YUK KING TAN New Zealand / Hong Kong
Auckland Art Gallery - NEW Gallery

Oil City

The firecracker installation Oil City relates to ideas about chance, control and the consequences of process and relationships, stretching the limits of different art processes. Paul Klee's quote about drawing as "taking a line for a walk" is extended in the work to 'loosing control of the line'. The installations are performances / Gesamtkunstwerke with three stages: the explosive performance of burning the works - always started by other people, the residue that creates the different manifestations, and the documentation. These stages relate to the cognitive process of how we perceive the world: a violent moment of catharsis; the change that happens in comprehension of the event; and the final malleability of memory.

Another central element of the installation is that it questions our relationships to art and architecture, forcing one to re-navigate expectations and limits. In a room full of a potential dangerous substance we tread differently. The work, filled with gunpowder, challenges the institution to protect the audience from themselves.

The Oil City imagery is a mixture of documentary and fantasy suggesting with current images of giant oil production and transportation a utopian city of oil tankers and platforms. Constructed out of firecrackers, the image hangs delicately with a potential for explosion and collapse. Oil rigs are structural monoliths, symbols of modernisation and the power of oil; each image is a representation of one of the superlative oil platforms in the world, the work metaphorically shows the intertwined geopolitics of oil and nationalism like the platform Petronius (central image second platform from left) which stands as the tallest single structure in the world at 610 from sea level, larger than Manhattan's Twin Towers or Piper Alpha (on the far right) which sank in the largest disaster of oil production history; an explosion in 1988 killing all 167 men working on board.

The artist wishes to thank for their support and construction of the installation: BJ from Top Hat Magic, Richard Maloy, Jane Davidson, Philip Burns, Paul Chapman, Robbie McMath, Layne Waerea, Courtney James and Phillip Good

- Yuk King Tan

Background

Of Chinese heritage, Yuk King Tan was born in Townsville, Australia, in 1971 and raised in Auckland, New Zealand. In 2005, she moved to Hong Kong where she currently lives and works. She has held residencies with associated exhibitions, at the Camden Arts Centre, London, 2000; Kunstlerhaus Schloss Wiespersdorf, 2001; and 8th Baltic Triennial, Lithuania, 2002. Passerby at ARTSPACE, Auckland in 2000 surveyed recent works. Subsequent solo exhibitions include Disorderorder, Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland, 2004; Flowers of the Revolution, Jonathon Smart Gallery, Christchurch, 2004; Overflow, City Gallery, Wellington, 2005, touring to Te Tuhi - the Mark, Auckland, 2006; Yuk King Tan, Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland, 2006; and Shelter, Gallery Quyn, Ho Chi Minh, 2006. Tan's work was part of the seminal exhibition curated by René Block Toi, Toi, Toi, shown at Museum Fridericianum, Kassel and Auckland Art Gallery in 1999. Recent group exhibitions include Scape: Art and Industry Urban Arts Biennial, Christchurch, 2004; 26th Bienal de São Paulo, 2004; Hong Kong Artspaces selection, Guangzhou Triennial, 2005; Local Transit, Artists Space, New York, 2006; Asia Traffic, Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, 2006 and Pearl River Delta, Kunstverein Wiesbaden, 2006. Projects for 2007 include This Place is my Place - begehrte Orte, Kunstverein in Hamburg. Major publications include the catalogue for Overflow, 2005 and Robert Leonard, ed., Yuk King Tan, 2002.