FOST Gallery is delighted to present Silence On A Milk Mountain by Wyn-Lyn Tan, comprising of paintings and video installations, which is the culmination of Tan’s journey to the International Territory of Svalbard while on residency with The Arctic Circle in 2011.

Taking inspiration from this glacial journey, this body of work evokes a hopeful sense of place, expectation, longing and solitude. The fleeting nature of memories is explored in relation to atmosphere and time – the rhythm of the seas, transient light from dawn to dusk, the melting of snow and ice. The austere Arctic landscape conveys an overwhelming sense of absence, which led to paintings that invoke an unsettling stillness. While they are barren, ethereal, and haunting, the paintings impart an abstracted narrative that remains vast, forceful, and elemental. Tan has captured the gentle luminosity seen in the northern latitudes with a deliberate building of colour and layers akin to the passing of time.

Trained in both traditional Chinese ink and Western painting, her past works in acrylic were reminiscent of Oriental landscape paintings, devoid of an optical perspective and horizon. The older works were always coy to represent any particular terrain, while the paintings in this exhibition feature a very visible horizon that repeats itself through the works. The line was not only the starting point for Tan’s painting process but also a visual device to suggest a mirrored reflection - a duality of image that unravels rambling panoramas as Tan continues her on-going fascination with remote, natural environments.

Image: © Wyn-Lyn Tan, FOST Gallery