John Young
Hong Kong – Australia
John Young is a Hong Kong born, Australian artist. Young has had more than 60 solo exhibitions as well as major exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, including at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. Over almost four-decades of artistic production, Young’s work has taken on many different phases. In the last decade his work has focused on the ramifications of technology on painting practice and historical re-imaginings. As the recipient of the prestigious Australia Council Fellowship for Visual Arts, Young has devoted several years to creating projects in relation to the history of the Chinese Diaspora in Australasia. Such projects include the design and construction of Open Monument, a permanent monument in Ballarat, Victoria. His most recent solo exhibition, Storm Resurrection was held in Pearl Lam Galleries, Shanghai.
Macau Days
Young focuses upon Macau as a place of paradoxical cultural exchange, of those seeking the flight out. As Young states, “This is a homage to the flight out, for all those whose lives were lived transformations – [to] Wenceslau de Moraes, who left Portugal, sojourned in Macau and spent the rest of his years in Tokushima, but introduced to the West the first Haiku”. Acting as a visual and allegorical recollection of a time of transculture, now largely surpassed by the wealth and greed in present day Macau, Young is still able to figuratively comprehend a dramatically colourful past Macau; a place at once entrenched in the pull of Western modernism, yet momentarily balanced in a courtship of Chinese and Portuguese history.
Philippe Graton
France
French but born in Brussels, Belgium in 1961, Philippe Graton has been taking photographs since his childhood. At 19, he carried his camera with him in the French Army and continued recording his soldier’s life. When he returned to civilian life, he pursued his passion as a freelance journalist for several magazines, mostly military and adventure. He reported from Vietnam, Cambodia and Bosnia as a freelance. When his father, renowned comic strip author Jean Graton, asked for his help to self-publish his work, Philippe accepted. Jean Graton was one of the main artists for the classic comic magazine Tintin, and is the creator of the successful Formula 1 comic hero ‘Michel Vaillant’.
Michel Vaillant by Jean Graton
(based on Rendez-vous in Macao)
In celebration of the 60th anniversary of Michel Vaillant’s comic book series, Philippe Graton will inaugurate a Macau exhibition featuring some of the original plates from his father’s book Rendez-vous in Macao (1983). The exhibition will also present photographs of Jean Graton throughout his career – with Steve McQueen in Macau, and Teddy Yip, Jean Graton’s 1981 Macau Grand Prix press pass, and of Luc Besson shooting the Michel Vaillant movie in Le Mans.
True Stories
by Philippe Graton
Philippe Graton grants us with a solo exhibition based on his photojournalism work displayed on the blog The Wednesday Shot. The photographer gives us a personal look into unusual encounters and news story with a selection of black-and-white photographs followed by a short autographed narrative that puts the picture in perspective. In the space of a few months after he began the project The Wednesday Shot, thousands of curious people have chosen to share this weekly poetic rendezvous with Philippe Graton. Now, we are able to see it up close in Macau.
Wong Ka Long
Macau
Born in Macau in 1977, Wong Ka Long received a Master’s Degree in Art Education and a Bachelor’s Degree in Sculpture from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2000 and 2003 respectively. Since completing the sculpture “Portuguese Poet Camões” he has been focusing on sculpture creation. Some of his most famous works include “Professor Jao Tsung-I”, “Matteo Ricci” and “Don Bosco”.
Mr One Hundred Dollar Bill
“In my childhood memories, I remember there were two portraits on the currency of Macau, one with one eye opened, and the other with a high, straight nose. No matter from which angle you looked, he was always watching you. Before the Handover, I had the chance to finish the “Portuguese Poet Camões” sculpture, and created a connection with Portuguese culture. Using a poet on a bill gives it a heavier sense of culture compared with using the revolutionaries, national leaders or monuments. This exhibition’s theme is Camilo Pessanha and it contains the design sketches and shows the creation process, trying to get back the relationship between my childhood and this one hundred dollar bill”.