Dr Gayle Chong Kwan is a multi disciplinary artist who creates large scale works with video and extended reality, and she says that no two are the same.
She describes her art as that of an artist who works at the intersection of historical, archival and material research and contemporary fine art practice.
She has examined the archives of the museum, and James Hutton’s geological research in the capital, as well as basing the new installation at the National Museum of Scotland on the founding work by Francis Bacon – The Great Instauration. Bacon used his work to restore paradise on earth, with key themes of divinity and philosophy.
Dr Kwan has reimagined scientific instruments in the newly commissioned artwork exploring the scientific collections from which she took inspiration. The artwork shows the scientific instruments changed into fantastical roots with representations of geology, and objects viewed under the microscope.
When visitors to the Edinburgh Science Festival see her work – also called The Great Instauration – at the National Museum of Scotland they will see her six giant sculptures on steel plinths. Around the Grand Gallery there are huge hand painted silk banners depicting some of the art on which the sculpture is also based.
People will have to make up their own minds what exactly they are seeing as it is not meant to be depictive. Dr Kwan said: “Art is less about depicting or representing. It is more about getting people to feel and think at the same time. The work is a response to the architecture of the Grand Gallery designed by Francis Fowke.
“It is really a building of the Enlightenment. My work goes back to the start of science, to the scientific revolution and thinks about almost upturning – a bit like the Great Instauration did. That’s Francis Bacon’s early text about the scientific method, but you get a feeling of almost being upside down in the space – perhaps being underground. So it is about reimagining science through a sense of upturning and change.”
Dr Kwan creates something new and unique each time she sets about a new commission. She said: “Each time as an artist you’re trying to develop and pull your work in new directions. There are definitely themes and tropes that I am known for in my work, these kind of fantastical growths or combinations of archival images reworked and reimagined. But each time I make things it becomes a new thing. It is really about the journey of making. I don’t start a project knowing what I am going to do.”
Dr Kwan’s first degree was in Sub-Saharan, post colonial politics and she uses that knowledge in her work. She also explained that the banners refer to medical or scientific slides with some of the colours portraying blood red or other hues in the earth and minerals.
She was originally from Edinburgh and has gone on to become an award winning multi-disciplinary artist. One of her earlier works used 20,000 milk bottles to transform a concrete underpass into a cave, and another was an immersive photographic work created in the longest tunnel in the London Underground.
The work will be on display at the Grand Gallery in the National Museum of Scotland until 19 April.
