To the Naiad’s House / Flowers Gallery / Hong Kong / Sep 29 – Nov 12 /

The story of Southeast China in the 1990s is one of breakneck transformation. Cranes worked in tufts of dust, new structures climbed steel frames to scrape the sky, and opportunity was in the air. For many millions of people in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and smaller townships, the proverbial first bucket of gold seemed less like a fantasy and more like a real possibility.

As China’s economy opened up, Southeast China felt closer to Hong Kong than ever before. Media and information moved across the border. Even though a border and bureaucracy separated Guangdong province from Hong Kong, people couldn’t help but form impressions of the city through glimpses offered in films and portrayals on television.

For her recent exhibition at Flowers Gallery, Wu Jiaru mined her upbringing in Guangzhou and feelings as a Hong Kong transplant, revisiting experiences as a child who spent time in her mother’s restaurant, watching the world change through a TV screen.

The solo presentation To the Naiad’s House takes its title from a room in that restaurant. The room itself is named after a location inhabited by one of the protagonists in Dream of the Red Chamber, the famed 18th-century novel.

One smaller canvas in Wu’s show, daycare_twoWaitresses (2022), is painted in the shades of the seats found in the Naiad’s House. An amber disc – perhaps the sun – shines behind a mess of limbs, shrubbery greens sprout forth and savoy blues glide off flesh tones against a smoky blue-gray background. Wu characteristically features figures in her paintings in positions of intimacy, dropping them into settings where they share moments of private poignancy.

Lifting even more elements from her mother’s eatery, Wu mounted two pairs of canvases on wheeled frames, making them moveable in the gallery. These mobile canvases mimicked screens that could be erected for privacy in dining areas, and had acrylic chandelier “crystals” dangling from them, sandwiched between each pair of paintings, playing off the inexpensive interior decor that was incorporated by many restaurateurs of that era. 

A set of metal mesh drawers, again mounted on wheels, housed painted closeups of faces belonging to Kobe Bryant  (eyes closed, standing before a background of Lakers purple) and Diana Spencer (eyes open, bright orange behind her auburn-not-blonde curls) – a nod to Wu’s love of basketball and her mother’s fascination with the late Princess of Wales, another stream of influence from Hong Kong, with colonial culture flowing north of the border. Keep exploring to find tangled balls of the artist’s own hair, collected out of habit: strands of herself shed to mingle with her art.

Wu’s gestures left on her canvases are not so much melodic as they are rhythmic, much like the way personal and shared histories ebb and flow. Figures from the past are untethered from the realities of grinding until success is in sight, and grafted into scenes with a mythic quality. Everyone from the artist’s past looks like they are free.

A tender moment glows through in the show. In familyTime_97_liveStream (2022), Wu’s mother is seated with legs crossed on a Baroque chair, the artist nestled within her embrace. Affection warms the frame as mother and daughter are hugged by the canary yellow upholstery, a lilac wall soothing the distant view. In July 1997, Wu would have been four years old.

Whereas this image of maternal tenderness was one of the last works viewers saw in the show, it called back most strongly to one work near the gallery’s entrance that was not made by Wu — a piece of fibre folk art produced by her mother in 1989, two years before Wu was born. It shows an ox under a crescent moon and two shining stars. Wu’s mother was in fact an artist herself, and used the money earned from selling artworks to open her restaurant.

Perhaps To the Naiad’s House is only half of the presentation. The other half would be in the room Wu remembers, where a child wondered about a city that was within reach but still felt like a world away, and then more than two decades later let mythology meld with memory as she made sense of moments from the past that continue to shape her art.

The moment in familyTime_97_liveStream is imagined. Wu told me she was never cradled in that position on the chair depicted on her canvas, nor was there a room in the Guangzhou restaurant painted with that shade of pale purple. This hardly matters. Memories bend and shift, but the feelings of care and attachment felt by Wu cut through time.

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轉轉瀟湘館 / 弗勞爾斯畫廊

中國東南地區在1990年代的故事是圍繞驚人的巨變：一艘艘的起重機不斷在滾滾沙塵中工作挖掘，新的建築物沿著鋼架漸漸落成，形成天邊的一道風景線，機會處處。對於數百萬住在廣州、深圳和一些小鎮上的人來說，傳說中的第一桶金似乎不再是天方夜譚，而是確確切切的能夠實現。

隨著中國經濟的開放，中國東南地區與香港的關係變得前所未有的緊密，媒體和信息跨越邊界。雖然廣東省與香港隔著一個邊境，官方制度也不一樣，但人還是忍不住從電影和電視畫面一睹，對這座城市留下印象。

在近期弗勞爾斯畫廊舉辦的展覽中，吳佳儒以香港新移民的角度展示她在廣州成長的經歷，重溫了小時候在母親的餐館中，透過電視觀看世界的萬千變化。

個人展覽「轉轉瀟湘館」取名自該餐館中的一個包廂，包廂的名字源自十八世紀著名小說《紅樓夢》其中一位主角所居住的地方。

展品之一是一幅細小的畫作《daycare_twoWaitresses》 （2022年） ，靈感來自於「瀟湘館」裡的梳化，以沙梳化的色調繪製而成。背景是煙熏調的灰藍；尤如太陽般的琥珀色圓盤，照耀在一片混亂的肢體形態背後；灌木般的蔥綠及天藍的色彩，則順著肢體的膚色上滑落。吳佳儒以其一貫作風，刻畫其畫中人親密的姿勢，並將其置身於私人的哀傷情感中。

吳佳儒從母親的餐館裡，提煉出更多意象。她把兩對油畫豎立在帶有滾輪的畫框上，使它們在畫廊中隨意移動。能移動的油畫模仿餐館把餐區劃分為私人聚會空間的屏風，油畫上懸掛著亞克力膠製成的 「水晶」 吊燈，夾在兩對油畫中間，與那個年代許多餐館所採用的廉價室內裝飾相映成趣。

一組金屬網製的抽屜同樣豎立在滾輪上，存放了兩位人物臉孔的特寫畫作，包括Kobe Bryant  （他雙眼緊閉，站在一個湖人隊的紫色背景前）和戴安娜史賓莎（她雙眼張開，以鮮橙色的背景襯托她那金褐色捲髮），這表達出吳佳儒對籃球的熱愛和她的母親對已故戴安娜王妃的傾慕，這些都是源自香港一股帶有殖民色彩的文化向北漂流所產生的影響力。除此以外，吳佳儒還慣性地把自己打結的頭髮收集起來，從中不斷地探索且把脫落的頭髮和藝術品融為一體。

與其說吳佳儒在畫布上留下的是一道優美的旋律，倒不如說是一種有韻律的舞步，就如個人與群體歷史的興衰起伏。過去的人物脫離了不堪的現實，於成功在望的一刻被嫁接到神話般的虛構場景中，這些在吳佳儒生命中出現過的人，在她的畫筆下都顯得自由。

展覽中還流露了動人的一刻 ，在畫作《familyTime_97_liveStream》 （2022年）中，吳佳儒的母親盤腿坐在一張巴洛克式的椅子上，女兒依偎在她的懷抱中，母女在鮮黃色的椅子環抱，親情洋溢，從遠處望過去，畫中淡紫色的背景讓人感到平靜。這是1997年7月，當時的吳佳儒大概四歲。

雖然這幅充滿母愛的畫作是整個展覽其中一幅觀眾最後看到的作品，但它與畫廊入口附近一幅並不是出自吳佳儒手筆的作品形成強烈對比，那是她母親於吳佳儒出生前兩年，即1989年，以纖維製作的一件民藝品。作品上可看到兩顆星在一個月缺的晚上閃耀，而夜空下有一頭牛。吳佳儒的母親本來也是一名藝術家，她把賣藝術品賺來的錢開了自己的餐館。

也許吳佳儒只把「瀟湘館」的一半呈現觀眾，而另一半則埋藏於她記憶中的那個包廂，對那個對一個城市充滿好奇心的小孩，那城這麼近，卻又那麼遠。在二十年後，吳佳儒用她的過去來塑造她的藝術品，把神話與回憶融為一體。

作品《familyTime_97_liveStream》呈現的場景是想像出來的，吳佳儒告訴我她其實從沒有在那幅畫上的椅子裡被擁抱過，而廣州那餐館內也沒有一間包廂的背景是那種淡紫色。其實這些都不再重要了，人的記憶會隨時間流逝而變得曲折模糊，但藝術家在當中所感受到的關心和歸屬感卻早已穿越時空。