The meeting with Yu-Chen Wang last week was really lovely and I was in a particularly good mood in my birthday sunshine! I went to visit her at the Chinese Arts Centre and happily got to nosey round the residency space again: the main workspace is my favourite – it’s large and bright with a high ceiling and a ladder leading up to a hole in the wall where the sleeping cabin is. The feeling of being set sail to sleep must be quite relaxing.
Yu-Chen talked to me about her work, particularly her performance work, which I found very interesting from a collaborative point of view because she doesn’t perform herself, but rather drafts in professional actors, whom she then directs. Her particular brand of direction/curation/creation is quite unusual I think. I admire the boldness.
As Yu-Chen spoke about her work, I realised that although we hail from different continents and produce markedly different work, we do actually have a lot in common:
· A love of paper – more specifically, the way it curls
· An obsession for composition – stemming from graphic design experience
· A love of objects – their secret humour and potential
· A current wish to tie up various strands of our practice
· Finally, we have both had the odd experience of being presumed to be men (in both cases, it was our names that did it)
After discussing her beautiful and witty work, I walked Yu-Chen over to Rogue Studios, pointing out the “worker bee” symbols on the way – that little bee is always at the back of my mind somehow – and explaining its appropriateness to Manchester’s industrial past. When we got to the studios, I showed Yu-Chen my work and she was straight in there with insightful questions and comments. I was particularly pleased when she looked at my big wall of inspiration (see picture) and immediately got the various threads running through it: “You’re telling a story” she said… spookily, no-one has ever noticed that before – I think most people just think the pictures are stuck up willy-nilly; but as with anything creative, there has to be a reason, otherwise I won’t do it. I think Yu-Chen might be of a similar frame of mind.
Yu-Chen’s plan while she’s here is to do a weeklong studio swap, followed by joint exhibition with a local artist as part of her overall programme of work. She’s meeting a few different artists with this in mind, so I’ve no idea whether we’ll get to do something together, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. If nothing else, it’s been fantastic to be reminded that we work in a world of echoes, coincidences, similarities: someone, somewhere always understands.
