap repeatedly at a pool of milk that glows white. These works attempt to move beyond racial constructs. The evacuation of body language and behavioural patterns becomes a vehicle through which this escape is staged." How does your nationality inform on your work? | | Second Skin (Owen Leong, 2003) |
"As an Australian born Chinese having lived in Australia all my life, I have always been made painfully aware of mainstream Australia’s racial anxiety, its tenuous grip on ‘whiteness’ as a position of power. "Up until the latter part of the last century, Australia existed under a Government endorsed ‘White Australia Policy’, which described Australia’s approach to immigration, limiting the arrival of non-white people to the country. "It was only as recently as 1973 that the final vestiges of this policy were removed by the Government. In the present diversity of multicultural Australia, almost one in four of Australia's population of 20 million was born overseas and these people come from more than 150 diverse countries around the world. "However, with the rise of Pauline Hanson and the One Nation Party in 1996 and the recent Cronulla race riots in 2005, there is a subtext of ugly racism lurking beneath the skin of contemporary Australia." How do you think making the work in Manchester will impact on the finished pieces? | | White Noise (Owen Leong, 2004) |
"I am constantly seeking out Asian artists who produce work within Western cultural centres. So I’m keen to immerse myself in the local art scene and also meet with Asian artists working in the UK. Being based in Manchester, I am interested in exploring a European context for whiteness and its relation to the Asian body here as opposed to Australia, which may or may not change how the work is read." What do you hope that your audience gets out of the work?"I hope people enjoy the immersive qualities of the video installation. There is a hypnotic, trance-like state in my performance videos, which I hope comes across. My work occupies a space of alien bodies, abject rituals, desire and repulsion." | 
