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Danielle Popov

An artist whose portrait of the actress Helen Mirren is in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London is having her first show in Asia at Hong Kong’s Flowers Gallery.
The Sheung Wan space is filled with British artist Ishbel Myerscough’s recent oil paintings that continue her exploration of the impermanence of life.
Called “Transhumance”, the exhibition represents how the 1995 winner of the National Portrait Gallery annual portrait award considers the changes that happen in our lives to be as natural and as necessary as the migration of animals from spring to winter pastures – the definition of transhumance.
Myerscough is known for her intimate and intricate portraits of herself, her friend and fellow artist Chantal Joffe as well as their families. The exhibition features still lifes, drawings of plants, and Myerscough’s paintings of her daughter and herself.

“You can see so much of yourself within your daughter,” Myerscough says.
Such personal subject matter should not be considered differently just because she is a woman, she adds. When men such as Henry Moore create sculptures of mothers and children, they are celebrated for creating great art. “But when a woman does a ‘Mother and Child’, it’s considered a domestic piece, so it has less weight.
“If a man does it, it’s a very weighty, important piece of work. Why is there a difference?” If a man paints a domestic setting, he is considered well rounded. “But if a woman does it, she’s just painting her kitchen sink.”
The largest painting in the gallery, 270cm (106 inches) wide, is almost entirely filled by her daughter Bella; it shows a tween girl lounging on striped sheets. Myerscough describes her as “a big water lily”, happy and growing in the house.

Another painting, Black Slip (2024), shows an older Bella lying on a patchwork quilt. The extraordinary details of the fabric and the youthful innocence come through in a luminous brightness that the artist attributes to the nature of oil paints.
In her self-portrait Ishbel (2024), the artist’s pale skin and unkempt hair contrasts with the bright patterns of a patchwork dress and the bright yellow background.
“There’s a grubbiness to it, but also colour,” she says. The closer Myerscough looks, the more she wants to say, she says, as shown in the eye motif in the dress in her painting.
Since winning the portrait award in 1995, which gave her the chance to paint Mirren in her Los Angeles home during the actress’ preparation for the title role in The Passion of Ayn Rand, Myerscough has won multiple awards and her work has been featured at major institutions such as the Turner Contemporary and the Royal Academy of Arts in the UK.

She is hopeful that women artists like herself are treated the same as men, as interest grows in rediscovering forgotten female talent sidelined by art history.
When she was a student in Glasgow and at the Slade School of Fine Art, she greatly admired female artists such as Helene Schjerfbeck, Dod Procter and Käthe Kollwitz.
“They were not famous when I was younger, but funnily enough became more famous as I got older. I loved discovering women painters,” she says.

With a keen personal interest in Elizabethan portraiture, she also enjoys playing with different scales of painting, from ones the size of a notebook to others that are over two metres wide. The different sizes reflect changing perspectives on life, she says.
“When you’re young you fill the room, but as you get older and change you don’t feel as seen. You feel invisible,” she says.
“Ishbel Myerscough: Transhumance”, Flowers Gallery, 49 Tung Street, Sheung Wan, Tue-Sat, 11am-6pm. Until January 4, 2025


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Detail from Black Slip (2024) by Ishbel Myerscough. Photo: Handout

Ishbel (2024), a self-portrait by Ishbel Myerscough, whose debut Asian solo show of her paintings runs at Flowers Gallery in Hong Kong until January 2025.


Bella (2023), oil on canvas, by Ishbel Myerscough. 

Black Slip (2024), oil on canvas, by Ishbel Myerscough. 

Black Sofa (2024), oil on canvas, by Ishbel Myerscough. 

Daisies (2024), pencil and coloured pencil on paper, by Ishbel Myerscough. 

American artist Howardena Pindell, whose first solo exhibition in Asia is at White Cube Hong Kong until January 8, 2025. Photo: Nathan Keay

Pindell grew up in the United States during the Jim Crow era. She became the first black woman curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the 1970s. Photo: Howardena Pindell

Howardena Pindell’s Tesseract 20 is part of the Deep Sea, Deep Space exhibition at White Cube Hong Kong. Photo: White Cube

Howardena Pindell’s City Lights, Night Flight features hundreds of tiny, hole-punched discs. Photo: White Cube

Howardena Pindell’s Deep Sea 8, featured in the Hong Kong exhibition, is one of the works that captures her love for the ocean. Photo: White Cube

Howardena Pindell’s Tesseract 18, featured in the exhibition. Photo: White Cube

Howardena Pindell’s Tesseract 19 (Deep Space). Pindell began her Tesseract series in 2022. Photo: White Cube

Howardena Pindell’s Untitled 31 (The Solar System Is Beige), like City Lights … Night Flight, features hundreds of tiny discs applied to canvas. Photo: White Cube

Howardena Pindell’s Tesseract 17. Photo: White Cube

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Ricky Yeung at his “(i)II” exhibition in Hong Kong. Photo: Sun Yeung

Mental illness in Hong Kong is the focus of Ricky Yeung’s “(i)II” exhibition in the gallery of the Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity in Kowloon City. Photo: Sun Yeung

Part of Ricky Yeung’s “(i)II” exhibition at the HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity in Kowloon City, Hong Kong. Photo: Sun Yeung

The works in Yeung’s “(i)II” exhibition examine mental health in Hong Kong. Photo: Sun Yeung

The brick walls Yeung painted in the gallery “symbolise a sort of imprisonment that takes away the sense of freedom, whether physically or mentally”. Photo: Sun Yeung

Yeung will give talks at the exhibition on November 2 and November 9. Photo: Sun Yeung

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A promotional shot for Daniel Yeung’s Freespace Dance-exhibitionist. Photo: Hoi Chiu

Daniel Yeung (left) is wired up for a rehearsal of Freespace Dance-exhibitionist, a nude dance work he will perform in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District. Photo: Hoi Chiu

Yeung in an orange one-piece leotard during a rehearsal for Freespace Dance-exhibitionist, premiering on November 21, 2024 at the Freespace Dance 2024 festival in Hong Kong. Photo: Hoi Chiu

A scene from Daniel Yeung’s 2011 “Dan’s Exhibitionist”. Photo: LCSD

Wires are attached to Yeung’s body linking to a synchroniser made by Taiwanese multimedia artist Chuang Sheng-kai for a rehearsal of Freespace Dance-exhibitionist. During the show, the device will create sounds based on Yeung’s movements. Photo: Terry Tsang

A promotional image for Yeung’s Freespace Dance-exhibitionist. Photo: Hoi Chiu

Lifestyle

Arts & Culture

‘You see so much of yourself in your daughter,’ says Ishbel Myerscough, whose paintings of her daughter and others can be seen in Hong Kong


‘You see so much of yourself in your daughter,’ says Ishbel Myerscough, whose paintings of her daughter and others can be seen in Hong Kong.


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