NIGHT OWL SONATA (in one movement)
written by Holly Lee
She was two and I was thirty two, both loved to sing and dance and jump and make up stories, and I gave her picture cards, I gave her banana, grapes, little wooden cars, elephants with big ears, an eagle owl and tortoise with a mobile home, her dark round pupils sparkled, some new ideas seen brewing, raising her left hand and pointing towards the ceiling with her index finger, she cried Owltoise! I was pulled back for a moment, trying to understand before breaking into a hysterical laughter, it was not the only time, for, after many tender months and years, after language was no nonsense but rules and mirrors, after many mornings of breakfast in the cha chaan teng, the Chinese Tea café at the corner of our street, and after many lunch time with sandwiches and tea time with cheese cake and night time with spaghetti, sprang up a new word in the English dictionary - Breluntiner.
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Lee Ka-sing
A suite of 16 picture-haiku works I made in the year 2013
Size: 56.5x9.5x2.5 inch
Composition of 16 pieces of photo blocks (7.5"x2.5"x1.5" each)
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Yau Leung
Two boys on train looking out
Gelatin silver photograph, fibre-based
Paper size 198mmx249mm (8x10 inches), image size 164mmx208mm
Work year 1963, printed in the nineties
Signed on verso by the artist
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Le Système des objets (a column)
(Le Système des objets is a column about OBJECTS, with contributions by various authors. The column name was borrowed from the title of a book by Jean Baudrillard.) Click here to view archives
Storage Box
written by Kai Chan
In the 1980s, I was very interested in basket making. Through an introduction by Dr. Stephen Inglis I was given access to the collection of Philippine baskets in the Royal Ontario Museum. In the collection there are containers, household items, fishing traps, and hats. They are all woven with bamboo, rattan and other plant materials. I learned a lot about basketry from examining these objects. It was around this time I bought this Indonesian storage box.
I was very excited in getting this box, because it is not woven but constructed like a house. This box is roughly a 16 inch cube, made entirely of plant material. The vertical and horizontal supports are made of bamboo and palm petiole.The walls, top and bottom of the box are filled with leaves with various geometric patterns. The interior of the box is lined with palm leaves. Some of these materials are in their natural light and dark brown colours, a fair amount of them have been dyed in purple and red. At the The front of the box is embedded with tiny cowrie shells in traditional symbolic patterns. There is a light beige horizontal bar at the front that indicating where the the lid ended.
A hundred years ago, a box like this, in an Indonesian village, could be a significant piece of furniture for the family. The care and dedication in the making is evident in the piece. Nowadays we have all the modern materials and technology to produce any type of boxes, a box like this would be futile. However it has enhanced my daily life and I still use it to keep all my woollen socks.
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OCEAN POUNDS and FOUNDERS
OCEAN POUNDS
OCEAN POUNDS is a platform for a number of art-driven projects, founded in 1995 (Hong Kong) by photo-based artists Holly Lee and Lee Ka-sing, headquartered in Toronto since 2000. OCEAN POUNDS is also a primo spot to acquire Holly and Ka-sing’s work - from the very recent to vintages dated back to late 70’s. Furthermore, it acts as a good resource to locate fine art pieces from their past organized projects (Gallery, Representation, Print Program), with work from prominent artists notably Nobuyoshi Araki, Christopher Doyle, Yau Leung and Yao Jui-chung.
Holly Lee
Holly Lee (Hong Kong/Canada) worked as a professional photographer for nearly two decades before relocating to Toronto in 1997. She was awarded an Asian Cultural Council fellowship in 1994 and was the recipient of the Grand Award and two Gold Awards from the Hong Kong Institute of Professional Photographers (1995) and Best of Multimedia in the Pan Pacific Digital Artistry Competition (1996). From 1992 to 1999 she was one of the founders and editors of DISLOCATION magazine, a Hong Kong-based monthly journal on contemporary photography. After moving to Canada in 1997 she helped to set up LEE KA-SING gallery in 2000. From 2006 to 2018 she was involved in INDEXG, coordinating the gallery’s exhibition programs. Her first poetry book Nine Years was publishing as a POD by OCEAN POUNDS in 2020.
Lee Ka-sing
Lee Ka-sing grew up in Hong Kong and resides in Toronto, Canada since 1997. He was the co-founder of DISLOCATION (1992-1999 Hong Kong), a former independent photography magazine. In 1989, he was awarded “Artist of the Year” by Hong Kong Artists’ Guild. A decade later, in 1999 he received the Fellowship for Artistic Development presented by Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Selected monographs include Thirty-one Photographs (1993, Photo Art), Forty Poems, photographs 1995-98 (1998, Ocean & Pounds, Hong Kong Arts Development Council Publication Grant), The Language of Fruits and Vegetables (2004, Hong Kong Heritage Museum), De ci de là des choses (2006, Editions You-Feng). His work is in private and public collections, and in museums such as Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, M+ Museum and Hong Kong Heritage Museum.
