Seeing: Out of Time, CVA (Contemporary) issue 29, 2000.

Mike Dawson and Jane Griffiths, artists and critics.

The colour black encompasses an endless number of associations. To work with it as your main colour is a challenge, especially if it isn't your primary intention to provoke a confrontation with the sinister. Suki Chan claims to be using it to 'create a sense of intimacy and freedom.' But what an artist believes and what an audience feels are not necessarily the same. This is not meant as a criticism of Chan's work, for the subtlety of her chosen colour is what draws us in, even though initial reactions are quickly overcome by the beauty of the patterns she has painstakingly created and laid out like the contours of a land map. You are gradually pulled into the piece until suddenly you find yourself engulfed in the installation itself. At this point you realise that your nose is pressed up against the glass upon which Chan's piece has been executed.

For three weeks Chan was part of her own installation while she applied home-dyed rice to the window using glue and the tip of a ballpoint pen. This drew a crowd, intrigued at first by the performance and then by the piece itself. Her choice of window pane as canvas is crucial, for it allows the audience to see the same grain from the same height and angle, yet from a different perspective. The pane can either act as a negative space or - with a simple readjustment of the eye - a positive one. The dual nature of the piece is emphasised by the inclusion of an open wooden chest which refers to 'the transition of inside to outside, the revealing of a secret.' Here we are presented with the idea of unspoken dialogue, a gesture of words unuttered; perhaps, even, a reference to the passing of time.

Chan has cleverly placed a subtle yet complex scenario before us, its cryptic guise allowing for endless interpretation. The mood of the installation is linked to the hour of the day. In the morning it is light and playful, but in the evening, as the shadows lengthen, it becomes sinister and haunting. She intensifies this effect by coating the shadows emerging from the wooden chest with rice, the countless grains appearing like an army of ants.

Beyond the window pane is a pendulum, not something naturally associated with rice, but Chan insists otherwise: 'time is irrational and any representation of it is no more or less [valid] than the other. The pendulum swing is one form of represenatation, as is the length of a shadow, or a grain of rice. All three refer to time without structure, in a state of stillness, or perpetual motion.' The pendulum swing also reminds us that Chan's work itself is running out of time.

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