A series of three tapestries composed respectively of stationaries, food, and medicine from Hong Kong. These are the ordinary things that I would encounter everyday growing up there.

This project explores the relationship between possessions and the narratives attached to them, and the fetishization of ordinary objects as souvenirs or keepsakes.

Click to enlarge.

Set comprises of three interlocking panels and a fold-out double-sided poster.

Brand design by branding team: Anton, Berkeley, Kaitlyn, Sara, and Sarah, lead by Jonathon

Salmon 1-5 is an experimental piece exploring the relationship between images, image-sequences, and the tendency of human memory to fabricate and filter certain details of past events.

The same scenario is repeated five times in five image-sequences. Certain details such as the hair, the clothes or the arrangement of the room is altered with each take.

The size and weight of the flip book calls for the viewer to observe the two different sides of the conversation separately. The viewer has control over the speed at which this scenario unfolds as well as the option of freezing at any particular frame.

This project is part of my personal visual exploration of our reliance on image-recording media.

This is a book that illustrates visually my experience of contemporary life as a place that offers so much easy access to knowledge and imagery that it becomes difficult to concentrate on anything.

Reference Manual for Boredom and Distraction symbolizes the experience of going out in the world and feeling like one has entered an enormous and over- whelming library where one desires to try and grasp every bit of information. This project shows that we no longer see any one thing individually, every image or idea becomes juxtaposed with many others at any given moment, and these then become tacked to the abundance of ideas we have collected in our minds. An attempt to organize or make sense of these easily accessible ideas inevitably ends in further distraction.

This book presents a theoretical process of obsessively collecting unrelated fragments of information from the world and re-organizing them in an attempt to make sense of the vast chaos. Meaning is exterior to what is actually seen, all information has been divorced from its original context and organized as if for future reference. Theoretically, then, this reference book would be carried through the world and referred to as a guide to making sense. However, such a goal could never possibly be achieved.

Formally, this book is created to look as though it is an outdated mass-marketed paperback, as if purchased from a second-hand bookstore. Each item in this reference book is numbered, and therefore refers to something outside of itself. Each image speaks to the overwhelming bank of images of which it is a part. Human beings, crowds, homecoming queens, chairs, geishas, beautiful boys, meals, architecture, interiors, bicycles, cars, bears, toys, diagrams, mathematical equations, electronics, household items, taken out of context and replaced in a new one. The manual is a reference for something external to what is actually at hand. The user goes through the book knowing that the real meaning of what is presented has been omitted, and has also become impossible to locate. The real meaning of any one thing becomes secondary in importance, more compelling is what is immediately available next. This mimics the overwhelming experience of traveling through the contemporary landscape, seeking to categorize too much knowledge one could ever hope to grasp.

Reference Manual for Boredom and Distraction is then a conceptual piece about an exercise in making sense destined to fail before it has begun. The result is an art artifact that at once both honours the book form and questions its role and relevance in the contemporary context.

All Pages (Coming Soon!)

Process Work

CMYK, perfect bound, 10.5″ x 16.5″, with half pages and a mini photo essay insert.

18″ x 25″ Poster. 300 illustrations.

Click for actual size: 2MB

A simple chart showing the information of a person’s average intake of coffee in Kilograms, ordered by country, the population of the country and the distance from the equator of each of these countries.

8 1/2″ x 11″