SOMETHING THERE AND NEVER THERE

The book is published to accompany the solo exhibition of Leung Chi Wo, ““Something There and Never There”. The exhibition is centred around the tumultuous year of 1967 in Hong Kong, featuring Leung’s recent works between 2015 and 2017. Linking his own biography to the history of the city, Leung constructs parallel worlds that connect vastly different events, characters and objects together. Civilian riots and vintage Volkswagen, student protests and Charlie Chaplin’s film, political propaganda and songs by The Beatles: they all crossed paths by coincidence without our knowledge or entering into official history.
By using diverse media including photography, video, and installations comprising of found images, music and objects from 1967, Leung performs a deep engagement with a subjective history through archival research, conceptual intervention and poetic re-imagination. The artist demonstrates that history is full of ambivalence, absurdity and ambiguities, and that through re-enacting and reconstructing these episodes in 1967, one can as well reflect on the current socio-political situation in Hong Kong.