Both of Phillipines and Hong Kong decent, these two Hong Kong based artists present their parallel perspectives on life and nature.

Parallel X is an exhibition of joint inspiration - decay, growth, evolution, and rebirth - approached in two different styles of art and thought. It is two fellow artists, with similar international backgrounds and subject matter to match, finally crossing paths. This show is a surprise conversation of mutual ideas, shared collected images, words and the result in which the two artists use them.

When Leah Clough draws she uses words to direct her. The themes the artists chose reminded her of the book Life after Life and specifically a line - ‘her helpless little heart was beating wildly, a bird trapped in her chest.’ A beating heart, birds wings, lungs breathing, renewing life, plants thriving, flowers hung out to dry, are all images in Clough’s head for the drawings that comprise this exhibition. Each one starts the same but ends differently - a series of regenerated hearts and imagined nature let loose and evolving; they are plays on different paths of invention and ideas drawn.

For Jewelle Yeung, after experiencing the aftermath and relief of the recent Typhoon (Haiyan) in the Philippines she was inspired by the regeneration of the environment both physically and emotionally. As with all change, and the concept of evolution, she has been playing with the idea that through the deterioration of old life, new life spawns in its place creating a never-ending process. Yeung is obsessed with the beauty that comes with growth and decay, bringing new light to something so dark. By combining the decay of botanical organisms (the most generic representation of life) with the vibrancy and movement of birds, embodying the idea of freedom, she brings forth something familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, with its uncertainty causing the viewer to rely on instinct and emotion.

-Above Second Gallery

Image: Courtesy of Above Second Gallery