Across the River in a Land Far Away
Lily Kemp Lian Zhang
19th September – 19th October 2024
PV 19th September 18:00 – 20:00
Light an incense stick and read on. It won’t take long – you’ll be done by the time the incense finishes burning:
It’s hard to tell exactly what it is that Lian and Lily have pulled you into. It may simply be a dream about a golden rustic past, one that unfolds like a scroll: a vast sweep of grassy land, a clear pond, and round lotus leaves on which droplets gather.
You hear water splashing softly. Fishers hum folk songs as they drift toward the rising moon in wobbly old rafts.
You’re asked to turn your nostalgic longings into offerings. You display them in a small shrine.
But it may also be that you’ve been invited to watch a strange play directed by Lian and Lily. Its set designs remind you of misty places and distant times, but you’re uncertain. On the stage, a mountain floats above a sea of clouds and smoke. A quiet lake quivers in late-spring breezes. Reflections of fishing boats’ lantern lights flicker like skittish fish. Performers wearing long-sleeved robes and flowy drapes get lost in their own thoughts. Their empty-minded gazes fall on each other – and on you. You find your own insistent stare reflected in their lowered eyes.
Following the zigzagging sightlines, you think you are finally getting closer to uncovering what the play is about. There, a tiny transparent devil on a leash; here, a dragon baby hatching from an ancient tree. You recognise the iconography, yet the plot continues to elude you.
Or it may be a lost myth. It’s about the kingdom of mythical creatures. The little people, the goat-headed imps, the giant goldfish with a tail and fins like waterfalls. An eerie sense of temptation and indulgence travels across the bright, fantastical world. The myth Lian and Lily recounted for you is a windowpane shattered into a thousand splinters. The fragmented and layered nature of the myth pricks you, unsettles you, pokes fun at how you keep wanting to interpret it, to make sense of it.
The strangers’ looming faces – they are yours.
You let yourself sink, deep into the night sky that’s so dark that it has become an infinite sea.
Text by Cindy Ziyun Huang
水星剧场： Lily Kemp 张联
请您点上一炷香，往下读。不会花很长时间——这炷香燃尽时，您就读完了。
很难说清Lian和Lily把你拉进了哪里。可能只是一个关于金色的田园往事的梦境。梦像卷轴那样展开：一大片草场、清澈的池塘、汇聚水珠的圆形荷叶。
你听见水花轻轻溅起的声音。渔民哼着小调，摇晃的旧木筏漂向初升的月亮。
她们要你把乡愁变作贡品。你把它摆在小小的佛龛前。
但也可能是你受邀观看一出她们导演的奇异戏剧。剧中的布景设计让你想到雾气缭绕的地方和遥远的时光，但你有些不确定。舞台上，一座山浮在云海上。安静的湖面在晚春的微风中颤动，渔船灯火的倒影闪烁着，像不安的鱼。身穿长袍和披帛的演员在自己的思绪中走失。他们放空的目光落在彼此身上，也落在你身上。你看见自己执着的凝视被倒映在他们低垂的眼里。
沿着交错的视线望去，你觉得自己终于离看懂这场演出的主题不远了。看那儿，一个被绳子拴着的透明小恶魔；这儿，一条从古树上孵化的幼龙。你认出了一些符号，但表演的情节却始终难以捉摸。
也可能这是一个失传的神话。它记载着充满奇物异事的国度。矮人、长着山羊头的小妖、尾巴和鱼鳍像瀑布一般的巨大金鱼。怪异的引诱和放纵在这个明亮奇幻的世界里穿行。Lian和Lily向你讲述的神话像一面裂成无数碎片的玻璃窗。支离破碎、一层又一层的神话让你不安，刺痛你，嘲笑你不断想要解读它、想要看懂它。
那些逼近地面的陌生面孔——它们是你的脸庞。
夜空太暗，变成深不见底的海洋。你让自己沉入其中。
文 黄梓耘
About the Artists
Lily Kemp
Courtesy of Brynley Odu Davies
Lily Kemp lives and works in London, she completed her BA in Fine Art Painting at the University of the Arts London in 2019. With an underlying interest in exploring narratives touching on the fluidity of gender and identities; Lily Kemp’s paintings explore escapism, storytelling, the act of dressing up and playing out imagined roles.
Drawing from a range of visual references and written sources, through the process of collage she interweaves figures and images from popular culture alongside found images of landscapes and her own personal photographs. Looking in part at the relationships between popular culture, gender norms and our sense of self. More specifically at our relationship with fashion, how the way we choose to present ourselves can be considered an extension of ourselves and a way of exploring our identities outside of socially constructed binary categorisations.
The sense of scale in Lily’s paintings is often distorted and exaggerated with an interchangeable indistinct relationship between her figures and the space surrounding them, her landscapes seeming to breathe a life of their own. Scenes are often hyper idealised and fantastical; her figures living within these imagined worlds and dream like realities which are both familiar, yet also border on the performative and theatrical.
Recent solo and Duo exhibitions include: Inner Voyage Out (duo show with Minyoung Kim), Over the Influence, Hong Kong, 2024; Taking flight, Taymour Grahne Projects, London, 2023; Cry me a river, Galeria Duarte Sequeira, Seoul, 2022.
Selected recent group exhibition and Art Fairs include: International Women’s Day Auction, Art on a Postcard, London, 2024; New Now, Guts Gallery, London, 2024; Duo presentation with Over the Influence at Kiaf Seoul, 2023; Group presentation with Galeria Duarte Sequeira at Art Busan, 2022; Intimacy, Taymour Grahne Projects, London, 2022; What Now?, PM/AM gallery, London, 2022; Assemble, V.O Curations, London, 2022; Confluence of Tongues, Grove Collective, London, 2021; Solo presentation with Galeria Duarte Sequeira at ARCO Madrid, 2021; Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2020, South London Gallery, London, 2021; Get a load of this, Daniel Raphael Gallery, London, 2021
Collections: The UK Government Art Collection; The UAL Collection, London
Interviews / Press: New Contemporaries; in conversation with Lily Kemp – F Word Magazine in collaboration with New Contemporaries 2020; Painter Lily Kemp examines the sexualisation of women’s bodies in her graphic works – It’s Nice That 2020; Interview with She Curates 2020; 21st Century Women in Art – Affordable Art Fair 2020; Woon Foundation Art and Sculpture Prize 2019 Winners – Arts Thread 2019; Woon Foundation Art and Sculpture Prize 2019 winner announced – Northumbria University 2019;
Lian Zhang 2024
Courtesy of Wang Wenxuan
Lian Zhang (b. 1984, Hangzhou, China) lives and works in London and Hangzhou. Zhang received a Master degree in Painting from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou in 2010, and a second Masters degree from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2013. Zhang’s works hint at multifaceted narratives that strain in many different directions at once, creating a current of tension that runs under an overlying sense of serenity. The past and the future are suspended, interweaving allusions to precise historical periods with timeless imagery. Zhang investigates the connections between interior and exterior worlds, constructing scenes both from personal memories and from imaginary landscapes. Through soft brushstrokes and a vivid colour palette, Zhang creates delicate scenes of transformation. Filled with the energy of stasis and motion, her paintings embody a fluidity between objects and figures. Zhang’s paintings are firmly sited within a rich art historical tradition, drawing particularly on the Surrealist and Symbolist movements. They are also inspired by the teachings of Chinese philosophy and Taoism. Zhang’s latest works explore Asian female identity and the experience of living abroad as an immigrant, challenging preconceptions and weaving together complex painterly narratives about what it means to live across multiple cultures. In particular, her recent paintings highlight and undermine some of the ways in which Asian women are stereotyped and objectified.
Recent solo exhibitions include: The Rabbit Who Hunts Tigers, Sebastien Bertrand Gallery, Geneva, 2023; Fast Dreams, Slow Days, Nicodim Gallery, LA, 2022; Weathering with you, Lychee One, London 2022; Constellation and Folds, Lychee One, London, 2020.
Selected recent group exhibition include: The Nature of Things, Castor, London, 2024; Two Sides of One Coin: Reflections and Transformations, Taikang Art Museum, Beijing, 2024; Apple of Discord, Louise Alexander Gallery, Italy, 2024; Art Brussels, Sebastien Bertrand Gallery, Belgium, 2024; We are the Future: Knocking on Heaven’s Door, Christie’s, London, 2024; Artissima Art Fair, Sebastien Bertrand Gallery, Turin, 2023; Brand New Second Hand, Ojiri gallery, London, 2023; Elsewheres, UTA Artist Space, LA, 2023; London Calling, Unit London, London, 2023; Under Blue Shade, Roman Road, London, 2023; Angels with dirty faces, Ojiri gallery, London, 2022; Dream baby dream, Fitzrovia gallery, London, 2022; An Ode to Orlando, Pi Artworks, London, 2022; The Dual-mechanism of the New Generation of Asian artists, Hive Art Centre, Beijing, 2021; Unfair Weather, Lychee One, 2021; Fortune Exhibition of Li’s Family House, Whitespacebeijing, Beijing, 2021; Fertile Laziness, Platform Projects, London, 2021; Antisocial Isolation, Delphian + Saatchi gallery, London, 2020
Prize: Zhang has won several painting prizes including the Curator’s Prize of The Open West 2014, Hine Painting Prize 2013, and shortlisted for Valerie Beston Award 2013.
Publications: ArtForum 2022 issue, ACNE PAPER issue 17 ATTICUS; Art Maze Magazine issue 19, issue 20, the anniversary issue 22, and the first issue of Artsin Square magazine.