Trevor Yeung
Born 1988 in Dongguan, China
Lives and works in Hong Kong
Artspace and White Bay Power Station
White Bay Power Station
Five Chaotic Suns (Transiting), 2023
metal frame, electrical wires, light bulbs, adaptors and night lamps
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous assistance from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council
Courtesy the artist
Trevor Yeung had grown up with many household pets, but during his time living in a college dormitory, where pets were banned, he started caring instead for a carnivorous plant whose needs were both specific and demanding. Yeung realised how crucial it was to cultivate the precise conditions that sustain life. Currently, he is creatively focused on understanding how social conditions shape emotional engagement. His practice ranges from image-based work to large-scale installations, creating structures that allow him to explore the power dynamics between living beings, including plants, animals, as well as the viewers. Using his installations as cyphers for his own emotional reality, Yeung often reveals the artificiality of perceived ‘natural’ connection.
In Five Chaotic Suns (Transiting), Yeung recalls the ancient Chinese myth of Hou Yi, who shot down 9 of the world’s 10 suns as they collided in the sky in order to restore calm on earth. The moment of interest for Yeung is the transitory period where there are simultaneously 5 suns in the sky – an ambiguous state that could suggest both the appearance and disappearance of multiple suns. Using industrially produced elements to represent the chaos of the convergence, Yeung’s series of chandeliers point to chaos as the natural starting point of order, as well as the ambiguity of each present moment as a possible beginning or an end. Each chandelier features a range of colour temperatures – certain light bulbs will appear brighter, while some may not seem to fit. The gradiation of light not only suggests various states of transition, but also the coexistence of differences in every system.
Artspace
Night Mushroom Colon (Artspace), 2024
night lamps, artificial plants and plug adaptors
Cuddle Party (Two groups), 2024
Serpulorbis roussaei, vitrine and found objects
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney
Courtesy the artist
Trevor Yeung had grown up with many household pets, but during his time living in a college dormitory, where pets were banned, he started caring instead for a carnivorous plant whose needs were both specific and demanding. Through this, Yeung realised how crucial it was to cultivate the precise conditions that sustain life. Currently, he is creatively focused on understanding how social conditions shape emotional engagement. His practice ranges from image-based work to largescale installations, creating structures that allow him to explore the power dynamics between living beings, including plants, animals, as well as the viewers. Using his installations as cyphers for his own emotional reality, Yeung often reveals the artificiality of perceived ‘natural’ connection.
In Cuddle Party (Two groups) Yeung transforms seashells into a shrine for love and relationships. Much how some may fill a vitrine with treasured objects or a small statue of a god, the work is a dedication to romantic fantasies. At once sweet and intimate, it is underwritten by ideas of worship and what the artist describes as “a situation of taking sides”. Nearby Night Mushroom Colon (Artspace) combines electrical converters and nightlights to give off a gentle bioluminescence barely noticeable to a casual passerby. Appearing to grow almost secretly, these mushrooms thrive and reproduce independently through “polyamorous converters and tempting colours”, in Yeung’s words. Their apparent disinterest in, and distance from, human agency offers a viable alternative to the entanglement of human lives lived large, loudly and interdependently.
Trevor Yeung’s art excavates the inner logic of human relations. Fascinated by botanic ecology and horticulture, Yeung features carefully staged objects, photographs, animals, and plants in his mixed media works as aesthetic pretexts to address notions of artificial nature. These delicate and ironic arrangements allow him to exert control over living beings, including plants and animals, as well as his audiences. He often projects emotional and intellectual scenarios onto living substitutes in his work, translating his own social experiences into elaborate fables through which he continues to explore failure and imperfection. Yeung ultimately questions how closed systems contain and create emotional and behavioural conditions.
Read more about the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, by purchasing the catalogue here.