The works range in a variety of mediums including a VR experience, a series of paintings, a video and a 3 part sculpture. All of these pieces dissect themes regarding the fleetingness of situations in the world around us. Natural elements and forces are all present in each of these works, which reveal the complex relationship we have with the transitory world we inhabit.
Rationale
eTHIS CAN’T LAST consists of a collection of works that explore the essence of ephemerality and the torment of impermanence. The works “11:11” by Sunnie Cao, “November” by Helinda Yu, “Waterfall” by Rachel Feng and “There Is Only One Sun” by Mila Feng. The works range in a variety of mediums including a VR experience, a series of paintings, a video and a 3 part sculpture. All of these pieces dissect themes regarding the fleetingness of situations in the world around us. Natural elements and forces are all present in each of these works, which reveal the complex relationship we have with the transitory world we inhabit. Although created at the same time, the artists worked separately, exploring themes they found resonated with themselves respectively. Ideas of impermanence, memory and isolation all reside in each work, showing that perhaps as we evolve emotionally as autonomous, independent beings, we do so convergently.
11:11 by Sunnie Cao is a VR experience whereby the viewer is invited to enter a space that no longer occupies a physical space. The space now exists as a memory of the demolished site, its uncertain and non-physical form is akin to a dreamscape, or liminal space. The clinical, white, plaster walls shift as the viewer moves through, suffocating yet oddly comforting as it triggers ideas of tangible spaces and intangible subconsciousness.
November by Helinda Yu is a series of paintings that record the ever-morphing sky through November 2020. Painted at the same time of day, the artist records the changes of the sky as the planet turns. The repetition of days displayed in a calendar format at first glance may appear to visualise the certainty of passing time, however, through a darker lens the melancholic repetition reads anxiety and desperation for the uncertain promise of tomorrow.
Waterfall by Rachel Feng is a video that captures the ephemerality of substances like ice and light; their tangibility and their ghosts. It questions whether one can materialise grief, how people should commemorate those who have never crossed their paths, and whether assigning meaning to a monument evokes or replaces grief.
There is Only One Sun by Mila Feng is a three-part sculpture that marks the sun’s trace like wrinkles on our skin. A parabolic mirror refracts the rays of the sun and burns a plaque of wood, creating a dark mark that eventually pierces through the wood. Through this experience, a monumental yet intangible force is captured and preserved for eternity.
In turn, these works become an existential study of the minute changes we are able to make when faced with the invincible opponent of time. These individual works all speak to one another on the ephemerality of the present and the desperate attempts at marking our existence in a world that holds no memory.
“November” by Helinda Yu
November 2020 is a work made up of 30 acrylic paintings on canvases, each revealing a part of the sky at 5pm on the 30 days of November in 2020. The work is presented chronologically and displayed in a grid, correlating to the calendar format and a summary of the day through the image of the sky. The process involves painting from real life, initiating a direct confrontation to our natural world and enforcing a connection to our environment and surroundings. The sky is an emblem of something all humans share despite our social backgrounds and geographic locations. This sense of togetherness and commonality becomes more apparent in our current situation in dealing with a global pandemic, whereby the mundanity of life and its meanings had shifted significantly. The belief that anything and everything created, perceived and experienced in the year 2020 is indeed of great importance, and is significant, as we are collectively impacted by the effect of Covid19. Art is greatly known to memorialise and be a medium for documenting our contemporary events, such as the banal and taken for granted - the sky. I chose the 5 pm sky as I had always found the hour to be magical, calming and fascinating to view the sky at.
And so, with this opportunity, I decided to paint a landscape piece since I haven’t yet done so for a project. Ever since I was young till now, I have been fascinated and attracted to the sky as it intrigued ideas of wonder, imagination, hope, and peace for myself. This time around, living under the impact of Covid-19, made me appreciate more of the little things in life, replicating something that is unchangeable and changing every day, sometimes even going unnoticed. The sky encapsulates both change and permanence - entailing the fleeting concepts of light and time and yet remains prominent in our everyday life.
Artist Bio:
Helinda Yu is a contemporary visual artist based in Sydney, Australia. She is a final year student at The University of Sydney, studying a Bachelor of Visual Arts specialised in Painting, and a Bachelor of Advanced Studies (coursework) majoring in Sociology. Helinda’s practice involves using acrylic paints and mixed mediums to create works that invite new ways of understanding the banal in our everyday life. Helinda plays with organic forms, abstraction, colour, light, and materiality of paint, to explore deeper meanings and understandings embedded in our daily routines and habits with an emphasis on the interactions between nature, technologies, and people.
“There Is Only One Sun” by Mila Feng
There is a scene in Haruki Murakami’s “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle” where the main character climbs down an old dried-up well. Suffering from the turmoil of his wife unexpectedly leaving him, Okada enters a long journey of self-reflection and existential contemplation. During these isolated hours at the bottom of the well he questions his physical and psychological being entrenched in the vast darkness he can no longer make out the shape of his hands in front of himself. As the hours pass, he notes that by the movement of the sun, he gains a mere few seconds of light every day; seconds of warmth whereby he can confirm his existence.
I am entranced by the mirrored nature of explicit memory and sunlight. For my project, I wanted to explore memory and the existentialism of ageing in relation to the human skin and sunlight. The skin has the ability to record explicit memory and simultaneously encapsulate the fleetingness of time itself, whilst sunlight; an omniscient presence is the main factor of ageing. I also want to discuss the permanence of the entity that is the sun; a presence so sure, so giving, yet undeniably impermanent.
I built a three-piece structure consisting of a parabolic mirror, sunshade, and a wooden frame to execute my ideas. The concave mirror focuses and reflects the sunlight into a single point whilst the sunshade distorts the moving light, burning the wood for a certain moment, before moving on. With the movement of the sun, the burns created are moving, kinetic beings tracing across the surface for a limited moment. Through these marks I capture the movement of something monumental, focusing its majesty and containing its energy. Consequently, this act mirrors the way our skin records fleeting but explicit memories. Like wrinkles, scars and sunburns, each leaves a mark on our skin, embedded and immortalised on our vessels.
Artist Bio:
Born in Shenzhen (1999), Mila Feng is an emerging contemporary artist from New Zealand who is now working on the traditional land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, Sydney. As a recent graduate from Sydney College of The Arts (SCA), Mila continues her practice as both a sculptor and video artist. With an aim to create multidimensional works that engage with a wide range of audiences, she dissects complex theories within culture and philosophy. In her visual art practice, she explore side as of human intimacy and impermanence. Although primarily trained as an artist, Mila is also extremely passionate about gallery spaces and is working as a curator at 16albemarle Project Space with multiple shows planned for the year.
“Waterfall” by Rachel Feng
“By assigning a fixed material form to memory- which is something essentially unstable- the memorial freezes meaning and relieves the public from the obligation to remember.” -Uriel Orlow
This artwork is a documentation of an installation that took place on USYD campus. The ice installation is a memorial to the lives lost during Covid-19. It questions whether one can materialise grief, how people should commemorate the ones who have never crossed their paths, and whether assigning meaning to a monument evokes or replaces grief.
The crystal clear ice allows the spectators to see through, creating a sense of pervasiveness and nothingness. The melting ice evokes counter memory of the pandemic and becomes the representation of an ephemeral existence that is meant to decease. It draws spectators' attention to life and memory, as they both can be slow, silent, pervasive, free flowing, ephemeral, malleable, and are constantly evolving/devolving.
Through post production, the relationship between the public and the monument is explored. Passersby’s have the freedom to interact with the installation in whichever way they please. This is an archive of the public's reaction to 'some ice on the stairs', yet when the installation is granted with a function, meaning and musicality, some may experience a sense of melancholy. We interact with what we see, but what about what we no longer see? This artwork challenges the conventional way of 'remembering' by documenting the deliberate 'forgetting'.
Artist Bio:
Rachel Feng is a screen artist who works internationally in Sydney and Shenzhen, China. She graduated from the Sydney College of the Arts (USYD) with a Bachelor of Visual Arts, majoring in Screen Art and Sociology.
Through screen and installation, her works often investigate the dynamic between social beings and social institutions. Much influenced by the symbolic interactionist and structural functionalist paradigms in Sociology, she explores themes such as institutional critic, multiculturalism, identity, memory, and semiotics. She makes conceptual works that usually pose a dilemma or a tension that encourages a search for reflective equilibrium.
“11:11” by Sunnie Cao
I reinstalled an empty house in white to construct different spaces with ordinary boards, polystyrene and glass. After reinstalling the house, in order to achieve a good effect, I used 3D software to build a space of the original proportions. First, I used my physical feeling to make text and paste it on the wall. The font size is not the same, representing the strong and weak emotions felt whilst inside this space. I hope everyone can feel similar emotions in this space. In addition, there are eleven clock pictures, which are different times. Using these pictures to form activities for everyone to try to find to make their memory deeper. Coupled with the sound of my walking in this space, there will even be echoes so that the audience can be more immersed.
I wanted to explore the relationship between space and interaction. First, using VR technology people are able to experience the space online, a good display of online art in the current epidemic situation so that the audience can become immersed. After the audience visited the house, they unconsciously construct a memory of this space. Space is not just physical. In the end, the house itself will eventually be destroyed and disappear. I took inspiration from Christo. His works are always about freedom. The opposite of freedom is possession, so disappearance is more permanent than existence. When the house disappears, accompanied by visual impact and sound, when there is only a piece of empty space, people will recall this space, matter, space, and time as one. Everyone constructs a memory palace in the brain to obtain the memory of the house.
Artist Bio:
Sunnie Cao is a Chinese contemporary visual artist who works in both Sydney and Beijing, China. She has just completed her Bachelor of Visual Arts degree from Sydney College of The Arts, specialising in sculpture.
Sunnie's artist practice centres around theories regarding memory, the subconscious mind, online interaction, and real feelings. Focusing on sculpture, Sunnie is a versatile thinker and creator, working in a range of mediums, unafraid to venture into large scale projects with attention to detail. She has developed skills in using virtual reality technology to build interactive spaces and simulate environments for people to truly experience the boundaries of intangible topics such as memory. Sunnie explores the relationship between space and human interaction, attempting to define space from different angles and forms. She believes that the audience is also an important component of an artwork and integrates matter, space and time into people's subconscious.
Rationale
eTHIS CAN’T LAST consists of a collection of works that explore the essence of ephemerality and the torment of impermanence. The works “11:11” by Sunnie Cao, “November” by Helinda Yu, “Waterfall” by Rachel Feng and “There Is Only One Sun” by Mila Feng. The works range in a variety of mediums including a VR experience, a series of paintings, a video and a 3 part sculpture. All of these pieces dissect themes regarding the fleetingness of situations in the world around us. Natural elements and forces are all present in each of these works, which reveal the complex relationship we have with the transitory world we inhabit. Although created at the same time, the artists worked separately, exploring themes they found resonated with themselves respectively. Ideas of impermanence, memory and isolation all reside in each work, showing that perhaps as we evolve emotionally as autonomous, independent beings, we do so convergently.
11:11 by Sunnie Cao is a VR experience whereby the viewer is invited to enter a space that no longer occupies a physical space. The space now exists as a memory of the demolished site, its uncertain and non-physical form is akin to a dreamscape, or liminal space. The clinical, white, plaster walls shift as the viewer moves through, suffocating yet oddly comforting as it triggers ideas of tangible spaces and intangible subconsciousness.
November by Helinda Yu is a series of paintings that record the ever-morphing sky through November 2020. Painted at the same time of day, the artist records the changes of the sky as the planet turns. The repetition of days displayed in a calendar format at first glance may appear to visualise the certainty of passing time, however, through a darker lens the melancholic repetition reads anxiety and desperation for the uncertain promise of tomorrow.
Waterfall by Rachel Feng is a video that captures the ephemerality of substances like ice and light; their tangibility and their ghosts. It questions whether one can materialise grief, how people should commemorate those who have never crossed their paths, and whether assigning meaning to a monument evokes or replaces grief.
There is Only One Sun by Mila Feng is a three-part sculpture that marks the sun’s trace like wrinkles on our skin. A parabolic mirror refracts the rays of the sun and burns a plaque of wood, creating a dark mark that eventually pierces through the wood. Through this experience, a monumental yet intangible force is captured and preserved for eternity.
In turn, these works become an existential study of the minute changes we are able to make when faced with the invincible opponent of time. These individual works all speak to one another on the ephemerality of the present and the desperate attempts at marking our existence in a world that holds no memory.
“November” by Helinda Yu
November 2020 is a work made up of 30 acrylic paintings on canvases, each revealing a part of the sky at 5pm on the 30 days of November in 2020. The work is presented chronologically and displayed in a grid, correlating to the calendar format and a summary of the day through the image of the sky. The process involves painting from real life, initiating a direct confrontation to our natural world and enforcing a connection to our environment and surroundings. The sky is an emblem of something all humans share despite our social backgrounds and geographic locations. This sense of togetherness and commonality becomes more apparent in our current situation in dealing with a global pandemic, whereby the mundanity of life and its meanings had shifted significantly. The belief that anything and everything created, perceived and experienced in the year 2020 is indeed of great importance, and is significant, as we are collectively impacted by the effect of Covid19. Art is greatly known to memorialise and be a medium for documenting our contemporary events, such as the banal and taken for granted - the sky. I chose the 5 pm sky as I had always found the hour to be magical, calming and fascinating to view the sky at.
And so, with this opportunity, I decided to paint a landscape piece since I haven’t yet done so for a project. Ever since I was young till now, I have been fascinated and attracted to the sky as it intrigued ideas of wonder, imagination, hope, and peace for myself. This time around, living under the impact of Covid-19, made me appreciate more of the little things in life, replicating something that is unchangeable and changing every day, sometimes even going unnoticed. The sky encapsulates both change and permanence - entailing the fleeting concepts of light and time and yet remains prominent in our everyday life.
Artist Bio:
Helinda Yu is a contemporary visual artist based in Sydney, Australia. She is a final year student at The University of Sydney, studying a Bachelor of Visual Arts specialised in Painting, and a Bachelor of Advanced Studies (coursework) majoring in Sociology. Helinda’s practice involves using acrylic paints and mixed mediums to create works that invite new ways of understanding the banal in our everyday life. Helinda plays with organic forms, abstraction, colour, light, and materiality of paint, to explore deeper meanings and understandings embedded in our daily routines and habits with an emphasis on the interactions between nature, technologies, and people.
“There Is Only One Sun” by Mila Feng
There is a scene in Haruki Murakami’s “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle” where the main character climbs down an old dried-up well. Suffering from the turmoil of his wife unexpectedly leaving him, Okada enters a long journey of self-reflection and existential contemplation. During these isolated hours at the bottom of the well he questions his physical and psychological being entrenched in the vast darkness he can no longer make out the shape of his hands in front of himself. As the hours pass, he notes that by the movement of the sun, he gains a mere few seconds of light every day; seconds of warmth whereby he can confirm his existence.
I am entranced by the mirrored nature of explicit memory and sunlight. For my project, I wanted to explore memory and the existentialism of ageing in relation to the human skin and sunlight. The skin has the ability to record explicit memory and simultaneously encapsulate the fleetingness of time itself, whilst sunlight; an omniscient presence is the main factor of ageing. I also want to discuss the permanence of the entity that is the sun; a presence so sure, so giving, yet undeniably impermanent.
I built a three-piece structure consisting of a parabolic mirror, sunshade, and a wooden frame to execute my ideas. The concave mirror focuses and reflects the sunlight into a single point whilst the sunshade distorts the moving light, burning the wood for a certain moment, before moving on. With the movement of the sun, the burns created are moving, kinetic beings tracing across the surface for a limited moment. Through these marks I capture the movement of something monumental, focusing its majesty and containing its energy. Consequently, this act mirrors the way our skin records fleeting but explicit memories. Like wrinkles, scars and sunburns, each leaves a mark on our skin, embedded and immortalised on our vessels.
Artist Bio:
Born in Shenzhen (1999), Mila Feng is an emerging contemporary artist from New Zealand who is now working on the traditional land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, Sydney. As a recent graduate from Sydney College of The Arts (SCA), Mila continues her practice as both a sculptor and video artist. With an aim to create multidimensional works that engage with a wide range of audiences, she dissects complex theories within culture and philosophy. In her visual art practice, she explore side as of human intimacy and impermanence. Although primarily trained as an artist, Mila is also extremely passionate about gallery spaces and is working as a curator at 16albemarle Project Space with multiple shows planned for the year.
“Waterfall” by Rachel Feng
“By assigning a fixed material form to memory- which is something essentially unstable- the memorial freezes meaning and relieves the public from the obligation to remember.” -Uriel Orlow
This artwork is a documentation of an installation that took place on USYD campus. The ice installation is a memorial to the lives lost during Covid-19. It questions whether one can materialise grief, how people should commemorate the ones who have never crossed their paths, and whether assigning meaning to a monument evokes or replaces grief.
The crystal clear ice allows the spectators to see through, creating a sense of pervasiveness and nothingness. The melting ice evokes counter memory of the pandemic and becomes the representation of an ephemeral existence that is meant to decease. It draws spectators' attention to life and memory, as they both can be slow, silent, pervasive, free flowing, ephemeral, malleable, and are constantly evolving/devolving.
Through post production, the relationship between the public and the monument is explored. Passersby’s have the freedom to interact with the installation in whichever way they please. This is an archive of the public's reaction to 'some ice on the stairs', yet when the installation is granted with a function, meaning and musicality, some may experience a sense of melancholy. We interact with what we see, but what about what we no longer see? This artwork challenges the conventional way of 'remembering' by documenting the deliberate 'forgetting'.
Artist Bio:
Rachel Feng is a screen artist who works internationally in Sydney and Shenzhen, China. She graduated from the Sydney College of the Arts (USYD) with a Bachelor of Visual Arts, majoring in Screen Art and Sociology.
Through screen and installation, her works often investigate the dynamic between social beings and social institutions. Much influenced by the symbolic interactionist and structural functionalist paradigms in Sociology, she explores themes such as institutional critic, multiculturalism, identity, memory, and semiotics. She makes conceptual works that usually pose a dilemma or a tension that encourages a search for reflective equilibrium.
“11:11” by Sunnie Cao
I reinstalled an empty house in white to construct different spaces with ordinary boards, polystyrene and glass. After reinstalling the house, in order to achieve a good effect, I used 3D software to build a space of the original proportions. First, I used my physical feeling to make text and paste it on the wall. The font size is not the same, representing the strong and weak emotions felt whilst inside this space. I hope everyone can feel similar emotions in this space. In addition, there are eleven clock pictures, which are different times. Using these pictures to form activities for everyone to try to find to make their memory deeper. Coupled with the sound of my walking in this space, there will even be echoes so that the audience can be more immersed.
I wanted to explore the relationship between space and interaction. First, using VR technology people are able to experience the space online, a good display of online art in the current epidemic situation so that the audience can become immersed. After the audience visited the house, they unconsciously construct a memory of this space. Space is not just physical. In the end, the house itself will eventually be destroyed and disappear. I took inspiration from Christo. His works are always about freedom. The opposite of freedom is possession, so disappearance is more permanent than existence. When the house disappears, accompanied by visual impact and sound, when there is only a piece of empty space, people will recall this space, matter, space, and time as one. Everyone constructs a memory palace in the brain to obtain the memory of the house.
Artist Bio:
Sunnie Cao is a Chinese contemporary visual artist who works in both Sydney and Beijing, China. She has just completed her Bachelor of Visual Arts degree from Sydney College of The Arts, specialising in sculpture.
Sunnie's artist practice centres around theories regarding memory, the subconscious mind, online interaction, and real feelings. Focusing on sculpture, Sunnie is a versatile thinker and creator, working in a range of mediums, unafraid to venture into large scale projects with attention to detail. She has developed skills in using virtual reality technology to build interactive spaces and simulate environments for people to truly experience the boundaries of intangible topics such as memory. Sunnie explores the relationship between space and human interaction, attempting to define space from different angles and forms. She believes that the audience is also an important component of an artwork and integrates matter, space and time into people's subconscious.
