"The Obsidian Isle", a significant new body of work for Gayle Chong Kwan, artist in residence in UNIDEE 2005, documents a fictional island located off the coast of Scotland, on which reside one country’s lost and destroyed buildings and places. Presented as an installation of large-format photographs and sculptural works, "The Obsidian Isle" explores ideas of collective history, national identity, landscape, and tourism through the prism of the senses and the distortion of memories.
"The Obsidian Isle" (that also refers to Ossian’s cycle of epic poems) questions what is kept, what remains, what falls into ruin or is destroyed, what persists and how these can be altered by memories, myth or competing histories.

The exhibition:
The ten large-format photographs are constructed from found images, three-dimensional elements and photographs taken by the artist, which are re-made as mise-en-scenes and then photographed in the studio. Ideas of fragmentation and dissolution through using tactile printing and sensory abstraction are further explored in series of smaller oval and darker photographic works.

Chong Kwan, born Edinburgh 1973, is based in London, and has shown extensively in the UK and internationally; including participating in major international Biennales, such as the 54th Venice Biennale 2011 (where ‘The Obsidian Isle’ was premiered) and 10th Havana Biennial, Cuba, 2009.

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