Taking a Detour This 2012

Photos:
1. Wearing a vintage dress, a belt I got at a clothing swap, H&M ring and MAC lady danger lipstick.
2. A reaaally cool crocodile design by London/HK illustrator Kristopher Ho.
3. Taking a photo with celebrity guest Joe Ma at the Crocodile x Detour event.
4. Here I am with my nominated design 'A Celebration' on display!

I'm back with a new blogpost and this one concludes my Growing Up in Hong Kong project! Thursday before last, my parents and I headed over to the Oasis Gallery (that should really be in quotation marks because we all know that 'gallery' is really the hallway in front of the Central escalators) to attend the Crocodile x Ambassadors of Design x DETOUR opening ceremony. There were lots of celebs, models and designers in attendance, including Lisa S., Amanda S. and Joe Ma.

An aside: as a thank you gift for the nominated designs Crocodile gave us all gift certificates and I took my dad shopping for new shirts and then I felt really validated as an artist or whatever (I'm being silly and that sounds pretentious but I was just really happy and excited that some art/craft/thing I've made could be turned into something tangible I could give to a loved one, so thank you Crocodile!)

After the ceremony my parents and I had a delicious lunch at Green Waffle on Graham Street. And then I headed over to Wanchai to meet my friend Phoebe for the Detour opening night party happening at the former Police Station.

1st row: Checking out the Instax Love display by photographer Rraay Lai. / Inside the prison of the former Wanchai Police Station, although now a heritage building we heard there were still cops working upstairs.
2nd row: Relaxing on the grass balcony art installation looking out onto Gloucester Rd.
3rd row: A selfie from the Crocodile opening. / Beautiful illustrations of really good looking Hong Kongnese hipsters by the illustrator Little Thunder seen at DETOUR. She also painted the beautiful Virgin Suicide leather jacket I've been lusting after ever since I saw it at Rat's Cave.

Speaking of shoppables, I also recommend you check out Mutt Museum's little stall of vintage fabric cheongsams at the DETOUR Maker's Fair.

Polaroid taken at the Hawkerama stalls at the DETOUR exhibition opening.

To see some cool art and to visit my little crocodile make sure you go check out DETOUR on until Sunday December 16th, at the former Police Station in Wanchai and the Oasis Gallery in Central, the latter being where my crocodile will be displayed.

And, if you've missed any of my previous posts about creating my installation for the Crocodile x DETOUR event you can catch them in the A Celebration in Process blogposts.

Growing Up in Hong Kong

I could kiss this baby, but I don't. I'm so happy to be finally done my DETOUR 2012 piece. After a mini breakdown and a forest of paper I'm ready to pack and deliver it to the HK Ambassadors of Design tomorrow. There are a few pieces in the installation and I hope people will take the time to explore the different objects when they see it in person. Most importantly, I hope the piece inspires a sense of delight and nostalgia when people recognize objects from their own childhoods. I wanted to share with you some of the different elements:

• the child: the paper mache figure is in 'Nian Hua' style, images of these chubby kids would have been ubiquitous during Chinese New Years. The school uniform was inspired by a photo from a childhood birthday party.
• airplane badge: replacing the school logo on the uniform, the airplane symbolizes the 1997 mass immigration rush that affected a lot of Hong Kong families, I distinctly remember  tearfully seeing my cousins off at the airport and in a few short months also moving away with my mom to Abbotsford, BC.  
• test papers: clenched in the child's hands. Excessive school work is a part of the reality of growing up in Hong Kong and one of the major reasons why my family and I emigrated.

So, that concludes my first foray into the art world. I really enjoyed working with all the different materials and had a lot of fun fooling around with the finished pieces. How real does the 'gai daan jai' look? It's almost good enough to eat. 

If you are interested in my earlier process with this piece, check out these posts. And if you're in town make sure you check out the DETOUR show in November which will be held at the Former Wanchai Police Station. x

Girl Stays Home All Month, Makes Baby.

 I've been hanging out at home all month listening to Fever Ray, watching Bones and putting together my paper mache project for Detour 2012. It's been slow going and I never go out, choosing instead to call up my friends and sob about how I never meet anyone cute to make out with; this is my life. It started out rough, had a breakdown after the armature I made with cardboard, masking tape and scrunched up paper ended up looking horrific, snapped out of it (thanks mom!) in time to realize I only had 2 weeks left until I had to deliver the baby to the organizers. Since, I've been crafting hard, paintbrushes blazing, leaving trails of paper mache lumps and the living room too scary for visitors.
 

After making the armature, I made some paper mache clay, this place has a good professional recipe, but what even is joint compound? So I just used toilet paper and the worst smelling white glue, using the back of a spoon I spread it over the taped foundation. Then I very poorly and impatiently sanded the dried structure smooth less lumpity-dumpity.

Next, I painted her body and hair. Put together the cake with painted paper, plastic plates and scrap plastic. The candles are a favourite, made with rolled up cardboard (I had fun posing with them pretending they were real cigarettes), then I painted them and added embroidery floss for the wick. The icing is piped paper clay from the Jusco $12 plaza. 

Making her outfit: I actually really liked this part, I stayed up all night sewing the little embroidered patch to go on her uniform. I used a back stitch for the border and a satin stitch for the airplane, this place is awesome for embroidery stitch tutorials.

 

There's still more paper to be mached, stay tuned to see how it goes!

  

How to get your work into Detour 2012

What's in this moderately heavy box?

 I've been entering contests and competitions like a madwoman this year, living on my desert island slipping messages into bottles and right now it's starting to feel like a few of them have been washing back each filled with a little bit of love and I'm so so grateful. Last week I got a call from Ambassadors of Design letting me know that my proposal had been nominated!

My installation along with the other nine winning pieces will be displayed at DETOUR 2012 this November. In case you didn't know DETOUR is Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design's 17 days flagship event and it's pretty totally sweet, held at the Former Police Married Quarters last year, it was one of first things my friend Wing Sum and I did together, the art was cool but really at that time I was more excited about finally having found someone in HK to go to designy things with.

Yesterday, I went to the Ambassadors' office and lugged a huge cardboard box home from Wanchai wearing totally inappropriate clothing - namely a Pierre Cardin top that I got at HK's creme de la sleaze thrift store Mee & Gee (secret: my favourite one is the one on Fa Yuen St, Mong Kok. But, please don't go there and buy all the cheap nice fringey things because that is not nice and I need them for my body).

Below is my proposal, the theme of the competition was Growing Up with Hong Kong:

My nominated design! You go Glen Coco!

"A Celebration" is inspired by imagery associated with growing up in Hong Kong, created in the style of traditional Lunar New Year posters, the child is riding triumphantly atop of the crocodile, clad in her school uniform and clenching test papers. The airplane badge on her dress symbolizes the pre-1997 immigration rush, which affected most children whether directly or by seeing their friends and family move away. The child is surrounded by treats from her childhood: birthday cake from the local bakeries, egg waffles and tea eggs from street vendors."

A photo from my elementary school days that I used for inspiration.
I love how the 'treats' were hard-boiled eggs and apples.
Also, is it irony if you put an Instagram filter on an old picture.

DETOUR 2011. Photo: Ambassadors of Design

This little guy was inside the box "Decorate me. Rawr."

The installation will be made mostly of paper and paper mâché along with some embroidery and found objects. I was thinking of doing the figure like those Chinese funeral paper dolls, but I'm not so sure about the connotations with that since it's supposed to be about celebration. Anyways, stay tuned this month, I'm going to be blogging about the process.