The Unknown Garden

IVY YUEN
THE UNKNOWN GARDEN

2020
Interactive digital media / Digital Animation And Sound Installation, Colour Pencil Drawings On Paper Set Of 12

Developed for Otherworlds - as part of Singapore Art Week 2021

CREDIT

Sound Recording Transferred By Electromagnetic Vibrations. Courtesy Of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, Scientific Visualization Studio

CONTROLS

Move your mouse to click the various entries.

DESCRIPTION

The work showcases materials that are derived from archival material, images, text, and the artist’s drawing of plants. In the physical version, Yuen displays her twelve drawings of plants and a live-drawing performance streamed from her studio in Hong Kong. The VR version features interactive material animated and translated digitally.

The document from the Singapore Botanic Garden archive “Plants and seeds inward register, 1 May 1936-29 May 1959” shows that the plant species, mostly native to Hong Kong, were dispatched from Hong Kong to Singapore. In order to gain a visual understanding of the two cities’ botanical exchange, Yuen searched the images of the plants through their scientific names at the Hong Kong Herbarium’s Plant Database and depict the plants from these images.

While immersed herself deeply into the world of plants, Yuen feels that the diversity of the botanical world is closely resembling the uniqueness of each human personality.

ABOUT ARTIST

Ivy Yuen graduated with a Master of Art in Fine Art at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2018. She received a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art), major in Painting at Hong Kong Art School in 2014 (co-programmed with RMIT), and a Bachelor degree in Social Sciences in China Economics at Hong Kong Baptist University in 2000. Her art practice is research-based through data-mining from historical and statistical records. Her solo exhibition includes, “When Smoke Rises’’ (am space, Hong Kong, 2015). Group exhibition including “Art in Construction” (CIC-Zero Carbon Park, Hong Kong, 2020), “In the course of Dancing, from Nightfall to Darkness” (Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong, 2020), “From the Outside of the Inside”, (INSTINC, Singapore, 2016; Pure Art Foundation, Hong Kong, 2017). She was awarded the Osage Art Award Best in Master in 2018. Yuen currently lives and works in Hong Kong.