Amy Ching-Yan Lam with HaeAhn Woo Kwon: a small but comfy house and maybe a dog
Richmond Art Gallery, April 22 - June 11, 2023
Amy Ching-Yan Lam, Time Capsule (1994), 2023
The title of this exhibition comes from a text, “Me in the Future,” that Amy Ching-Yan Lam wrote at age eleven and put in a time capsule, speculating by the age of twenty-five she’d be married, have a career, and “a small but comfy house and maybe a dog.” Starting from these childhood fantasies of domestic love and financial stability, Lam presents artworks that explore how these dreams function within the wider context of colonial history. With humour and acuity, she examines the relationships between property, family, institutional power and collections, and theft.
A central part of the exhibition is a series of models created by Lam in collaboration with artist HaeAhn Woo Kwon, where they remake toys, domestic materials, and found objects into a fantasy communal home. The imagined dog is represented by the real story of Looty, a Pekingese dog taken from China by British troops at the end of the Second Opium War, told through a book and animation.
Expanding on how collections are formed and accessed, Lam has worked with the Richmond Public Library to bring a selection of items from their Dr. Kwok-Chu Lee Collection into the gallery. In turn, the Richmond Art Gallery participates in a lending program of artworks from their Collection, accessible through the Public Library, over the duration of Lam’s exhibition.
The exhibition’s lending program features artworks from the Gallery’s Didactic and Permanent Collections by artists Diyan Achjadi, Amir Ali Alibhai, Len Gardiner, Judith Gillis, Roy Green, Evan Lee, Laurens Lee, Zshu-Zshu Mark, and Alan Wood.
The exhibition is accompanied by an artist book, co-published with UK-based publisher Book Works, in 2024.
Read the curator’s text here.
Curator’s talk here.
Extended exhibition labels (English and traditional Chinese) here.
Top: Amy Lam and HaeAhn Woo Kwon, You don’t have to die Library, 2023
dried gourds, LED lights, ceramics, found objects, toys from Amy’s collection, epoxy clay, acrylic paint, fabric patch
Below: Lost in the sauce Kitchen, bread with dirt, ceramics, bent metal utensils, candlesticks, candles, 2023
Photo: Michael Love
Amy Lam and HaeAhn Woo Kwon, Untitled, 2023
Photo: Michael Love
Detail: You don’t have to die Library
Photo: Michael Love
Amy Ching-Yan Lam & HaeAhn Woo Kwon, At the edge of Sleephouse, 2023, flip flop, acrylic sheets, sand, sheepskin, toys from Amy’s collection
Photo: NK Photo
Amy Ching-Yan Lam, Me in the Future, 2023
digital print
I wrote this when I was eleven years old, in 1994, and put it into a time capsule. I was supposed to open the time capsule twenty years later, in 2014, at a class reunion. I never made it to that reunion, but my mom found this time capsule last year, as she was preparing to move out of our family home in Calgary, and gave it to me.
-Amy Ching-Yan Lam
Detail: You don’t have to die Library
Photo: Michael Love
Detail: Lost in the sauce Kitchen, bread with dirt, ceramics, bent metal utensils, candlesticks, candles
Photo: NK Photo
Amy Ching-Yan Lam & HaeAhn Woo Kwon,Needing and Wanting, 2023
bathroom sink and cabinet, faucet, pond pump, hose, bulkhead fittings, plastic buckets
HaeAhn and I made this fountain in response to a feng shui reading by local expert Sherman Tai. I commissioned a reading after learning that Dr. Kwok-Chu Lee, whose collection at the Richmond Public Library is featured in this exhibition, was a feng shui scholar. The reading influenced various aspects of this exhibition, ranging from the placement of artworks to the colour of the entry wall beside this fountain.
-Amy Ching-Yan Lam
Photo: Michael Love
Amy Ching-Yan Lam, Couch Clock, 2023
This arrangement of couches from Lam’s family home is inspired by the shape of a sundial: shadows cast change over the course of the day. A sundial makes visible the fact that “time exists because of the movement of the earth.”*
Visitors were welcome to sit on these couches.
Photo: NK Photo
Amy Ching-Yan Lam, Property Calendar, 2023
risograph on newsprint, acrylic binding, 396 pages
I started keeping a journal about property at the end of 2021 and stopped at the end of 2022. The original idea was to write down every time the topics of real estate, property, and housing came up in conversation. Also during this period, my parents, in their late-sixties, retired from working. Their retirement included a plan to sell the family house in Calgary that they had lived in for close to thirty years, that me and my sister had grown up in, and to move in with my sister in Toronto.
-Amy Ching-Yan Lam
Photo: Michael Love
Detail: Property Calendar
Every day of the exhibition, a page is ripped off each calendar to reveal the next entry.
Photo: Michael Love
Installation view:
Amy Ching-Yan Lam
My Private Garden…, 2023
photograph
Future-Friendly, 2023
photograph
The placement of plants around this window was suggested in a feng shui reading for the exhibition by Sherman Tai.
Photo: NK Photo
Amy Ching-Yan Lam
My Private Garden…, 2023
photograph
This perspective on the architectural model is from where the Gallery is located, which is represented by the empty green space in the lower left corner.
These are photos of the Richmond Centre condo marketing materials and showroom model.
Photo: Michael Love
Amy Ching-Yan Lam in collaboration with Emerson Maxwell, Looty Goes to Heaven, 2022
pencil and pastel
Courtesy of the artist, as part of the lending collection. More info on the loan initiative here.
This drawing depicts Looty, a Pekingese dog that was stolen from the Summer Palace near Beijing during the Second Opium War, gifted to Queen Victoria, and renamed “Looty,” in reference to how she was obtained. Looty died in 1872, and it’s not known where she was buried. The drawing is by Emerson Maxwell and was commissioned by Amy Ching-Yan Lam. Emerson and Amy also worked together on the Looty animation.
Photo: Michael Love
Amy Ching-Yan Lam
Future-Friendly, 2023
photograph
These are photos of the Richmond Centre condo marketing materials and showroom model.
The title Future-friendly comes from a euphemism that the Richmond Centre’s marketing material uses to denote wheelchair accessibility in individual condo units. Instead of being described as “wheelchair accessible,” the units are denoted as “future-friendly.”
Photo: Michael Love