Loose ends

"We’re all searching for a piece of home, or a piece of ourselves. We look for a taste of it in the food we order and the ingredients we buy. Then we separate. We bring the haul back to our dorm rooms or our suburban kitchens, and we re-create the dish that couldn’t be made without our journey." — Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (2021).

The traditional colour spectrum 오방색 is a prominent pattern found in Korean arts and traditional textiles. The colours of red, blue, yellow, white and black represent five cardinal directions; south, east, centre, west and north respectively. This idea of five orientations being brought together to visually represent Korean traditional culture finds resonance with the underlying concepts and artworks of Loose ends.

The journey to understanding personal and cultural identity is never a straight line or clear path. There are ruptures along the way, historical, cultural or geographical barriers, that fragment this line of enquiry. This exhibition relishes the fragments - the loose ends - inviting us to let go of where one has been or where one is going, and reminding us that knowledge is forged along the way.

Loose ends curated by Alice Castello, thoughtfully considers the complexities of self representation, personal history and cultural hybridity. Bringing together works by Lisa Myeong-Joo, Jonathan Kim and Sun Young Lee, this exhibition threads together their their personal enquiries and notions of identity, belonging, alignment and subversion, using mediums such as performance, jogakbo, drawing and dance. These varied expressions, a culmination of different pathways and journeys, are interwoven by a shared cultural heritage.

written by Nanette Orly