With Wings Like Clouds Hung From the Sky is the title of an installation of art created and selected by Montreal-based artist Karen Tam. For this exhibition, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria through Sept. 4, Tam imagines the world of Lee Nam, an immigrant painter who worked on Cormorant Street in Victoria in the early 1930s.
Emily Carr wrote of Lee Nam in her journals: “A young Chinese came to my door carrying a roll of painting. He had heard about the exhibition [at her House of All Sorts], had come to show his work to me — beautiful watercolours done in Oriental style. He was very anxious to carry his work further … I invited him to show … and he hung a beautiful exhibition.”
There are no extant works by Lee Nam, but Tam discovered an ink painting of two chickens in the British Columbia Archives, a work loosely attributed to either Lee Nam or Carr. A reproduction of this painting welcomes us into the show. Overhead hang hundreds of paintings of ducks and other birds, created by Tam and her mother for this show.
Lacking a photograph of Lee Nam, Tam looked into immigration records and painted portraits of six men who were all named Lee Nam. Immersed in the idea of this artist, she went on to create her version of his painting studio.
An ornate chair is drawn up to a table where ink stone, ink stick and an impressive array of brushes is ready for his use. Soft Chinese papers are held in place by decorative metal weights and, for inspiration, blue and white pottery and a gilded clock in a bell jar stand nearby.
Tam titles this installation The Flying Cormorant Studio and has carved stone seals with this name, to be used on paintings created here. Hung about the studio are scrolls, ink landscapes by a senior artist in Montreal, Lui Luk Chun. Lui trained in Hangzhou and has shared with Tam his view as a Chinese artist who immigrated to Canada. Those paintings are, artistically, the highlight of the show.
Also in the studio is a period piano, and at the opening Tam played from a repertoire of “orientalist” tunes from Tin Pan Alley, which she has rearranged for solo piano. Perhaps she’ll leave her music for Colourful Clouds Chasing the Moon, written in the 1930s and perhaps the first Chinese pop song with western influence.
For 15 years, Tam has invented installations of this sort, first recreating a Chinese restaurant, and then an opium den, a karaoke bar and a curio shop. For the Victoria show, she drew on the extensive holdings of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, bringing out a few paintings by founders of the Lingnam School, an art movement centred in Quangdong, the homeland of Lee Nam. These artists were among the first Chinese to import western influences, via Japan, to their South China-style bird-and-flower paintings.
Tam makes a point of incorporating local influences into her installations, and in this case she has hung work by four local painters. Kileasa Wong is a central figure in Victoria’s Chinese community, and was a student of painter Su-Sing Chow of Vancouver. Andy Lou is a well-respected painter and teacher in Victoria. Andy’s father, Lou Shi Bai of Beijing was a protégé of the famous Chih Pai Shih, and paintings by all three are on show. One painting by Richard Wong of Victoria is provided.
New to Victoria is the talented Lifu, represented by two landscapes on silk, which show his view of the Victoria landscape seen through Chinese eyes.
Finally, an area for demonstrations as well as try-it-yourself experiments is provided. This show is likely to be popular with all ages.
Artists in the Chinese tradition have been left out of Canadian art history, and those artists who came to Canada have mostly been ignored in Chinese art history. One of Tam’s most important goals in this show is to open a place for them to be included in the future.
With that in mind, I would like to mention some artists who, while not in this show, have contributed to our local art history.
Stephen Sham was a student of Chinese painter Ding Yen Yong, and he opened Tiki Gallery on Fisgard Street in the 1970s. A specialist in painting monkeys, he later operated a wholesale framing business.
Stephen Lowe was a student of the great Lingnam master Chao Shao-an of Hong Kong. Lowe’s brilliant career in Victoria was cut short by his death at age 37, but his paintings have twice toured China to great acclaim. Wing Lum was a talented naïve painter whose “iron wire” lines on silk often depicted eagles and peacocks. Lum’s paintings, sometimes embellished with glitter, hang in a number of restaurants in Chinatown.
May Ip Lam was inspired by her father in China and came to her maturity as an artist here only in her senior years. Forging her own style, she operated a gallery on Herald Street in recent years. Zhang Bu, a member of the Beijing Art Academy, was a student of Li Keran. He lived in Victoria for 10 years during the 1990s, painting “darkly framed and heavily coloured” landscapes. On his return to China, he was celebrated with a solo show at the Beijing Art Museum.
John Nip was a beloved teacher of Chinese painting at the Monterey Centre and elsewhere.
If you know of others who should be recognized, please contact [email protected]. The show continues through Sept. 4 at the AGGV.
With Wings Like Clouds Hung From the Sky at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1040 Moss St., 250-384-4171, aggv.ca, through Sept. 4.
