p S HO SIU KEE – 13 (cid:127) issue 10 By Dr Emma Watts, AWARENESS, PERCEPTION AND UNDERSTANDING Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong S unforced and subtle. The title is a clear, straightforward narrative instruction, which demands visual acceptance. The image arrests the viewer, held in an apparent simplicity that belies the contradiction of what is seen and the inner conceptual complexity. The longer we are held, we are confronted with a reality of the improbability of the scene, the artist standing with eyes closed, slightly above a vast expanse of open water. el v e er l at w e h e t v o b a g n di n a St p S Ho Siu Kee 14 15 • issue 10 AwAreneSS, PercePtion And underStAnding We confront the technicality - How did he get endeavors to awaken the consciousness, enabling cognitive discourse between the body and really acknowledge or consider the space there? How is he balancing? We question the the sub-conscious actions of a human being: the environment it inhabits, giving the works our bodies inhabit? How does this change in purpose and outcome – why is he there and what walking, seeing, standing, to be transformed into a timeless quality with direct reference to the differing situations and interactions with our happens if he falls? an acute awareness of self. understanding of the body. surrounding environment? And how does an altered perspective effect and affect our pre- The calm falls away into a desire to understand, Ho Siu Kee takes us on a The timeless essence of Ho’s work feeds into conceptions of those basic functions? and as it does, Ho Siu Kee takes us on a journey its resistance to be categorized artistically journey of discovery that of discovery that challenges what we see, what or geographically. Geographic freedom is Ho’s journey into this questioning has taken we know, and what we believe of the possible and due in part to his own creative journey from him across a plethora of external influences challenges what we see, the improbable. undergraduate study in Hong Kong, to his from the material order of the world, expounded what we know, and what Masters in the United States and his Doctor of in Exploitation of the Work of Nature, Sung, His art is more than visual creativity - it is a Fine Art in Australia. His international exhibitions Ying-sing in the Ming Dynasty, 1637 to The we believe of the possible voyage, each piece of his oeuvre, a creative have included the 23rd International Biennial of Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice landmark that explores another conceptual aspect and the improbable. Sao Paulo in 1996 and the 49th Venice Biennial Merleau-Ponty, “we are in the world through our of space, experience and perception, ultimately in 2001, as Official Hong Kong Representative; body…we perceive the world with our body.” opening the opportunities for awareness and and in 2012 he was invited to become an understanding. Yet despite the dominance of self-portraiture, his Associate Member of the Royal British Society The recognition of the temporal nature of work is not subjective. Rather it is the objectivity of Sculptors ARBS, London, UK. body and environment is a key element which Ho Siu Kee is a quiet, polite and modest man, and of each enquiry that fosters a cohesive platform Ho’s work responds to as stimuli identifying these attributes of his personality are reflected for collective attention and interpretation. The This active global spread has given a human the “cognitive reaction” which is omnipresent in his art. As an artist he has used a form of objective exploration of perception, conception collective quality to his work, which responds in everyday life. There is no need to set any self-portraiture in sculpture, performance and and expression has further guided his passion for to the organic transformation of time itself, boundary for art.” documentary photography to conceptually and art education that, as student and teacher, has retaining its context and evolving in the physically explore his own boundaries, and by focused attention on the processes of art making. perpetually changing environments of each Sculpture without boundaries is an apt way to s all doing so the ordinary and everyday movements viewing. His work challenges the assumptions describe his creative output, which connects b 2 of life become extra-ordinary events, challenging From his earliest developments Ho Siu Kee has of basic human awareness, forcing a re- bodily perception and response to material n o the very substance of understanding. Simply, he explored his own perceptions, questioning the assessment of these basic functions. Do we elements as agency for exploration. And, with ng ki al W 16 his own perspective to the opposite point of view, and self-portraiture are further challenged. thus re-directing attention to the relationship between the material world and the bodily. This line Walking on Two Balls and Gravity Loop have of enquiry seeks to question how the processes confronted the physical experience of what we think we know, what we think we should expect. The the body, its position and posture. juxtaposition between environment and experience become a micro-enquiry altering the perception of From the process of carving two wooden balls from the space occupied in the physical world and the a single tree in the piece Walking on Two Balls to Making Brick, the synthesis of body and material draws out both essence and co-existence. The This partnership is a body adapting and accommodating the demands of the material, just as the material evolves to the conscious awakening request of the man. of the senses In his creative processes and outputs, Ho’s work This partnership is a conscious awakening of the opens up dimensions of awareness that reach out senses, which questions the substance of human beyond the image or experience of an artwork, to action and ultimately becomes a macro view of rather become an echo of substance that resonates perception and pre-conception. through the normality of the everyday - re-aligning perspective and perception not as a lightening bolt Ho’s oeuvre has sought to redirect expectation and of realization but as the whisper of an inner voice. transfer the rhythms of normality. Through a variety of media; clay, wood, metal, Ho has furthered Standing Above the Water Level has this extended his explorations into the physicality of material. daily, and asking for contemplation or consideration crafts and craftsmanship, he has extended the of the boundaries of our bodies and echoing in our exploration between body and material – altering spaces and the world we occupy. p o Sung, Ying-sing, Exploitation of the Ho Work of Nature, Ming Dynasty, 1637. vity Translated by Li, Chiao-ping, China a Gr Academy, Taipei, 1980. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phe- nomenology of Perception, Paris 1945, translated by Colin Smith, Routledge, London and New York, 2002. P 239. Ho, Siu- Kee, From Sung, Ying-sing to Maurice Merleau-Ponty - “Crafts- manship”, “Bodily Synthesis” and “Art Practice”, White Text, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Art School, 2005 (issue 1), P35-50.