Wednesday, September 3, 2008

'Cutting Edge' event at the V&A Museum's Friday Late

‘Cutting Edge’ was one of the side events for the ‘China Design Now’ exhibition at the V&A Museum, the event took place on 26 June 2008 was commission by V&A and supported by French Connection.

Cutting Edge publicity material


The CD-R (Chinese Designers’ Region) group was invited to organize this event. William Hailiang Chen, one of the CD-R directors and also the curator of the event mentioned that he inspired by the mosaic floor ornament design on V&A’s flooring and relate it to traditional Chinese paper cutting. He decided to invite members of public visiting the event to pick up a pair of scissors and join the CD-R members to create a paper-cutting installation in ‘Cutting Edge’. The installation then ran along the floor of the museum like a carpet strip. At the end of the night, the visitors were also allowed to take a piece home.


Another event alongside the ‘Cutting Edge’ event was the ‘Sound Message Board’ which was organized by the CD-R members. Devised by sound artist Zhu Tiantian, the installation creates ‘live sound-scape’ in response to people’s aural messages. Members of public were invited to write their message on their textured message boards with improvised writing instruments to hear their ideas resonant.

Participant designers and artists:

Yue Bei, William Hailiang Chen, Stephanie Foy, Beidi Guo, Chloe Liu, Lei Liu, Yan Pan, Chong Boon Pok(Andrew), Kar Paik Soon, Mei Fong Tam, Tom Tong, Zhe Wang, Susu Xu, Yan Yan, Can Can Yang, Ann Xiao and Jing Zhang

About CD-R

CDR is a non-profit organisation embarked from the first meeting with Get It Louder curator Ou Ning in April 2006 and later also ‘Post Awakening’ party at William Hailiang Chen’s flat on 8th October 2006. The group has been holding a number of meetings and tried to curate a collective exhibition for almost 2 years now. For further information about CD-R please visit visit www.cdregion.com

I designed and pre-prepared a 2-D Chinese ornament pattern that has butterflies and flowers motif for the event. The design was then cut out from a piece of designated colour paper and laid on the museum floor, it was meant to be fixed in one of the boxes of the museum floor’s ornamental design. At the event, I invited members of public to have a hand on experience on paper butterflies cutting using old magazines’ papers that can be then transformed into 3-D butterfly. Their cut-outs matched my design in an evolutional manner (from monotone 2-D to colorful 3-D), and displayed on the floor up to the pillar next to my design.

Drawing for my idea

Experiments of the butterfly cutting


The cutting technique demonstration


Members of the public took part in the paper cutting


Some of the paper buttleflies displayed on the pillar

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Welcome to the ground

Thank you for stopping over. The Ground We Share evolves from my research study where I make a comparative study between the concepts of the everyday in art practice and Zen.

My art practice may be seen as the result of my interest on the matters of the everyday and Eastern thoughts. Over the years, I have produced a body of cross-disciplinary work that explores the as-it-is-ness of things, and interconnectedness between objects and people. My own cultural background and life experience are often revisited, examined and evidenced in the work within this journey of exploration.

In Zen tradition, mindfulness to everyday trivial is important in their spiritual pratice, my research relates this notion of attentiveness from my work to this tradition. Historically, many important twentieth century artists and art groups who expanded Duchamp’s theory of the ready-made and the everyday were also influenced by Zen teaching from D.T. Suzuki and Shunryu Suzuki that can also be related to this research.

In contrast to the Western sociological perspective on the study of the everyday from important thinkers like Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau; I look at it from a different perspective - through the prism of a contemporary artist that comes from an Eastern background.

This blog provides a space to share my activities and information arising from my work and research. You are welcome to be part of this interconnection by posting your valuable experience, thoughts and comments.