| Gayle
Chong Kwan is a London-based artist. Her practice features
photography, video, sound, installation and performance to
explore aspects of history, the senses and memory. Chong Kwan's
major focus is on the global politics of food and tourism.
'Cockaigne' is a series
of twelve large-format photographs, based on fourteenth century
ideas of a glutton's paradise - a land made entirely of food,
where all wants and needs are met. Hams and cheeses grow on
trees, fountains run with beer, houses are roofed with pies.
This work explores utopian ideals of paradise and the presentation
of the exotic in the global tourism and travel industries,
as well as European legend and the history of fine art. It
brings together geographical, historical monuments and landscapes
in one impossible and ultimately overbearing paradise island
made out of food.
Chong Kwan has shown
extensively in the UK and abroad, including the Ecole des
Beaux Arts, Paris , the Netherlands New Media Institute, Amsterdam
, the NOW Festival, Nottingham , VAIN Live Art, Oxford and
the Gallery Los 29 Enchufes, Madrid.
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