The Collector | Trevor Yeung’s poignant exhibition all about love and loss

The perils of exhibiting a delicate sculptural installation during a busy Wong Chuk Hang gallery open day were revealed when Trevor Yeung’s appropri­ately named Wiped Off The Face of The Earth (2016) was knocked by a child and crashed to the floor. Luckily, it was the display case not the artwork that was damaged.

But the group of three separate pieces – Born with Two Hearts (2016) and Three to Tango (2016) are the others – had great(er) poignancy in this state, as the artworks describe a complex three-person triangular relationship. Yeung had collected seashells and manipulated them into new and suggestive sculptural forms; the damaged work was entwined Siliquaria armata, or sea snails, constructed to hug each other – and this species of sea snail is quite elongated, so it is a long, passionate embrace.

“The Sunset of Last Summer” is a beautifully displayed exhibition about love and loss that ranges across sentimentality, campy kitsch, sadness and pure happiness. The display is almost an entirely aesthetic experi­ence. The careful arrangements of objects, light, shadow, curtains, sculptural work and photography create a controlled ambience and are a pleasure to walk around. It is not an exhibition of great leaps of emotion or meaning, although each artwork has a story; it is simple love stories told by a sensitive artist recalling his experiences.

Giving the exhibition an introduction, The Saddest Sunset (2016) trilogy of photographs features three locations around the world and recalls a past love affair. The photographs, however, do not capture the precise sunset moment, but the time preceding and following it. Depicting these fading landscapes, Yeung further exposes his developed photographs to destructive ultraviolet light, to give greater conceptual weight to his idea that “memories of the moment captured are lost like the colours in a faded photograph”.

In contrast, sex and intimacy gurgles in the two-part Music Box (bedroom) (2016) installation of a series of seven interconnec­ted fish tanks. Yeung has been using arrangements of fish, sand and fish tank flora to build elaborate living, aquatic sculptural installations over the past two years. Music Box (bedroom) is a minimal, sound installation in this series. The bright coloured lights beaming into the water and the sound of fish tank pumps combine to allude to “human activity”.