‘Hanmi Gallery presents the 7th interim exhibition FOUR_everyday life;  that showcases a quartet of North Asian artists who have all lived and studied in London, drawing on the experience of city life by contextualising everyday objects into their practices. A quadruple examination of domesticity and consumerism that now temporarily inhabits a whole building in Fitzrovia.

 

The four ancient elements were perceived to simply be air, earth, fire and water while symbolic mystical meanings of number four deals with stability, invoking the grounded nature of all things. The four seasons and the four compass directions are both wrapped up in the square; fours represent formality, solidity, calmness, and the home. It is said that recurrence of 4 in your life may signify the need to get back to your roots, and centre yourself. The four diverse takes presented here represent a critical reassessment of our ever faster and increasingly busy lives as we constantly consume:

 

2nd floor
Dari Bae was dazzled by the huge range of exotic fruits on sale at London markets, the choice in Korea being far more modest. These displays were formally appealing and evidence of the dynamic multicultural life to be found in the capital. Dari Bae’s work asks us to consider their strangeness, origin and means of production, a largely imported extravagance that lasts all year long. Here she illuminates rotting fruit from the inside, a deconstructed chandelier that makes beauty out of a tiny fraction of the daily waste society produces.

 

1st floor
Funa Ye works with the realities of everyday life, using humour and irony to investigate the perceived connection between authority and cultural diversity. This can include mass media, stereotypes of language, fictional site-specific tourism, and an ethnographic study of personal and social identity. For this exhibition, the artist takes Barbie dolls and manipulates their appearance, asking us to consider established Western ideals of female beauty enshrined in globally marketed toys. For the accompanying works with newspaper she acts as a cultural editor, correcting idiosyncrasies of the English language.

 

Ground floor
Jukhee Kwon is a black belt in Taekwondo, loosely translated as the art of kicking and punching. This artist describes her artwork as “Destruction for construction. Negation of negation. Going and coming back. Death and new life. Cutting and making.” Her working material is the everyday printed book, paper and ink, transformed through handicraft, situated in time and site. Now she takes three identical copies of the South London Yellow Pages, slicing the directories into a sculptural waterfall of illegible information from these iconic books that are no longer seen so much in homes, as words migrate online.

 

3rd floor
Yeon Lee aims to find herself through the production of artworks which combine recent experiences with childhood memories, a process in which half forgotten narratives are fused with everyday reality to give create new abstract shapes. Ubiquitous plastic shopping bags have prompted the French to dub the English as Le Petit Sac, an endemic emblem of consumerism that this artist has stitched into a giant filigree sculpture that hangs from the ceiling, asking us to think before we add landfill, by reusing non-plastic bags to shop.

 

Recent exhibitions by the FOUR artists_
Dari Bae_Born in Seoul, 1970_Lives and works in London
2010 – MA Fine Art, Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London
2011 – Artist at Work; the process recorded, Korean Cultural Centre, London
2011 – Clerkenwell Art & Design Fair, The House of Detention, London
2011 – Future Map 10, 176 Gallery (Zabludowicz Collection), London
2010 – The Seoul Art Exhibition 2010, SeMA Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul

 

Funa Ye_Born in Kunming, 1986_Lives and works in London and Beijing
2010 – MA Fine Art, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London
2011 – Future Pass – collateral event, 54th Bienniale, Venice
2006/2011 – 1st / 2nd Academy Documentary of Experimental Art in Beijing
2009 – 28th Graphic Biennial in Ljubljana, Slovenia

 

Jukhee Kwon_Born in Dae-jun, 1981_Lives and works in London
2011 – MA Book Arts, Camberwell College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London
2011 – Inside out, Camberwell College of Art, London (solo show)
2011 – Things change, you know, book sculpture, New Gallery, London
2011 – Trajector Art Fair, Brussels, Belgium

 

Yeon Lee Born in Seoul, 1976_ Lives and works in Seoul
2008 – MA Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, University of London
2011 – The House, organised by I-MYU project, The Air Gallery, London.
2010 – Solo project ‘Re-Use Me’, Jerwood Space project room, London.
2010 – Solo project ‘Route Master’, supported by Platform A+A, Spitalfields
2009 – Five Years, Sesame Gallery, London