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A Home Among the Plum Trees
19 September - 30 September
Kelvin Lau
A Home Among the Plum Trees
19 September – 30 September 2023
hours:
Tuesday – Thursday: 12pm – 7pm
Friday – Saturday: 12pm – 4pm
(including Victorian public holiday Friday 29 October)
admission: Free
..what emerged through this work eventually revealed my own identity(ies) and cultural position(s) to be more complex, nuanced, and unexpected…
A Home Among the Plum Trees is an exorcism of hauntings that resonate across family generations into my past and current life. During 2020, a confluence of critical personal events motivated me to re-evaluate how I saw myself as an individual, the identifications that others projected upon me, and my relationship with others in Australian society. Guided by the photo therapy framework of Jo Spence and Rosy Martin, in conjunction with a material engagement informed by Karen Barad’s agential realism, I approached this self-reflection by engaging with a diverse range of photograph-centred practices throughout 2021 and 2022. Parental and institutional erasures of diasporic heritage, and its replacement with the values of Australian middle-class suburbia and professional status, were critically examined through this multimodal approach.
I began work on this project with preconceived ideas about recovering some form of lost Hong Kong-Chinese heritage – or perhaps reconnecting with a forgotten community that I was separated from during our family’s diasporic trajectory. What emerged through this work eventually revealed my own identity(ies) and cultural position(s) to be more complex, nuanced, and unexpected.
Kelvin Lau // Artist Statement
Kelvin Lau / Lau Wing Kei CV
Last updated: May 2023
Education
2023 MA (Photography), Photography Studies College
2017 PhD, University of Melbourne
2013 MPH, University of Melbourne
2006 FRACGP, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners
1997 BSc(Med) MB BS, University of New South Wales
Solo exhibitions
2023 Painted Ghosts, Sol Gallery, Melbourne
Group exhibitions
2023 Through Time and Space, Museum of Chinese Australian History, Melbourne
2021 STAGES Life in Lockdown, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne
2020 Bowness Photography Prize, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne
2014-2020 Salon, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne
1991 ArtExpress (1990), Art Gallery of New South Wales
Awards, grants, residencies
2023 Creative Residency, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne
2021 Finalist, Australian Photography Awards
2020 Finalist, Bowness Photography Prize, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne
Collaborations
2022 Consultant, Unknowing Madness project by Thembi Soddell for The Big Anxiety Festival, Melbourne
2016 Co-facilitator, Exploring Emotion Through Photography, youth program with headspace Collingwood, Centre for Contemporary Photography, and ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions
Publications
2017 Understanding mental distress in young people from a migrant background in Australia through photo-interviewing, open access thesis, University of Melbourne
Declared fields of interest
Reflexive photographic practice
Autoethnography
Qualitative research methods
Visual social research
Arts/health
Health/illness lived experience
Primary healthcare