Into the World of Palpable Objects and Fruitful Delight
Project description
Into the World of Palpable Objects and Fruitful Delight was a solo exhibition by Malaysian artist Fan Chon Hoo (b. 1982, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), presented at Eleven Spitalfields in London. It was Hoo’s first solo exhibition in the UK, bringing together a body of work exploring cultural translation, appropriation, taste and the ways in which histories are embedded within cultural artefacts.
Shortlisted for the Saatchi Gallery and Channel 4’s New Sensations in 2010, Hoo has developed a distinctive visual language informed by the roles of the amateur antiquarian and anthropologist. Drawing on the traditions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travellers and amateur naturalists, his practice examines cultural objects as residues of exchange, translation and transformation.
Among the cultural artefacts that inform Hoo’s practice are Willow Pattern chinaware and Victorian copper jelly moulds. In the Blue and White Collection, a series of paper earthenware works responding to the Willow Pattern, Hoo recreates and alters its familiar visual language. Originally developed by English craftsmen in the late eighteenth century, the pattern combines imagined Oriental landscapes with architectural structures and exoticised garden follies, revealing the ways in which representations of foreign cultures can be appropriated, translated and absorbed into local visual traditions.
The jelly moulds collection similarly explores the relationship between cultural appropriation, nostalgia and taste. Hoo recreates decorative Victorian dessert moulds using brightly coloured and luminous gelling agents imported from Indonesia, while drawing on moulds shaped by Rococo and Neoclassical architectural details. These works create an intentionally incongruous relationship between material, form and cultural origin, questioning the histories of expropriation and appropriation embedded within seemingly familiar objects.
The exhibition’s setting at Eleven Spitalfields provided an important historical context for Hoo’s investigation. The Georgian townhouses were originally built in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to accommodate French Protestant Huguenot silk weavers and later immigrants, creating a setting closely connected to histories of migration, trade, craft and cultural exchange.
Through his transformations of familiar objects and decorative forms, Hoo examines how European cultural identity has been shaped through processes of exchange and appropriation. His works evoke the appearance and authority of authentic historical artefacts while subtly disrupting their origins, materials and meanings.
Into the World of Palpable Objects and Fruitful Delight presents Hoo’s exploration of artifice, cultural translation and the construction of taste. By reworking objects associated with luxury, domestic culture and European history, the exhibition considers how cultural narratives are constructed and how ideas of authenticity and origin can be continually transformed.
Bio
Fan Chon Hoo (b. 1982, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) is a Malaysian artist whose interdisciplinary practice explores cultural translation, history, material culture and the construction of authenticity. His work draws on the visual languages of antiquarianism, anthropology and decorative arts, transforming familiar cultural artefacts through processes of reconstruction and reinterpretation.
Hoo studied photography at the London College of Communication. His work has been exhibited internationally, including as part of Saatchi Gallery and Channel 4’s New Sensations 2010 at the House of Noblemen, 2 Cornwall Terrace. In 2013, he co-founded Run Amok (RA), an artist-run gallery and cultural space in George Town, Penang, with Trevor Hampson. The project subsequently developed into an art collective involving Liew Kwai Fei, Minstrel Kuik, Hasanul Isyraf Idris, Tetriana Ahmed Fauzi and Hoo Fan Chon.
Hoo has presented solo exhibitions including The Back Room in Kuala Lumpur in 2021 and has participated in group exhibitions across Asia. He is also active as a curator and grassroots cultural producer.
Project details
Year: 2011
Artist: Fan Chon Hoo
Venue: Eleven Spitalfields, London
Curated by: Keith Whittle
Publication essay: Keith Whittle
Country: United Kingdom