TREVOR YEUNG
Plants—rather than paints or pencils—occupy every available surface of Trevor Yeung’s studio in Fo Tan, which he’s had since 2015. “Last year I counted my plants and I had around 200,” he says. “But now there are more because some of them have had babies.”
They aren’t just for decoration. These plants play a crucial role in the theory and practice of Yeung’s art, and often become a physical part of his multimedia installations. “My first love was animals,” he recalls. “But I am interested in plants because you have a responsibility to care for the plant. Sometimes, plants give you hope. They keep you positive. But the relationship is indirect—they do not give you a direct response.”
Yeung’s art is often indirect, too—his photographs, sculptures and installations use images and objects from the natural world to obliquely explore human interactions. For Cacti, a series he debuted last year, Yeung ‘planted’ dried puffer fish in terracotta pots, then painted the spiky fish green to make them indistinguishable from real succulents. Appearances, Yeung seemed to be saying, can be deceptive. Maracuja Road, an installation Yeung made for the Shanghai Biennale in 2010, featured rows of passionfruit plants positioned beneath a hanging latticework canopy. The famously fast-growing plants shot up bamboo support poles, but couldn’t bridge the gap of just a few centimetres that Yeung left between the top of the posts and the frames above. The installation can be read as a metaphor for a relationship that didn’t quite make it, or a desire that is never fulfilled.
When Yeung’s away, which is fairly often—last year alone he had residencies in Panama, Finland and France— his plants are watered by photographer South Ho Siunam, a close friend who shares Yeung’s studio and is also represented by Blindspot Gallery, which has championed them both for years. “nd when Leung Chi-wo and Sara Wong go away, I look after their plants,” says Yeung. “Fo Tan is a community—it’s not huge, but I like it that way. It’s a small group of close friends.”
A darkroom dominates South Ho Siu-nam’s half of the studio he shares with Trevor Yeung. It’s here that he develops the black-and-white photos he’s most famous for, which feature everything from Hong Kong’s public housing developments to political protests. A recent series,
The Whiteness of Trees, documents the aftermath of super typhoon Mangkhut, the storm that tore through Hong Kong in September 2018, causing widespread flooding and uprooting thousands of trees. The latter fascinated Ho—he spent days traipsing around the city after the storm photographing torn branches and trunks before they were swept away. “It was quite sad because, to me, the trees are like our friends—they’re also living in the city,” says Ho. “And they’re very old—sometimes much older than me.”
Most of Ho’s work takes place on the streets rather than in his Fo Tan studio, but he still uses the space regularly as a place to research, and plan books and exhibitions once he has developed his images. It’s also the base for another of his creative projects. “In Hong Kong, gallery openings are [among] the important gatherings for artists—we go to socialise, not just see the work. But at the openings, wine and beer are mostly bad quality, so my friend [Natalie Lo Lai Lai] and I decided to learn how to brew beer.” And micro-brewery BVA Project was born.
“We started in 2017 and we’re still going—we serve BVA Project at exhibition openings and other events,” says Ho, who brews all the beer in a corner of his studio. “We don’t produce much, and it doesn’t make us much money, but it’s Ok—we do it for the community.”