Live Drawing Performance with Bettina Fung – 'Towards All & Nothing' (2023)
11 November 2023, 11.30am–12pm at West Court Gallery, Jesus College
To celebrate the opening of Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends, join artist Bettina Fung at West Court Gallery, Jesus College for a live drawing performance of Towards All & Nothing. This work has been developed through the processes of researching and remembering the work of Li Yuan-chia and the LYC Museum & Art Gallery.
Alongside the exhibition at Kettle’s Yard is a satellite display at West Court Gallery, Making New Forms: Li Yuan-chia & Friends, which focuses on experiments in ink, charcoal and clay by Li, Bettina Fung, Madelon Hooykaas and Charwei Tsai.
Towards All & Nothing
This performance drawing is a tribute to Li Yuan-chia, drawing from his life, his concept of all and nothing and the point as the origin and end of creation. Using the simple gestures of drawing and erasing, the work contemplates on legacy and disappearance, the significance of holding on to and letting go of, what remains and what is lost. Its conception was inspired by Li’s All & Nothing Show at Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner in 1967 – a performance that was cancelled. Fascinated by this performance that never took place, yet continues to exist in our imagination, Bettina originally wanted to reimagine it as a tribute to Li and the performance later evolved into Towards All & Nothing.
About Bettina Fung
Bettina Fung | 馮允珊 is a Hong Kong born, British-Chinese artist based in London. She creates two dimensional, performative and site-specific works that delve into the subjects of ritual, futility, legacy and belonging, productivity and progress. With a strong interest in the ideas of ‘commoning’ and collective creative action, her more recent works are associated with the themes of shared authorship and the dynamics within working and building together.
Bettina has exhibited nationally and abroad and was the recipient of awards such as the a-n Artist Information Company’s New Collaborations Bursary in 2014 and Arts Council England’s Grants for the Arts award in 2018. She was commissioned by Aspex Portsmouth in 2021 for their Aspex (life begins) at 40 programme that resulted in an online long durational performance and text-based game “The Sea Changes Into Words”. Bettina also participated in Syllabus IV (2018/19), an alternative peer-led artist development and learning programme delivered by six UK arts institutions, and was awarded the Airspace Gallery’s Artists Make Change bursary in 2020 to instigate a peer-led learning group to research the subject of artists making social change.
Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends
This group exhibition is based on the pioneering vision of artist Li Yuan-chia (1929 – 1994) and the LYC Museum & Art Gallery which he founded and ran between 1972 and 1983 in the Cumbrian village of Banks, alongside Hadrian’s Wall.
The exhibition retraces Li’s commitment to fostering creativity, his interest in play and his investment in new ways of being in the world. Through the LYC, Li showcased Roman artefacts, works by major figures of British modernism, local artists and contemporary practices including kineticism, land art and video. The LYC’s children’s room provided a place for young people to experiment with art making, while craft workshops played host to communities of making. Much like Kettle’s Yard, the LYC also had a library, a garden, and spaces to socialise, transforming how we encounter art.
The exhibition puts the LYC into conversation with Kettle’s Yard. Both projects evolved over time, with collections (in the case of Kettle’s Yard) and exhibitions (in the case of the LYC) being shaped through friendships and personal affiliations, including with the artist Winifred Nicholson, who was an important presence at both the LYC and Kettle’s Yard.
Li’s practice – as both artist and organiser – is at the centre of the exhibition, along with those artists he exhibited at the LYC and those who were part of the cosmopolitan networks he enabled and enriched. Making New Worlds will also include works by contemporary artists reflecting on the afterlives of Li’s work in the present.
Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends has developed in partnership between Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art as part of its ‘London, Asia’ project, and is accompanied by a new publication produced by Kettle’s Yard and supported by Paul Mellon Centre.
It is co-curated by Hammad Nasar (Curator, Strategic advisor and Senior Research Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre), Sarah Victoria Turner (Director of the Paul Mellon Centre) and Amy Tobin (Curator, contemporary programmes, Kettle’s Yard).
Find out more about Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends
