Quiet Hours (2024) is a composition of a street scene in Hong Kong which has been transferred from photography to a textile. By transferring the image into textile it becomes an entirely different image entirely as it is no longer a photograph but more of an impression and has been imbued with the softness of the fabric offsetting the hard geometry of the city. Thus it has balanced the more geometric elements of the city against the soft weaving and thus allowing us to explore this memory slowly.
Looking toward the centre of the work, there are two figures—one moving and one on a bench. They both suggest movement and the lack of it at the same time. We, the viewer, do not know why they are moving or paused. Thus, the work highlights the slowness of time and redirects away from the fast-paced culture that defines most of Hong Kong’s representation.
The medium of just black and white threads allows the city to be seen much more hazily as though it is a snapshot of a memory. The edges are not sharp but are rather textured and this sharpness has been removed creating a much more atmospheric feeling to the image.
Concrete Paths (2024) continues this peaceful observation of the Hong Kong cityscape. The memory is perfectly captured, and the work has the same snapshot feel. The figures in the work are going about their days; the buildings do not assert themselves, thus creating a feeling of anonymity.
The perspective of the image is brilliant as the pedestrians are moving throughout the middle of the composition while they are slightly blurred by this movement. The lower part is grounded by the street and pavement while the upper part is the mid-rise apartments – a Hong Kong that is not the exaggerated outside image that one may think. The Jacquard technique gives these elements the suggestion that their forms are present rather than precise allowing us to move with the photograph and engage with it.
Salt and Time (2024) is the most open composition of the three works in the publication. The sea fades into the horizon with fog cascading what looks to be land ahead. A figure is fishing in the foreground – everything within this composition is rid of the more busier aspects of the city. Though, the other compositions do have less people than one would expect from the outward image that many may have of Hong Kong- this composition is grounded within solitude and its atmosphere calm.
The weaving of the fabric has successfully and wonderfully drawn out the highlights of the light on the water through texture- it also perfectly recreates the graininess of the photograph adding to its feeling of being a lived memory. The work is a great contrast to the two busier street scenes in the series- which here the time has been paused or rather slowed down.
Overall, the series has created a greatly personal and sophisticated set of portraits of Hong Kong not through the idealisation of spectacle but rather the overlooked parts of Hong Kong and what would be more of the lived experience. The material used in the series, cashmere (which has been reclaimed) and cotton- adds to the message. The usage of the discarded material reflects what has usually been cast aside – whether memories, materials or perhaps imagery.
Each work in the series showcase different perspectives of the city- a street in the early morning; a residential alleyway and a harbour looking toward the sea. What has been preserved in this method is the scenery that has been overlooked and has thus been given new life to the presence of not idealism but of lived experience and life.