Venue Address: Lumenvisum, L2-2, JCCAC, 30 Pak Tin St, Shek Kip Mei, Kowloon (Google Map to venue)
Read more about this project and view the images from this exhibition:
SCMP Article
Artist Statement and Images
Lumenvisum’s Exhibition Newsletter (PDF)
Images from the opening reception at Lumenvisum, August 20, 2023
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Evolving Territories – Hong Kong in Transition 1994-2000 (Part II) opens at HKI Gallery on August 27th and will be on display through October 22nd.
Venue Details: HKI Gallery, Suite 701, 7th Floor, Chinachem Johnston Plaza, 178-186 Johnston Rd, Wanchai, Hong Kong.
Opening Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12 pm – 7 pm.
It was a great please to discuss my work with Zolima CityMag’s Managing Editor Christopher DeWolf. Chris is a Canadian journalist who has lived in Hong Kong since 2008. He is the author of a book on Hong Kong’s unique urban culture, “Borrowed Spaces: Life Between the Cracks of Modern Hong Kong” (Penguin, 2017).
Link to article:
https://zolimacitymag.com/gretchen-so-evolving-territories-hong-kong/
HKI Gallery presents Evolving Territories – Hong Kong in Transition 1994-2000, a photography exhibition featuring images I took between 1994 and 2000. Commemorating the 25th anniversary of the handover, this exhibition is a candid portrait of Hong Kong at a crucial historic juncture. Come by to see the pigment prints at the gallery – the show is on until July 20, 2022.
Venue Details: HKI Gallery, Suite 701, 7th Floor, Chinachem Johnston Plaza, 178-186 Johnston Rd, Wanchai, Hong Kong. Opening Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12 pm – 7 pm.
15 Jan- 30 Jun 2021 at Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens
The year of 2021 marks the 150th Anniversary of the Hong Kong Botanical and Zoological Gardens, which has been an escape for people who enjoy nature. The recent strolls that I made through the area were full of exciting encounters with the locals, children, domestic helpers, expatriates, and tourists. These enchanted visitors vitalized the air with their bliss. The Gardens, an ideal setting for both social and solitary life, has become a true celebration of the diverse communities and cultures that have converged throughout its history.
My childhood recollection of the Gardens consisted of nothing more than the huge aviary and primitive sounds from the wildlife. However, my repeated visits have confirmed that it is a unique and timeless place. For this exhibition I deviated from my long-standing photographic style of limited human presence, and created a series of people-centric images entitled Where the Hearts Meet. They explore the remarkable geographical settings of this urban oasis and its special connection with visitors. I believe that the intrinsic value of the Gardens lies in its power to nurture different lives and relationships, generation after generation. This project honors the Gardens, an essential part of Hong Kong, which provides all that is needed to connect our hearts.
The Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens was the site of the government house during the city’s early development. It was officially opened to the public in 1871 and is the oldest garden in the territory.
The Gardens occupies an area of 5.6 hectares (14 acres). At the southern entrance is a memorial arch and a granite arch dedicated to the Chinese who died assisting the Allies during the two world wars. A bronze statue of King George VI was erected in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of British colonial rule over Hong Kong.
Apart from housing century-old historic monuments, old and valuable trees and other exotic flora, the Gardens is also the home to various endangered species of birds, mammals, and reptiles.
For the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens the Art Promotion Office launched a yearlong public art project, ‘Hi! Flora, Fauna’ to celebrate the event.
The artist, Gretchen So, was commissioned to explore stories about the Gardens and the relationship between humans and nature. The result of her work is a series of photographs, most of which are displayed on both sides of the steps leading to the Bronze Statue of King George VI, creating a spectacular outdoor gallery. The remaining works are nested in different trails where the landscape of the photos intertwines with that of the surrounding environment, allowing visitors to roam freely between the imagery and reality during their leisurely strolls.
This project began just before the early outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the following year, many visitors flocked to the Gardens because of the closures of many businesses. People from all walks of life engaged in various unusual activities, which were captured in the artist’s photographs.
Exhibition Period: 9- 31 Dec, 2016
Venue: Lumenvisum, L2-10, JCCAC, Shek Kip Mei, Kowloon (Closed Mondays and Public Holidays)
“Behind Closed Doors: American Home in mid-1990s”, a solo exhibition by art photographer Gretchen So, explores the harmony and contradiction between the ideal and the norm of the living culture in North American society in the 1990s.
The featured images of domestic environments are psychological portraits of their inhabitants. The exhibition prompts viewers to question the context of the interiors, speculate on the background of the owners, or even imagine the character of those remote occupants.
At the exhibition venue, the images are grouped into virtual rooms, separated by decorative panels, serving as “walls”. I see a wall not only as a physical structure that encloses or divides a space, but also as a display board of occupants’ individual values, intertwining tastes, and past experiences.
Enjoy the “Homes” and please feel free to share your thoughts with me via www.gretchenso.com/contact/
View Images from the series “10,000 Messages” >
Gretchen So is participating in the Hong Kong International Photo Festival 2016, themed “What Do You Want For Tomorrow?”.
The exhibition takes place at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, 1/F Thematic Galleries 1 & 2, from 10 August 2016 until 26 September 2016. The festival is presented by the Hong Kong Photographic Culture Association, and is a partnership project with Hong Kong Heritage Museum of Leisure and Cultural Services Department.
“Whether it is due to suburban development or city modernization, people in Hong Kong live in a constantly evolving environment. Can we just reminisce the past? Or should we look forward to the future? Do we gain more than we lose during the process? I have been photographing extensively in Hong Kong for over two decades. Passing through the streets of the city, I strive to capture the ever-changing scenes of our environment. My images serve as witnesses of our time, and may assist the future generations to answer these questions.
Along with photos of urban landscapes in Hong Kong, in this installation I also include images I recently took at night for the very first time around Central and Sheung Wan. Instead of a caption, there is a QR code next to each photograph, which leads to an assigned online discussion page. I invite viewers to post there a relevant title for each image. Viewers can share their insights, and discuss various issues related to the images in this forum. The traditional experience of attending an art exhibition is then combined with the modern “Mobile-and-Social” lifestyle of engaged citizens. The ultimate goal of the exhibition is to reach the juncture, where Art Photography, Mobile Technology, Social Media, and User Engagement interconnect.”
Gretchen So
Gretchen So’s work of New York’s Twin Towers from 1990s will be on display at the Photospace Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand from 11 Sep through 6 Oct, 2014.
The opening reception is on 11 September 2014, Thursday, from 5 pm to 7 pm. Gallery opening hours: 10am-4pm Mon- Fri; 11am-4pm Sat.
Several years in a row Tse Ming Chong, Founder of Lumenvisum, asked me to participate in the Artist and Photographer Conversation Series. My routine response was that I had no time and was not ready. Indeed, I had a fairly busy schedule when I first relocated back to Hong Kong. Yet the main reason of my rejection to his proposal was my fear of having to delve into my old work or to make art for a predetermined project.
I began seriously taking pictures in the summer of 1990 and have collected tens of thousands of images ever since. The film cameras that I have tried range from Minox subminiature camera, Diana box camera, Seagull/Pearl River twin lens reflex, Nikon SLR, Mamiya RZ67 to Calumet and Graflex Speed Graphic. A photographer’s working method to a large extent reflects a technique as much as a temperament. I eventually settled on a medium format film camera.
I like to explore the world and see it through the viewfinder. My photography heavily relies on the intuition of my trained eyes, my sensibility, and the spontaneity of the medium. I already know the picture when I pick up my camera. The moment I click the shutter I feel that my role as an artist is fulfilled. The resulting image is no longer important to me, and it doesn’t matter if it will have an audience. It has become the norm that in most cases my images either occupy the space in my storage unit or quietly reside somewhere on my computer hard drive.
Last year, I finally decided to accept Mr. Tse’s invitation to participate in this conversation project. Through several dialogues with Stanley Wong, I discovered that we share similar interest in our complex cultural and visual environment. We incessantly photograph the streets of Hong Kong, without a project in mind. Other than the excitement we have at the time of the exposure, we are both left with heaps of untouched negatives.
For the exhibition, I reviewed the images that Stanley Wong provided to me, and selected some to pair with my own work. My work shows a more open view of the scene whereas Stanley’s is relatively closer and, in certain occasions, focus on an object. Despite those differences, each pair shares certain connections or similarities to one another, either visually or conceptually. I intentionally present the two images very close together, imitating the format of stereoviews, which is how the exhibition title originated. I hope each pair of two-dimensional images is seen and then combined in the mind of the audience to give the perception of three-dimensional depth. When the viewer moves between the two images within the pair, they would feel as if they could zoom in and out of the scene.
The image selection process has given me the opportunity to re-examine in detail some of my work from the past two decades. I see the Hong Kong I have captured on film as an intricate environment, with layers of buildings, signs, people, and traffic coming together in disorientating panoply of objects. Fragments of visual information are juxtaposed, creating an ambiguity between three-dimensional form and two dimensional rendering. The city in my photographs seems temporal; evolving before my eyes…
I thank Lumenvisum and Mr. Tse Ming Chong for organizing this exhibition, and for letting me rediscover my work and see it in a way I had never seen before.
– Gretchen So
View Project Images | Read Exhibition Press Release
我的「倆睇」
蘇秀儀
過去數年，光影作坊的創辦人謝明莊都曾邀請我參與每年一度的「藝術家與攝影師對談展」，我一貫的回覆是沒有時間，還沒準備好… …。誠然，回流香港後的我很忙，但真正拒絕的原因卻是不願重翻舊作，或要按照特定的主題做創作。
我從1990年夏天開始認真地拍攝，並已收集了成千上 萬的影像。曾使用的相機有Minox subminiature camera, Diana box camera, Seagull/Pearl River twin lens reflex, Nikon SLR, Mamiya RZ67 to Calumet and Graflex Speed Graphic…等。攝影師的拍攝手法很大程度反映了個人的技術和性格。而我，最终選擇了120相機模式。
我喜愛用相機去探索身邊事物，主要利用眼睛的直覺、個人的洞察力和攝影獨有的快拍功能創作。在舉起相機的同時，我已能確定影像的產生。而在按下快門的一刻，作為藝術家的我，感到任務以經完成，從不深究那些作品的命運，是否會被公諸於世。久而久之，大量的底片和數碼檔案，不是充斥着我的儲存倉，便是靜悄悄地躲在電腦資料庫內的某個角落。
去年，我終於答應參加是次「藝術家與攝影師對談展」。從多次對話中，得悉又一山人跟自己一樣，非常關注身邊事物，經常漫無目的地拍攝香港的大街小巷，大家的得著竟同樣是一堆堆陳年底片。
我從他提供的底片中挑選了一些影像，然後以自己的照片配對回應。儘管我的作品景觀廣闊，而他的距離較近，有時甚至會聚焦在某件實物上，但每對作品在視覺或概念上都有些關連或共通點。為了配合展覽英文標題”Stereoviews” 的構思，我仿效傳統立體照片的模式，把展出的每對照片放得十分接近，希望觀眾能在腦海裏，把兩個類似的平面影像融合一起，營造出立體的假象。當他們左右觀賞照片時，感覺又會像變焦鏡頭般，能把影像放大或縮小。
準備是次展覽使我有機會回顧過去二十多年的創作成果。舊作裡，我記錄了香港錯綜複雜的面貌。不同層次的建築物、招牌、人物及交通工具等，互相交織；破碎的視覺片段並列一起時，令立體事物和平面圖像變得難以分辨。鏡頭下香港的景觀短暫善變，在我眼前不斷地急速發展… …
我在此感謝光影作坊和謝明莊籌劃是次展覽，容許我以嶄新的角度檢視自己封塵已久的作品。
Exhibition opens on 15 February 2014 (Saturday), at Lumenvisum; Artist Sharing at 4pm; Opening at 6pm
Lumenvisum proudly announces that artist Stanley Wong (a.k.a. anothermountainman) and photographer Gretchen So are participants of this year’s “Conversation between Artist and Photographer Series IV”. Continue reading ““Stereoviews”: A Conversation between Gretchen So and Stanley Wong”
We’re excited to announce that Gretchen So’s work will be on display at Pearl Lam Galleries in Shanghai from 15th to 24th March 2012.
Learn more about Pearl Lam Galleries.
Gretchen So was selected as one of the finalists in the 2011 Sovereign Asian Art Prize. Her work “Pigeon” (51cm x 76 cm, Archival Inkjet Print) was exhibited in January 2012 at the Arts and Science Museum at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, and in February at The Rotunda, Exchange Square in Hong Kong. The art piece was auctioned off at charity auction dinner on February 17, 2012 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong. The event was attended by 360 guests, and total proceeds from the art auction exceeded USD270,000.
The Sovereign Asian Art Prize was initiated in 2003 when the Sovereign Art Foundation was established as a charity in Hong Kong.
ART EDITION is an annual art fair organized by the Korea Print Photography Promotion Association (KPPPA) and serves to promote and develop the genres of printmaking, photography, Media art and many other edition works. The venue of this year’s ART EDITION was held at the Seoul Trade Exhibition & Convention (SETEC) Centre in December 2011.
Learn about Sense Art Studio
Headstorm Industry, a mobile radio, interviewed Gretchen So who talked about how she began her artistic life 20 years ago. It also introduced the images she took of the World Trade Center in the early 1990s. More content about how she got into Yale School of Art, The charm of the World Trade Center, A love story, a family and a closure after 20 years.
I have never visited New York. Nor, of course, have billions of other people in the world.
I certainly can’t speak for them, but I suspect any person exposed to American culture and its exports would share some of the following thoughts.
My impression of New York City and its buildings have been entirely constructed in my mind; fuzzy impressions from books, films, television and photographs. The Manhattan skyline: a mountain range of high-rises. The Statue of Liberty: adrift on an island. Abstract Expressionism/New York School: de Kooning; Gaston; Pollack, Motherwell et al. The city’s great museums: many, but the Guggenheim’s spiral is the only interior I can recall. Parks: there is Central Park, but any others? Of course, Henry James’ Washington Square: its park. Continue reading “Down, an essay by art critic John Batten”
HONG KONG, August 1, 2011 — This September, recognizing the ominous 10-year anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, Hong Kong photographer Gretchen So presents her exhibition entitled “NY 10048: The World Trade Center in Early 1990s”
As a stunning tribute to the American Dream, the World Trade Center complex in New York was a popular photography subject. And just when one would think the world has seen the Twin Towers from every possible angle, the black and white images of Gretchen So re-discover them for the audience, yet again, as a powerful reminder of the artistic merit of these glass-and-aluminum-alloy pillars of modern times.
Gretchen So’s photographs of the towers were taken approximately 20 years ago, and they validate the notion that the Twin Towers are never-to-be-forgotten. “It is my hope that this exhibition will guide the viewer to go past the monumental historic prominence of the buildings, and discover their remarkable impact as quiet witnesses of our daily life at the time,” says So.
The photographs reveal the artist’s fascination with the monolithic symbolism of the buildings. Most images feature the towers from remote locations in New Jersey, Queens and Brooklyn, and how the farther she went from them, the more ubiquitous their presence appeared in the skyline. She portrays the buildings not so much as an engineering marvel, but rather as an omnipresent witnesses of modern life in cosmopolitan New York in early 90s, when the Twin Towers were reigning as the symbol of opportunity and success.
So continues, “Having lived in both New York and Hong Kong, I see the strong correlation between the two cities. The street rhythm of Hong Kong resembles the fast pace in New York both visually and emotionally. I truly believe the diverse Hong Kong audience will connect with the images just like I did on location twenty years ago, and appreciate the subtle monochromatic elegance of these photographs.”
Selected photos are being exhibited in Hong Kong for the first time at the following neighboring venues:
FRINGE CLUB (The Anita Chan Lai-ling Gallery)
Address: 2 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong
Hours: Monday to Saturday, 12noon – 10pm
Phone: (852) 2521 7251
THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS’ CLUB
Address: 2 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong
Hours: 10am-12 noon & 3pm-5:30pm daily
Phone: (852) 2521 1511
An online preview of the exhibition is also available at GretchenSo.com
Gretchen SO received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University and also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) in Photography from the University of Manitoba, Canada. She has received awards from numerous organizations, including multiple grants from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council for exhibitions in Asia, Europe and North America, and for compiling the photographs she took six years before and after the handover of Hong Kong to China in two albums. Her works were selected for the Hong Kong Art Biennial ’98 and she was a finalist for the 2008 Sovereign Asian Art Prize. For more information, please visit the artist online at www.gretchenso.com
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong, one of the world’s finest social clubs, is an important media hub, providing a rare neutral platform for an impressive selection of local and international speakers. For more information about the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, please call (852) 2521 1511 or visit www.fcchk.org.
The Fringe Club nurtures local emerging artists by presenting their work and providing them with a supportive and open environment. It engages in cultural heritage work, community outreach, and regularly collaborates with overseas arts organizations to showcase and promote Hong Kong and its artists. For more information about the Fringe Club, please call (852) 2521 7251 or visit www.hkfringe.com.hk.
Hong Kong Heritage Museum
20.6.2010 – 3.1.2011
城市漫遊者─社會紀實攝影
香港文化博物館
2010年6月20日 – 2011年1月3日
This exhibition incorporates a diverse range of creative media, showing the works of eight individual artists. Some of these works are site specific. A parking lot acts as the main body and the artworks are parasites on it – through this temporal relationship the exhibition investigates the notion of power and conditions for co-existence.
‘If You Park Here’ uses a parking lot as the exhibition space. The traditional white slots have been, over the past few years, replaced by non-profit organisations, artist studios, shopping malls and outdoor spaces. The car park, although it only participates in a one-off exhibition, is selected as an alternative space for its public stance, its state of mobility, its characteristics of transparency and the experience that it brings to globalisation. This exhibition may create another kind of attention for local art, which has always been perceived or debated upon as being ‘non-mainstream’ or ‘personal’ Continue reading “If You Park Here: Curatorial Statement by Dr. Tang Ying Chi”
I live in Wan Chai, where I often encounter a large vinyl banner with an image of a serene path leading into the woods. The beautiful scene of nature not only adds green tones to the hustle-bustle grey surroundings, it also conceals the trash collection centre behind it. Continue reading “Thematic exhibition “If You Park Here” presented by Fotanian Open Studios 2010″
Hong Kong Central Library Exhibition Gallery
66 Causeway Road, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong
December 20 – 30, 2008
香港中央圖書館展覽館
香港銅鑼灣高士威道66號
2008年12月20日至12月30日
Central Plaza
1/F Lobby, 18 Harbour Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong
January 4 – 17, 2009
中環廣場一樓大堂
香港灣仔港灣道18號
2009年1月4日至1月17日
Exhibition: Vertical Cities
Documenting Hong Kong and Vancouver
Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
July 21 – August 22, 1999
By Trevor Boddy | Published by Charles H. Scott Gallery
The ocean between them is not reason enough to think of Hong Kong and Vancouver as anything but sister cities. Unusual among world cities, both urban centres are artificial creations of the 19th century, rather than organic continuations of settlements many centuries older. Hong Kong was created as a British mercantile enclave out of an archipelago of pirate-ridden islands and tiny fishing villages as a part of the negotiations that ended the Opium War. Vancouver was invented as a land development scheme by the Canadian Pacific Railway Lands Department in the late 1870s in order to maximize returns on their peninsular location of a western terminus for their line-courtesy of a gift of extensive government lands -rather than share speculative profit with existing land owners in such older, established towns as New Westminster or Port Moody.
The very names of each city are somewhat problematic, revealing the contingencies of their invention, nor evolution. Hong Kong means “fragrant harbour” in Chinese, a double-baited marketing hook not unlike the Chinese characters meaning “golden mountain” ascribed identically to California, Australia, British Columbia and elsewhere to help expedite emigration of Chinese gold prospectors and railroad labourers. For the 19m-century flow of labour that anticipated today’s borderless flows of capital, the actual differences between these employment destinations mattered little. The CPR Lands Department and government officials insisted on calling their new creation “Vancouver” for its sentimental appeal to potential property investors in Britain and Eastern Canada, who had become unsettled over the previous two decades during which the British Pacific colonies had repeatedly threatened to join the United States. They did this knowing full well that a thriving and much older town with the same name existed 300 miles away in Washington State, a town founded, in fact, by Canadians when it was an outpost of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Exhibition: Hong Kong Now!
Anderson Gallery, School of the Arts
Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia, USA
Essay by Robert Hobbs, The Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University
Gretchen So’s years of study, first as an undergraduate in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and then in the Yale University graduate program in New Haven, Connecticut, have provided her with the vision to undertake the project of chronicling change in Hong Kong over a several year period. A color photographer who prefers to work with a medium-format SLR camera, because of the clarity of detail it offers. The commercial subtext provided by this film is a crucial component of her work that transforms the environs of Hong Kong into its simulacra. Continue reading “Hong Kong Now!”