Grosser Forms of Superstition
7 Feb - 4 March 2006

A little man stands atop a plinth – holding out a golden peach, his large forehead strikes you as being a little out of the ordinary.  He is Shou-xing or Sau the god of longevity: "Most Venerable Member of The Happiness Squad"
To the left a coven of his very kind… facing each other in a ring a rosy circle.  What conspires here?  A giant peach, which promises immortality, sits next to them as three breakaway guys hold confidence.

Walking further in there is a toxic swamp like puddle with discombobulating and coagulating forms breaking it’s surface but frozen still.
There are an assortment of brains, plastic lumps that seem intestinal, forms that relate to miniature scholar rocks, a clump of worms, clay lumpen shapes and large fields of molten metal in digital images.

This outpouring of objects are installed in groups like phenomenological evidence, either directly on the floor or offered up on tabletops.  Like crystal ball gazing the work teases that there is more than meets the eye at stake… Things waver: likeness and resemblance, natural and artificial, ornamentation and display, manufactured and handmade.
The ocular is a portal for our critical reflection; for day dreaming, staring,
Hallucinating, projecting and meditating.

In the work "Spirit and Matter" Kum fuses and bakes up concoctions of plastic and epoxy putty to ape the shapes of scholar rocks.  Historically collected as accoutrements to the scholars study in the Song Dynasty they were particularly admired if the natural processes of erosion had sculpted them. She adds to this mix ‘wasters’ by definition articles spoilt or flawed by manufacture, plastic waste lumps – these objects are re-presented for contemplation as embodiments of the transformational powers of nature and material. Directly linked to Kum’s ongoing interest in generative possibilities… accidents, mistakes, waste and by-products.

"Convoluted Nervous Substance" and "Curioser and Curioser" are subsets of vinyl, wax and resin brains. That mushy substance at once given form by the skull not present – a chimera, a trope.  The ersatz chemistry set acknowledges the possibilities of the formal and the unformed. Traces of the process of production in Kum’s work seeks to stress the material world, whilst encouraging an apprehension of material fact... The 'fall out' factor of invention and imagination, the relationship to constructed realities and simulation

"In Grosser Forms of Superstition"… Superstition is formed as a credulity regarding the supernatural, a misdirected reverence

We think we have made their acquaintance.