Virginia Lo: Throbbing Soul

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Odds and Ends is pleased to present Throbbing Soul, a solo exhibition by Hong Kong artist Virginia Lo.

Throbbing Soul is an emotive exploration of place memory, a concept intrinsically tied to social displacement, environmental psychology and notions of placelessness. To Lo, the response to placelessness often takes the form of nostalgia, a particularly acute form of place memory incited by sightings of urban objects and architectural landmarks. A particular object of interest to Lo is the soon to be obsolete public telephone booth, an object once intrinsic to our daily lives now rendered irrelevant by new technology. Yet, its looming presence in public spaces offer an interpretation of the story of their existence, giving back echoes of their past. By isolating a single phone booth, Lo bestows in her paintings a narrative power that treats objects in urban environment as mediators through time, communicating basic elements about our society’s material and immaterial culture.

Lo’s preoccupation with place memory is rooted in its resistance to geographical and contextual mapping, resulting in paintings that register fractures of existence that are both impossible to negate and impossible to locate. Subject isolation is one of many tools Lo uses to establish an artistic practice in which emotions and personal experiences take on decisive importance. In more ways than one, Lo regards her paintings as forms of text that are open to and rely on viewer’s emotional interpretations. Her paintings are grounded in accounts of memory that emphasise its visceral and emotional qualities, promoting a form of viewing that is personal, relevant and open to negotiated meaning in an otherwise increasingly prescriptive educational world.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Virginia Lo is a contemporary artist born and based in Hong Kong. Lo's practice explores her emotional reaction to place, reflecting on the streets and sites that she witnesses on a daily basis. Having begun her artistic training in traditional Chinese painting with masters such as Mr. Leung Ba Yue, Lo’s current practice is heavily informed by Chinese aesthetic theories. Her recent body of work explores concepts of place memory through the lens of cultural and social preservation.

Lo received her Master of Fine Art degree and Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) degree, co-presented by RMIT University and Hong Kong Art School, in 2005 and 2002 respectively. In 2001, Lo received the membership of Golden Key International Honor Society. She is currently a part-time lecturer at Hong Kong Art School.