The Eye — a wander

Immediately drawn to this—an expressive humanoid eaten, molten by light, shadow and frost. Or simply reminding me of my pre-laser surgery days without spectacles? Blurry image that conjures multiple feelings and sensations, a cold wet night, late in a deserted street? Loneliness. We are on the other side—a cry for help—paradoxical in this pluri-disciplinary exhibition. And the puzzling line: “You are looking at what is missing”. A blurriness that evidently brings perception to the fore- it’s only a wooden mannequin upon a closer look–and a rare happenstance in this HD life.

Jingyan Chen
False Clarity, Poster, 2025

I suppose my thread here is distortion, although in a completely different aesthetic to Jingyan Chen’s poster. The aesthetic of the artworks reminds me of a malfunctioning desktop of the 1990s. There is a nostalgy to this, coupled by the juxtaposed snippets of interview. The non-edited lines give us a fragmented perception of this brother’s voice, we can almost hear him and this, through his brother’s distracted ears.

I love portraiture by objects: we learn so much—and yet so little—of someone’s life and thoughts through the objects that they surround themselves with. But we take so little time to listen and look, and we perceive through our own curated lens? How much of what we keep is true?

William DAVENPORT
I copied my Brother Spread

You know when you go to the local Vietnamese and have a good pho and put too much chilli in your soup, and you’re steaming and suffering and happy at the same time? And there is feeling of being at home, the comfort. This piece of tissue evokes a shared sensation I believe.

And at the same time this face imprint that could be make-up or food or both, a disposable contemporary desecrated Shroud of Turin. Is this really a piece of tissue? Will Amy frame this and keep it forever? What will endure?

Amy YOON
Eol-kuen-ha-da

Gleefully drawn to this video, as someone raised—and still a lazily practising Christian—and who is fascinated by cults and their parodies. I love the Augmented Reality style mixed with flavours of commercial videos. The rhythm and profusion and quick cuts of some passages remind me of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once. Except that this aspect is counterpointed by the universal quest for inner peace and for the greater good, packaged and sold since times immemorial mostly by different iterations of divinity. Remind me to buy some of this tomorrow.

Ginger HUDSON
Belief

This set has an esoteric feel to it. Of course, without knowing this version of Orpheus and Eurydice’s story, this is still embedded in a world where the gods are omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. The “seats” (?) in disarray evoke 3D occult glyphs that look, together with the rest of the set—like they would be made of stone, or belong to the Salisbury Plain. Is it moss- covered? But it can also shimmer. Oh, what lighting can do for perception! This is only a model for a design offer, and one that I wish I could experience in real life and brought to life with its inhabitants.

Henry NGUYEN
Set design for Eurydice

Mesmerising, compelling and sickening all at once model that has a strong affect on a mediocre swimmer like me. Ever-pressing and distressing question of rising water levels, and where are my children and generations to come going to live? We need to make sure they can swim!

‘Speculative design’ that seeks to produce a strong affect to urgently prompt discussion and action is the way to go, I think! But the little lantern-lighthouse as an obvious beacon of hope, a reminder of home, of a lit place to swim to, where there will be light, warmth, people and food.

Fergus SHARP
The Model of The Natural Environment

Perhaps blue is the thread to my wanderings today. And nostalgia. And raising awareness again and again. Nostalgia for the patterns that my mother and I have browsed through together and sewn from for decades. Nostalgia for the different ideals of feminity that these patterns, from different eras sold and spread. We can ask ourselves, who bought these patterns? In whose homes, on what dinner tables were they unfolded? What fabrics were used, what kind of bodies were dressed, for which occasions? Over how many years? And handed down? Or sent to rot in the landfill or converted to a rag? There is definitely a tea-towel quality to the monochromatic design of this ‘pattern’.

In any case, oh the endless potential stories that we would be carrying while wearing these patterns. And is this a sort of metonymy or a Droste effect, of the pattern of the dress or cap appearing on the very item made from this pattern? I know many costumier friends who would love this dress.

Lola Mayo
Patterns and Patterns

Again, blue in the cyanotype. Design and art in the sterilised world of medicine; of course even pharmaceuticals have recourse to designers. But what does medical design aim for? Is it only pragmatic? There is a certain satisfaction in the minimalism and cleanliness of it all, of the design. In this iteration, I feel like the blanks and the ‘negative spaces’ are of course deliberate to feed into the anxiety- inducing quality of medical paraphernalia. I also sense a vintage quality to this and that feels even more worrying, bleak and lonely. On another note, the blurb regarding experimentation is more joyous and invite us to draw a parallel between the perceived creativity of artists and underestimated creativity of scientists, and to ponder how hard science,, just like art, can be but a gamble.

Sheryn Xhuet YI WOO
The Distance Between Us