GOLDEN
Years
susan pui san lok, Years, 2006, DVD, 22 mins alternating two-screen loop (still)
Archive footage reproduced with permission from Central ITV.Golden (Years), 2006, comprises fifty short sequences, an idiosyncratic and oblique double narrative spanning five decades, that alludes to the negotiation of territory and memory between shifting cultures and geographies. Incorporating footage shot in Hong Kong and London with archival Central England news coverage dating back to the late 1950s, Years juxtaposes ballrooms and allotments as particular spaces of ‘leisure’, contact and ‘cultivation’, and their attendant practices and habits as metaphors for the ‘cultivation’ of identities and spaces – the ‘tending’ of memory and territory, subjective and cultural.
Years was commissioned by Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester, for the solo exhibition, Golden (12 May – 2 July 2006), which also featured Vistas, Songs, and Awards, a series of digital prints that reproduce selected certificates received by the artist’s parents, L.C Lok and Y.Y Lok, for achievements in ballroom dancing and allotment keeping. For Golden (Lessons), an exhibition and residency at Beaconsfield (18 October – 10 November 2006), Years was projected onto stretched tarpaulin screens at either end of the venue’s railway arch space. Years also featured in Cruel/Loving Bodies 2 at Hong Kong Arts Centre (2006).
susan pui san lok, Years, 2006, DVD, 22 mins alternating two-screen loop
(stills) Archive footage reproduced with permission from Central ITV. 
susan pui san lok, Years, 2006, DVD, 22 mins alternating two-screen loop
(installation views) Above, top: Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester
Above: Beaconsfield, London. Images (c) susan pui san lok 
susan pui san lok, Awards, 2006, digital prints, various dimensions
Above: Installation view, Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester.
Image (c) susan pui san lok. Below: Detail. Image (c) Ferdinand Carabott
Years, image galleries: video stills; Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester, installation shots / Hong Kong Arts Centre, installation shots / Beaconsfield, London, installation shots
Acknowledgements
Years was commissioned by Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester, for the solo exhibition, Golden (12 May – 2 July 2006), and developed with support from Arts Council England, and the Media Archive for Central England (MACE). Thanks also to L.C. Lok, Y.Y. Lok, and dancers Tammy Arjona and Annie Pui Ling Lok.
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