Leung Mee-Ping - Out of Place: Review

http://liverpoolstudentmedia.com/2012/11/out-of-place-review/

Curated by Hong Kong’s Museum of Art, Leung Mee-Ping’s Out of Place (2012) can be found at the All Are Guests exhibition, Hong Kong’s contribution to City States at the Copperas Hill Building during Liverpool Biennial 2012 until 25 November.

This is a video installation with a difference allowing for a semi-participatory experience as the viewer walks in between the projection screens which the artist presents. Mee-Ping’s projections involve imagery of busy city streets across Asia showing “a series of solitary figures, drifters who undergo similar experiences in different cities.” With the ingenious and dynamic outlay of projection screens viewers feels like they are wandering through these streets with the artist.

Photo Courtesy of UoL Contemporary Art Society

Out of Place plays with Liverpool Biennial 2012’s theme of ‘hospitality’; as viewers wanders through the arrangement of projection screens, they mimic the action of moving from street to street and in doing so potentially illustrate a darker-side to the idea of tourism. The artist and viewer passively observe the events and action which unfold in the street scenes, rather than wishing to interact with documented drifters the viewer instinctively moves to the next projection, demonstrating notions of detachment with the surrounding world.

 “By isolating her subjects from the fabrics of everyday life [Leung Mee-Ping] seeks to encourage viewers to ponder wider social issues”, perhaps it is the audience’s mimicry of isolation and detachment from the unfolding scenes juxtaposed with the act of walking through these street scenes that make viewers contemplative of their own actions with regard to Mee-Ping’s objectives.