YU-CHEN WANG

The Song of the Machines 2012

Artist's book published by CFCCA and distributed by Cornerhouse Publications

​

Yu-Chen Wang’s quasi-fictional book features stories about the artist’s life and her practice. Reality and fiction are blurred through the display of new work, documentation, critical texts and creative writing.

​

Her work explores the notion of representation, distortion and transformation, and the transitional space between them. Using a mixture of drawings, objects, installation, performance and film, the artist constructs visual narratives to explore the concept of machines and energy, and art’s potential in dreaming of, and hoping for, a better future.

​

The unusual layout of this book invites the viewer to determine their own experience of it – flipping it round, reading it from back-to-front – or, however the reader chooses – reflecting Yu-Chen’s studio practice where large-scale drawings are often hung at different angles, each time inviting another visual reading of the work.

​

Taking the multi-layered and multi-faceted collection of work that was The Splash and A Last Drop one step further, a book entitled The Song of the Machines brought together images from the filmed performance at Manchester’s Victoria Baths, plus artwork, documentation, essays and fiction. Its colourful format, including a “wraparound” cover showing one of Yu-Chen’s colourful drawings, and many impressive photographic double-page spreads, brings together further the artist’s interests in the industrial past, the uncertain present and hope for the future.

​

Buy now £12.00 from Cornerhouse Publications

​

Supported by Grants for the Arts, Arts Council England.

​