Treading Softly with Trevor Yeung
Earthy blends of moss, woodlands, and male body spray steer audiences through the dark in Trevor Yeung's first U.K. exhibition at South London non-profit Gasworks, inspired by a memorable visit to London's gay cruising grounds at night.
Trevor Yeung. Photo: South Ho.
Presented ahead of the artist's work at the 2024 Venice Biennale, where he will be representing Hong Kong, Soft ground (28 September–17 December 2023) stages a nocturnal realm under the faint purple hues of moonlight heat lamps, where the reliability of our sensory perception is put into question across minimal but effective works.
At Gasworks, the darkness is such that visitors pause at the threshold to take in their surroundings.
In England, cruising—referring to the search for casual sex partners on public grounds—is traced back to the 17th century. North London's Hampstead Heath, in particular, has been a historic site for intimate encounters, which triggered Yeung's imagination after a visit during his 2022 residency at Delfina Foundation.
He returned to interview men cruising in the area and took photographs. One shows the infamous tree, known as the 'fuck tree', he would cast in soap beside a metal bin placed after local complaints of littering. Beyond a site for queer desire, for the artist, the environment related to unspoken interactions, or how we signal each other in the everyday.
It is a thoughtful introduction to Yeung's practice, which has become known to create such systems of viewing that guide viewers through intentional stagings and sensory stimulus. (A similar intervention was noted in the artist's installation at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale's Cruising Pavilion, where a mist machine used to keep reptile tanks moist released eucalyptus oil to mask bodily scents of sex.)
Born in Guangdong, but a Hong Kong native at heart, Yeung who studied Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University is best known for conceptual installations made of plants and aquatic ecosystems, which he uses as a medium to illustrate the relationship between living things.
His very first plant installation, I could be a good boyfriend (2011), comprised a Venus flytrap inside a bell jar under growth lights. At once providing the conditions for the plant to thrive and confining it within parameters the artist had designed, Yeung expressed a desire to control and sustain that mirrored tensions within human interactions, where hierarchies are often signalled but not always articulated as such.
In recent years, the artist's work has increasingly engaged audiences and addressed contemporary events. Thirteen money trees were suspended from the ceiling by earth-toned straps at Art Basel Hong Kong 2023. Made in the context of pandemic isolation, they formed an inverted pyramid that appeared to defy gravity while recalling the fragility of all life forms.
At M+ museum's Sigg Prize 2023, The Queue (2023) recreated the experience of waiting at the border to quarantine in a hotel room, while The Pavilion of Regret at Singapore Biennale 2022 invited audiences to adopt and leave behind houseplants in a greenhouse as a comment on the purchase and discarding of plant life during lockdown.
At Gasworks, the darkness is such that visitors pause at the threshold to take in their surroundings, as the eye latches on to a momentary comfort near the ground: a tiny nightlight with glowing mushrooms and saffron fern growing from a body of interconnected adapters.
Night Mushroom Colon (Twelve) (2022) is among an ongoing series of luminescent sculptures by Yeung, companions for those who are alone. Moving from China to Hong Kong at a young age, the artist says he felt out of place. Instead, he found company in secret fish tanks and a wide range of plants, whose ecologies were easier to understand and sustain.
Live in Hong Kong, Born in Dongguan, Yeung's 2015 installation at Para Site Hong Kong, spoke to these complex feelings. Shown as part of a group exhibition addressing Chinese nationalism and its century of humiliation, imported fish from China filled six aquariums raised above styrofoam boxes to create a crawling space for one.
These acts of concealment followed by revelation are common in Yeung's work, which displays a particular awareness of how organisms behave in their ecosystems, from animals and nature to the international art circuit. A small barrier of plants obscured the entrance to Blindspot Gallery's booth at Art Basel Hong Kong 2015 to filter out the incurious. Some were placed directly in front of the artist's photographs to integrate the work itself. As Yeung tells Ocula Magazine in 2016, Garden Cruising: It's not that easy being green was his first attempt to control an audience.
Without meaning to, one becomes acquainted with the ways a cruiser might navigate woodlands in the dark.
At Gasworks, the faint glow of the artist's nightlight ceedes way to the tinkling of a nearby stream. Following its sound, one arrives in a near-empty room, where a thick smudge of dried paint is splattered on the wall, suggesting the room has been painted. But there is no way to know. Only later does one find out it is a wall painting series titled 'Gaslighting'.
In the far-right corner, a slab of stone embedded with a metal faucet overlooks a patch of crimson moss. Shy Fountain (2023) means to imitate the sound of cruisers urinating in the park to mark their territory. As one steps closer, the faucet shuts down, only to turn back on when another person enters the gallery. Seeking an explanation, one backtracks to find the second room, eyes now adjusted to the dark.
Below a starry night sky of tiny acorns is the 2.5-metre-long Soapy Fuck Tree (2023), which could be mistaken for a severed limb. Yeung's cast retains a slight curve that recalls the infamous oak from Hampstead Heath, misfortunately endowed with a bent body that has made it a functional surface for nocturnal encounters.
On his visit, Yeung found much of the tree bark had been rubbed off from use. Thinking of how cruising affects the environment, Yeung cast its body in soap, alluding to how the physical manifestation of desire can cause gradual deterioration in nature by human hands.
And yet, one is tempted to reach toward the ridges lining the bark's wavy surface, bring their nose closer to detect aromas of musk, soil, and moss, and softly pat both extremities to ascertain the interior is solid. Without meaning to, one becomes acquainted with the ways a cruiser might navigate woodlands in the dark. —[O]
