Venue: Hackney Picturehouse, 270 Mare Street, London, E8 1HE.
Tickets: £6.00/£5.00 Concessions
Running time: 75min (approx)
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Featuring work by: Yeondoo Jung, Kim Joon, Minjae Huh, Daun Chung, Yiyun Kang
Drawing on a past that includes Chinese cultural domination and Japanese imperialism, the videos in Irrepressible Seoul play with notions of gender, history and politics to present diverse forms of self-expression. The works on show offer multiple narratives that break free from a chaotic past to produce a vibrant new way of seeing.
The principal work in Irrepressible Seoul is Yeondoo Jung’s Handmade Memories. Elderly Koreans are interviewed about their lives. Yeondoo then visualizes the reflections on-screen from a 21st century perspective.
Shown side by side, these two versions of Korean history make a stunning whole, in which the elders’ recollections are juxtaposed with Yeondoo’s modern day interpretations. In so doing the past and the present are fused to challenge existing ideas of individual and collective memory.
Yeondoo Jung (Korea) Graduated with an MFA from Goldsmiths and has had numerous international group and solo exhibitions, including Documentary Nostalgia in Modern Mondays, MoMA and Locations, at Tina Kim Fine Art in New York.
Kim Joon (Korea) Graduated with an MFA in Painting from Hongik University in Seoul, where he now lives and works as an artist and professor. His interests lie in photography, as well as animation towards body movement.
Minjae Huh (Korea) Studying on the MA in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art, she graduated in Communication Arts & Graphic Design from Rhode Island School of Design and her work explores the contrast between private and public space.
Daun Chung (Korea) Graduated with an MA in Visual Communication from the Royal College of Art. Now living and working in Seoul, she explores nomadic identities, drawing on personal memories and feelings of displacement.
Yiyun Kang (Korea) An artist in residency at Nanji Art Studio in Korea, she graduated with an MFA in Media Arts from UCLA in the USA. She creates works of emotional and poetic resonance using hi-tech digital imagery.
Irrepressible Seoul is part of the Frame Talks season focusing on Korean identity, reimagined cities, and intersections between the body and technology.
Curated by Youna Shin, MA Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art. With special thanks to Hackney Picturehouse, Madeleine Mullet, Karen Alexander and David Gryn.