Showcasing 6 acclaimed artists from China and New Zealand. Immerse insight sound and motion.

This exhibition will showcase three artists from the ‘2019 Chinese Young Artist Residence Programme’ (Yuan Keru, Shen Piji & David Ye) and three artist from the Auckland gallery ‘Mercy Pictures’ (Teghan Burt, Cushla Donaldson & Tim Webby). The central element this exhibition revolves around are those luscious intoxications of ‘introductory experiences’: to be at once captivated and captive in one’s involvement with something ‘new’. And as an example, at the broad level of ‘culture’, we all know first exposures are felt in those quotidian pockets between language and food, sound and taste… ‘amuse bouche’ or ‘mouth amuser’.

This theme is not limited solely to the exhibition per se as relations between things will always be ‘new’. Each of these artists in solitude engages in the densities that can be found in ‘first impressions’. An ‘introduction’ does not simply need to act as a segway to warm up the muscles for ‘something else’, they can act as points that condense and contain all that will follow. Each artist present in ‘amuse bouche’ shows this through their use of references and materials: a deep history (techniques embedded in a musical or artistic instrument, a Guqin, ink or graphite); framing devices (vocabulary of image-making mediums such as cinema or photography); and even one’s peers (lineages of display or contemporary fashionistas, a bouquet or a fashion house).

An ‘amuse bouche’ is a standard component within the high categories of culinary expertise (★★★). They are small dishes offered to start a meal to warm the palate and display the artistry of the chef. And most simply, the artists present within ‘amuse bouche’ hold a trust in aesthetics, with similar seduction to these little dishes, that lures viewers into the channels of their thought and conceptual grounds. These artists attempt to show that without empathy to seduction, always at play in individual or societal foreign exchange, the world can only be held at bay as the tasteless and unrefined concoction it is.