Wong Hoy Cheong

Malaysia based artist Wong Hoy Cheong incorporates drawing, installation, photography and video s well as natural materials such as sugar, fruit and plants and cow dung in his work. Wong Hoy Cheong has exhibited widely in Asia, Australia and Europe as well as within Malaysia, including the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), ARS (Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, 2001), ‘Cities on the Move’, (Hayward Gallery, London 1999) and the Asia Pacific Triennial (1996). His solo shows include ‘Of Migrants and Rubber Trees’ (National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur) and a nationally touring exhibition ‘Selected Works’ (1994-2002) for OVA which opened at the Bluecoat Gallery (Liverpool) in 2002.

Wong Hoy Cheong has undertaken artist’s residencies at Gasworks in London (2002), the Canberra Institute of Art (1992) and has been visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths College (1999) and visiting tutor at Central St Martins (1998). He currently teaches at the ‘Centre for Advanced Design’ (Kuala Lumpur) and was previously Head of the Foundation Department. (1998-2001).

Wong Hoy Cheong’s work is diverse in form and rich in ideas. In The Colonies Bite Back 2001 (shown at Gallery 4A, Sydney) the artist fed pages of British school text books such as ‘Great Men of the East’ and ‘Exploring the British Isles’ to termites, using the pulp and shredded books in a series of delicate and intricate collage works. In Of Migrants and Rubber Trees (1994-6) for example Wong Hoy Cheong deployed a complex series of charcoal drawings – an installation of ‘moments’ from family photographs combined with identity papers, anthropological specimens and rubber trade paraphernalia, thus re-evaluating both colonial and migrant experience and sabotaging assumptions about identity and location.