Paul Wong Paul Wong creates work in video, performance, photography and installation. He is a media arts pioneer and veteran, the first and youngest artist to break many barriers in the Canadian art scene when he picked up his first Portapak camera. Many of his projects were developed for site-specific contexts, unique public venues, community centres, artist-run spaces, festivals, museums, closed circuit broadcast and television. In 1992, he was the recipient of the Bell Canada Award for Video Art in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the development of the art form. He is a self-taught artist who has been an activist against censorship, for artistic freedom, against racism since the early 1970's when he worked with street kids through Satellite Art Programs 1972-78. He has helped to create mentorship and internships for younger artists through workshops. He has demonstrated national leadership in the Canadian Artist Run Movement (ANNPAC Vice-President) and hundreds of curated programs. He was editor of Video Guide and has contributed to many other media arts magazines. In addition, he is an active cultural strategist in Vancouver and nationally. He co-founded the Video In Studios (1973), Canada's leading electronic arts access, production, distribution and exhibition centre. He is also the Artistic Director of On Edge (1985), a non-profit organization that initiates challenging art projects. Both organizations import and export international programs, host visiting artists, curate exhibitions and publish books on new popular culture. Recent works such as Blending Milk and Water: Sex in the New World (1996) premiered at the 11th Annual International AIDS Conference in Vancouver, July 1996 and had its U.S. premiere on Oct. 1996 at the "New Documentaries" series at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was video director and co-producer of Jazz Slave Ships, Witness, I Burn - a site-specific installation and performance by Vancouver artist Jan Wade in Whitehaven, U.K. in October, 1996. He is currently in post-production on Cultural Baggage - a multi-channel work featuring High-8 video footage from around the world. Other video productions include So Are You - an exploration into cultural and sexual stereotyping by the dominant culture, and Mixed Messages - interviews with an Asian transsexual about gender reassignment. These works were both featured in On Becoming A Man - an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (Sept.21,1995-Jan.7,1996). This solo exhibition of eleven selected video works by Wong made between 1976-1995. The four multi-media installations remounted in their original forms were: in ten sity, Confused: Sexual Views, Chinaman's Peak: Walking The Mountain and Mixed Messages. The seven single-channel videotapes were 60 Unit Bruise, 4, Prime Cuts, Confused, Body Fluid, Ordinary Shadows, Chinese Shade and So Are You. The exhibition catalogue in English and French, with a Chinese summary, includes illuminating essays by National Gallery curator Jean Gagnon, and Vancouver writers Elspeth Sage and Monika Gagnon. Wong was the curator of Yellow Peril: Reconsidered - an exhibition of film, video and photography by 25 Asian Canadian artists that toured to 6 Canadian cities (1990-91). Other projects include curator of Kikyo: Coming Home to Powell Street (1992); a solo exhibition of Chinaman's Peak: Walking The Mountain (1993) at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; feng shui adviser and an artist in the Feng Shui (1993) exhibition in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; director of the videotape document of the installation of Temple of My Familiar (1995) in Belfast. His installation Windows 97 premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, England in May, 1997 in the international exhibition Fortune Cookies featuring contemporary work by Chinese diasporic artists from around the world. Other recent projects: THE FIRST EMPEROR'S LAST DAYS Victoria Theatre,Singapore June 13-14, August 10 -22 was a directing collaboration with THEATREWORKS.Written by Tarn How and directed by Ong Ken Sen, this work is a political allegory billed as a psychological thriller.. It was an ambitious experimental work for the stage that was a fusion of artistic ideas and forms: conventional drama, abstraction, surveillance video, electronic and installation art.This new multi-media and theatre event was created for the 1998 Singapore Arts Festival. DEAD MAN TALKING March 22, South London Gallery, U.K.was a multi-media event as part of Parallel Universe, a series on art and non-Western medicine and science. The installation, performance and lectures series was a project by Arts Catalyst, the science & art agency. WINDOWS 97 May 16 - June 8, Nunnery Gallery, London. U.K.The installation of neon and photo canvases was the inaugural exhibition of the Nunnery Gallery in East London. This exhibition was the third stop of the year long U.K. tour. Windows 97 was created for Fortune Cookies, the Chinese Diaspora series at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art in London) in May 1997. The site-specific work was created for the Nash Room windows that face the royal ceremonial route on Pall Mall. Windows is a monumental work that acknowledges the de/recolonization of Hong Kong. Commissioned by the ICA Live Arts and Locus +. THEM=US 1998 - 2000 Canadian Tour is a an exhibition featuring the work of twenty photographers.Wong was commissioned to photograph Chinese Cafes in BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan during a month long drive through the wild west. A book and cd-rom will be published in Fall 1999. The exhibition has already toured to over four dozen venues: museums, malls, office complexes, and community centres through 2000. Produced by The Harmony Movement (Toronto) THE FIVE ENERGIES - CHINESE CAFES Open Studio, Toronto May 5 - 31, is a limited edition series of prints produced during a residency in Sept. 1997. The series is based on historical, family and recent photographs of Chinese Cafe culture in Western Canada. The Taoist system of the Five Energies Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water and its corresponding colors influenced the anesthetics of the series. Series of five 22" x 44" photo silkscreen prints. SITTING OUT DESERT STORM IN PARIS was a photo essay created for the May/June issue of Front Magazine (Vancouver). 7 pages of photomontages and story were written for the'after the revolution" issue. It is travelogue set in Paris. WAH-Q: OVERSEAS CHINESE Journey To The East Performances Jan 21-23, Shousen Theatre, Hong Kong Journey To The East Installation March, Hong University of Science & Technology Jiangnan, April 8, Grunt Gallery, Vancouver WAH-Q, is a work about sexual identity and was created for Journey To The East using the Peking Opera tradition of two actors, two chairs and a table. WAH-Q is a video performance using live action, live and prerecorded video sources. An installation version was created for gallery exhibition. VIDEOTAPES IN CIRCULATION: MISS CHINATOWN: National Gallery purchase, Worldwide Video Fest, Amsterdam CHINAMANS PEAK: WALKING THE MOUNTAIN is touring with Track Records & Scanning Histories BLENDING MILK + WATER: SEX IN THE NEW WORLD was broadcast on Knowledge as part of Video In 25th Anniversary Series in October in ten sity + 60 Unit + Prime Cuts sold to Concordia University |