Opening Thursday 24th August 6:30-9:30pm
In Korea and Japan, the word ‘skinship’ refers to the process of physical bonding between mother and child, between friends and lovers. Washing, suckling, hugging, kissing, caressing, holding hands… Skinship recognises the need for touch beyond an over simplified notion of sexuality. ‘Kinship’ sits at its core, the forging of family beyond blood. As such, skinship recognises the emotional, developmental and political need for meaningful, promiscuously undeterminable connections.
S:KINSHIP is Boreum Oh and Nina Park’s first collaborative venture. Here the worlds of fine art and illustration combine to form a narrative space in which multiple stories interlace. Oh’s practice has centred around language and multilingual communication since moving to the UK from Korea in 2015. She collects anecdotes and stories, repurposing them as the subjects of her art. Nina Park is a Korean illustrator living and working in London. In this exhibition, and for the first time, Park takes her wonderfully vibrant illustrations from the page and into the arena of sculpture.
This exhibition, curated by Chloë Dichmont, which has arisen out of a series of conversations and confidences, proposes to make work which honours the anecdote, the private stories we share with friends, the conversations which matter. And, in particular, that most central confidence we share with our kin alone: what is our relation to love in its manifold forms? What would it mean to reject love as a social convention? What would it mean to experience love as a loss? What would it mean to experience love as an expansion of the self?
We invite you to Hundred Years Gallery to join the conversation.
