Gailan Ngan: Moonlighting Papel

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Gailan Ngan, "Moonlighting Papel," 2017

installation view

Opening Reception Thursday, June  1 - 6pm to 8pm

In Gailan Ngan’s exhibition Moonlighting Papel, the artist has created an environment of sculptures and found objects arranged throughout the gallery. The works in the show comprise of ceramic shapes created by Ngan alongside and integrated with structures of varying media, as well as detritus and debris collected while beachcombing.

The installation at first glance appears to be a utopic natural setting, pleasant and almost park-like with cheerful colours and shapes. Ngan’s ceramic works—whimsical vessels, bulbous forms, all adorned with rainbow glazes of stripes, blobs, and drips—are the foundation of the exhibition, placed on the floor or supported by plinths and structures. They reveal process, gravity, and weight in their collapsing silhouettes, integrating naturally with the found materials.

The delineation between natural and man-made within the installation blurs with the inclusion of laminate finishes such as “desert floor,” specialty-bred petunias developed to look like the starry night sky, and brightly coloured tarps, rope, and other washed up materials. Ngan’s constructed environment, which initially appears organic, slowly reveals design, composition, and interference.

Gailan Ngan graduated from Emily Carr University in 2002, and since then her works have been exhibited at The Apartment, Art Los Angeles Contemporary, Centre A International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Western Front, and the Museum of Anthropology. Her work is in numerous collections including the Doris Shadbolt Collection at the Helen and Morris Belkin Gallery at the University of British Columbia. Ngan lives and works in Vancouver.