Globalisation, like cigar-and-intern jokes, is one of those things that media types love to throw in every chance they get to show that they are smart people aware of the latest trends. Amanda Boursicot's work, however, should help us remember something all Hong Kongers should know: that East and West have been mingling and mating for a long time.
The Hong Kong-born artist's series of triptychs (right) portray antique Chinese objects - tea caddies, wine jugs, porcelains - that were produced specifically for Western lovers of chinoiserie. 'These were things that were Chinese but made to appeal to European tastes - they were transformed,' she says. It is this external aesthetic trend that fascinates Boursicot: how a wine jug became, in Western eyes, valuable for its 'motif value' rather than its utility as a vessel.
This interest in the confluence of Occident and Orient is not limited to her subject; it also extends to her technique. The antique objects are painted in a 'very academic, Western style - on an easel, from a real object and with lots of layers'. Oil painting is also 'very much a Western tradition'. In contrast, the patterns that appear on either side of the objects - copied from lacquerware, traditional Chinese garments and the like - are painted in a single session, using adapted Chinese brush-painting techniques.
Boursicot's father is French and her mother is Macanese. 'Being of mixed origin means that I'm not part of the Chinese community and not part of the Western community. I have one foot in each house,' she says. 'My paintings are very much about that.'
She is now based in Vancouver, Canada, where it is sometimes hard to tell where East ends and West begins.
Until August 31. Galerie Martini, 1/F, 99F Wellington Street, Central. Tuesday to Saturday 11am-7pm. Tel: 2526 9566.
