This winter, Collective on Calton Hill presents as part of the Satellites Programme neither the West nor the East can be a determinate location, an exhibition by artist-curator Katherine Ka Yi Liu 廖加怡.
neither the West nor the East can be a determinate location is a multisensory installation featuring text, handmade paper, found objects, scent, ceramic sculptures and silver casts. To create this new series, Katherine has developed an engaged approach to archival research, in which she interrogates and challenges the Western, Eurocentric frameworks that have been imposed on Hong Kong that was a British colony from 1841-1997. Katherine Ka Yi Liu 廖加怡 is an artist-curator whose practice and research became witness to the political transformation in Hong Kong from a British colony to a post-colonial state.
This exhibition has been informed by research into the geographic and historic coordinates of Collective’s site on Calton Hill. The City Observatory sits on a designated meridian line and was built to house transit telescopes used to monitor passing celestial objects. In contrast, the meridian system in traditional Chinese medicines is called ‘Channel Network,’ is a concept of a path through which the life-energy known as “qi” flows. The meridian runs through the Hillside Gallery, where Katherine’s work will be exhibited, and continues across the globe towards the Hong Kong Observatory.
Central to the exhibition is a new work absolute truth, composed of written text on Yixing clay 宜興泥, a material which has been sedimented, gathered, moulded, preserved and witnessed. This work is an extension of an existing work, absolutely clear (2016, bone china and porcelain).
neither the West nor the East can be a determinate location will reference both the practice and the philosophy behind Shān Shuǐ (山水), traditional Chinese landscape painting.
Satellites Programme is Collective’s development programme for emergent practitioners based in Scotland and to support diverse practitioners to produce a new commission and includes a critical development programme of retreats, workshops, studio visits and group discussions, public exhibitions, events and publishing. Practitioners are selected from an open submission by a new panel each year.
The 2021/22 participants are Stephanie Black-Daniels, Mina Heydari-Waite, Katherine Ka Yi Liu 廖加怡, Joey Simons and Camara Taylor.
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 