VOLTA BASEL 2024(D08)

Basel, SWITZERLAND — Odds and Ends is pleased to announce its participation in VOLTA Basel 2024 (Booth D08) as part of sector VOLTA Firsts. Presenting new works by Hong Kong artist Amber Ng Wing Yan and Canadian artist Scott Sueme, whose practices emphasise colour theory, structural play and study of materiality. VOLTA Basel will be held at Klybeck 610 from 10 – 16 June 2024.  
 
Amber Ng Wing Yan will present a series of new sculptures and drawings that explore the interactive nature of playgrounds and the creative instincts of child’s play. Ng's works are extensive studies of bodily interactions with play structures that integrate motion capture technology, industrial fabrication and sculptural processes. Throughout her research, Ng observed a keen instinct amongst children in finding unconventional and innovative ways of interacting with built structures within a playground; an intrinsic trait often lost as we enter governed society. Her hand-welded sculptures and robotic drawings attempt to capture the fleeting moments of children’s organic and ungoverned interactions with play structures. Her new sculptures such as Playground: Monkey Bars, 2024 merge the player’s organic swinging motions with the rigid structure of monkey bars through rhythmic arrangements of round steels, resulting in a sculptural realisation of movement tracing. By using colours and materials commonly found in modern day playgrounds, Ng incites our own memories of play experience that were intrinsically motivated, discouraging manufactured experience of play and reviving our creative instincts that actualise our environment’s affordances. 

 

Also on view are new paintings by Scott Sueme, whose current practice explores the concept of “interface”, specifically between the human experience and our relationship with the natural world. Sueme beckons the question of how our internal states, or personal narratives filter and colour our perception of the world in a constant feedback loop. His new works incorporate the use of Chinese characters as a nod to his cultural heritage, at the same time attempting to capture, or make an impression of his environment through a biographical, or personal lens; one that acknowledges both the self and where we belong. His new paintings such as Moon Beam, 2024 and Forest Meditation, 2024 are anchored in the exploration of nature connectedness, from which our perception of human identity is formed. Sueme notes “I love this idea, or perspective, that humans (collectively and the self) and nature are not separate, that we are on in the same. It’s in this mantra, or in practice to ask how we truly see ourselves in all living things”.