Videotage proudly presents the exhibition Looking Down by Peter Alwast, resident at Videotage, from December 13th − 27th. The exhibition is inspired by his experience and observations of Hong Kong and takes form as a four channel video installation, which combines video, 3D animation and drawing, to explore repetition, time suspended and the way vertical zones in the city becomes sites of social organisation and contestation.
It is Alwast’s first visit to Hong Kong, which immediately impressed him with an intriguing analogy between the volume of people’s wealth and the altitude they dwell on. The richest people, he finds out, live with the most distance from the ground while the cities poorest literally occupy and sweep the ground beneath, and there is a conspicuous gap in between. Another subject this exhibition delves into is the arbitrary and repetitive unfolding of time: the city sleeps, wakes, goes to work, comes home and at times goes wayward in repetitious rhythm. Through repetition, time appears to be suspended, we seem to be moving yet nothing changes except when repetition is broken by an object which falls to the ground. Repetition provides an illusory sense of mastery over time and space, regardless of the distance from the ground.
Peter Alwast is a cross media artist who has received a number of national and international awards. His work is held in public collections in Australia and the United States. Alwast's practice employs a range of media including video, computer graphics, painting and drawing. Through the process of translation, his video works and drawings fold together different layers of representation, interchanging between real and virtual constructions of space. The constructed spaces within Alwast’s works are inflected with politics such as the use of appropriated images and text imbued with various kinds of utopian and romantic aspirations. In 1999, Peter Alwast was awarded a Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship and since completing his Masters in Fine Art degree from the Parsons School of Design in New York in 2001, he has exhibited nationally and internationally.
Opening Reception: 13 Dec 7pm (Fri) Date: 13 Dec – 27 Dec (Mon-Sun) Time: 12noon – 7pm Venue: Videotage, Unit 13, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon
For guided tour, please email [email protected] or call (852) 2573 1869.
Peter Alwast是國際上屢獲殊榮的跨媒介藝術家,作品曾於澳洲及美國展出。Peter Alwast的創作運用不同媒介,包括錄像、電腦圖像、繪畫及素描。透過不同媒介的交替轉換,錄像作品與畫作重疊成不同層次的再現,令現實與虛擬構成的空間得以互相交流。Alwast善於利用烏托邦和浪漫主義式的圖像和文本構建充滿政治隱喻的空間。1999年,Peter Alwast獲得Samstag國際視覺藝術獎學金並於2001年於紐約Parsons設計學院完成碩士學位。此後,他的作品已相繼在國內外的不同場合展出。