UK-based artist Pak Keung Wan (born Hong Kong in 1970) was in residence at The Art House throughout July 2017.
During the residency, Wan developed two ongoing bodies of work titled Lune and Primal Scenes which incorporates drawing, photographic processes and performative modes of production
Lune is the ongoing making of 12,000 drawings transfigured from diagrams in a publication by NASA detailing all the solar eclipses over a 5000-year period. This work provided a starting point for further exploration, articulated through installation, animation and photography.
He also worked with two local public cultural sites – The Hepworth and The Gissing Museum to inform Primal Scene series of performance photographs.
Wan also became interested in the reproductive possibilities of photography and the idea of the eclipse as a kind of cosmic shutter. During his residency, Wan began to develop a new photographic series, In Obscura (2017), which involved working directly inside a large format camera to produce a series of photograms on photographic transparency and film. Wan creates photograms that offer the uncanny suggestion of the place within the body where life comes into being.
The public engagement events within the residency involved an ‘In Conversation’, a public exhibition of the work produced and Artist Talks.
