With an artistic practice in video, animation, and installation, Jess Lau Ching Wa (b. 1991 in Hong Kong; lives in Hong Kong) centres on themes such as memories of the body and of the city, and the accumulation of time. Frequently, she experiments with the distinctiveness and malleability of each medium. Newly conceived for this exhibition, the video poem Sparkling Fountain hones in on the oddly mesmerising process where Lau took ready-made, star-shaped cloth patches apart, thread by painstaking thread, until they turned into dust. With the artist imagining the creation of a fountain of stars, sparkling and bursting with myriad wishes, the process, verging on violence, forms a stark tension, which generates a powerful visual and emotional impact. The cosmic references in the work also gently remind us of the transience of everything in life— whether they are as trivial and minute as a piece of cloth or as stupendous as stars and planets. Vulnerability and mutability are the eternity we share.

藝術家把一片片現成的星形徽章逐顆拆開，將過程逐格記錄後濃縮成定格動畫，彷彿構建出一座星星爆裂而成的噴泉，盡情展現願望被釋放的瞬間。充滿童真的糖果色星形徽章和近乎暴力的拆解動作構成視覺和情感上的落差，引人屏息靜賞。作品中對星塵、宇宙等浩渺存在的指涉，更如輕聲在耳邊提醒我們，無論大至星球或小至碎布，也許生命最本質的狀態就是轉瞬即逝的無常。脆弱和變幻是我們共享的永恆。

Born in Hong Kong in 1991, Jess gained her BA (Honours) in Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong in 2014. Jess’ work applies themes such as narrative fragments, body memory and focus on iterative manual processes and the aggregation of time. Jess’ work involves a wide range of media – videos, animation, installation – it explores the uniqueness and the malleability of each different medium, for example, outlining the fiction and reality with stop-motion animation. Her iconic works are created through the accumulation of labour and time. The material is constantly reorganised, shaped and dismantled in the world of video, connecting and extending with the memory and imagination of the city as well as the individual self. At the same time, her works aim to break the cold impression of media art, to portray the temperature of people, the traces left by her body, and to emphasise the process of creation and imaging. 

Jess’ artworks have been exhibited and screened internationally in: Ars Electronica, Austria, Animatou – International Animation Film Festival, Switzerland, Image Forum Festival 2022, Japan, Two Temple Place, London, IFVA Media Art Festival, Hong Kong, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, West Kowloon FreeSpace, Hong Kong and etc. Jess was the selected artist of Tai Kwun Contemporary Artists’ Studio Residency 2020 and awarded the Nanying Prize from Taiwan 2022.