Christine Mak is displaying 40 pictures that have been produced over the past four years. They are executed on paper with ink and colour, employing techniques derived and developed from modern Chinese brush conventions. The imagery in these pictures is partially distilled from remembered experiences and observations gathered from her travels through rural communities in Shantou, in the province of Guangzhou in China, in 2006.

The imagery is partially characterized by references to her past. Motifs and compositional schemes, as well as brushwork and colours are reprised, re-introduced from earlier pictures and reworked in paintings for this exposition. In these ways, Christine Mak underscores continuities in her practice.

The imagery is also prompted by her imagination; in which instance, the representational elements such as buildings and their interiors, furniture and domestic utensils, figures and landscape fragments are envisioned as yielding satisfactory pictorial expressions. In other words, for Christine Mak the primary intention is to transform what she sees, remembers and imagines into pictures; pictures that exemplify and satisfy particular aesthetic aspirations.

Of course this is not blindingly original or singular. On the contrary, what I describe takes us to the heart of pictorial representation as an aesthetic enterprise; an enterprise that is diversely realized in history and variously defined by cultures. What is more, as an enterprise it continues to be engaging until today, although it is pursued along trajectories that are dissimilar to those from before. Christine Mak is, along these fronts, deeply immersed in this enterprise.

It follows that in appraising her current practice, one has to initiate a number of moves. Two spring to mind. The first has to do with nudging the pictures on display into assuming related positions to some of the criteria that prevail in present-day discussion of pictorial representation, and seeing them comparatively. Seeing them comparatively too with her earlier productions. The second move is aimed at determining the extent or degree to which the pictures claim or register a status of difference, even of distinctiveness. Perhaps one should turn this query around and ask the extent to which claims for distinctiveness can be made on seeing Christine Mak’s pictures in this exposition.

I take a few steps back and sideways in order to clear pathways for approaching these matters. I begin with a citation that signals a point entry for discussion.

In his introduction to her 1992 exhibition titled Reflections, which featured compositions chiefly of landscape executed in acrylic, mixed media and ink with colour, T.Sasitharan briefly yet succinctly traces Christine Mak’s emergence, development and position in the art world here. In appraising the exposition he remarks, “it is in her Chinese paintings that Mak reveals her true qualities as an artist.”i What might these be? Sasitharan emphasizes the following: the mixture of spontaneity with studied technical rigour; the vivid, varied intensities of the chromatic range in the pictures; the capacity to manipulate and amplify the linear properties of ink and brush; and the pronounced humour and engaging emotional tenor in characterizing relationships.

These are, by any reckoning, an impressive array of attributes; they are enduring ones at that! Although, in compiling them as a list one does not convey how any one attribute is weighed and related to another, pictorially and specifically. I hope to point to some of these relationships as marking resonance and variation, thereby distinguishing one picture from another. Before proceeding to do so, there is a matter raised by Sasitharan that requires attention and some discussion.

Even as he commends and applauds these attributes as aesthetically accomplished, Sasitharan laments Christine Mak’s neglect of a pictorial element that he esteems highly. This has to do with the employment of ink in all its monochromatic purity and amplitude. Therefore ink, he says regrettably, is reduced to “playing second fiddle”. Hence, “the promise of becoming a truly gifted manipulator of ink, which Mak held out in her early days, has largely gone unfulfilled. This is a pity, for the truly great Chinese artists who have fused the traditions of the West and the East in painting are marked out by their remarkable ability to harmonise the handling of opaque ink, unworked white space and translucent colour.”ii

This is a forceful appraisal stemming largely from particular perspectives of painting and painters in China, and their histories; perspectives which project ink as the exemplary pictorial medium. Such frames of reference are devised by the wenren (the literati or scholar painter) in imperial China, who also produced writing on painting and its aesthetics. In these texts, ink in its manifold formal and expressive dimensions are explicated and propagated as exclusive hallmarks of the status of wenren and their painting. Consequently, colourful painting is regarded as intended merely to please the eye and increase the attractiveness of the picture and is thus meretricious. Ink, on the other hand, is weighted with gravitas!

Yet, a cursory survey of Chinese pictorial arts demonstrates that painting in colour (gongbi) was never eclipsed by ink. On the contrary, it prevailed throughout in China’s art histories; it is appraised as a practice in its own right. What is more, the reach and compass of pictures in colour, with regard to their content and reception, are far more extensive than pictures executed in ink.

There is one other issue, namely: the altered position of ink in post-imperial China, and the implications of this shift on its practice elsewhere. The status of ink in calligraphy and painting has radically changed, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century. While regard has not been completely abandoned or undermined, ink has assumed a socio-political, utilitarian reach and reception that are unknown or unregistered in its past histories. In pressing this issue further, it must be remarked that in contemporary art practices, ink is no longer a privileged medium; neither does it mark an exemplary aesthetic ideal.

Let me return directly to Christine Mak. Towards the end of the citation, Sasitharan acknowledges the position of colour and its function for producing an integrated aesthetic. Rather than weigh colour along secondary or auxiliary registers, I propose that it is one of the defining elements in Christine Mak’s representational scheme; an element that also distinguishes her pictures.

Let us examine a picture titled Competition, in detail. From an elevated vantage position we look vertiginously down into the interior of a room. A table with a vase of flowers and an assortment of objects hovers into view, not as a load-bearing furniture but as a flat and levitating plane. Beside it is a half-moon shaped wicker chair. Towards the extreme right is a cupboard or showcase, again with a vase of flowers placed on its top. Three children appear as deeply absorbed in playing with paper boats. A four-paneled screen is placed towards the left and top of/in the picture. A strip painted in black is seen in recessed space, as if located behind the screen. A colophon is suspended in space.

"Competition"

A table, chair and cupboard are objects that sufficiently signal to us that we are beholding a domestic interior; the children consolidate this viewpoint as they imply and qualify a habitat. Yet, as representations these appear as thin, weightless and insubstantial. In these circumstances, how are we to determine that these devices specify interior space or as fixing a place, even? Interior spaces and places are experienced; they are instantiated. In order to get anywhere close to such anticipations, we seize on the screen and anchor our sights on it. It is painted densely and is the only object that asserts a commanding, tangible presence. There is more. The screen, which is a favourite motif in traditional Chinese painting, embodies subtle and intricate attributes. Some of them are pertinent for seeing this picture by Christine Mak.

As a constructed, utilitarian form the screen is a three-dimensional object and is employed to further divide architectural space. Set in an interior environment, it secures supplementary spaces and qualifies them as exclusive. In Competition, the screen suggests boundaries within which children play confidently and uninterruptedly. It internalizes space.

A screen also functions as an art medium, providing surfaces for painting and embellishment. In Competition, the panels facing into the room bear inscribed patterns that are faintly legible. In poring over these surfaces and the patterns, we are conscious of peering into a two-layered picture, i.e. of scrutinizing a picture within a picture. This is a device and an attribute that reappears in a number of paintings by Christine Mak.

Before moving on to viewing another composition, there is one more feature that has to be mentioned. I have drawn attention to the faintly inscribed patterns on the screen surfaces facing into the room. When it is described as having a face, it follows that the screen also has a back. The implications of attributing a back are far reaching. We are encouraged to move further into the interior, from behind the screen. These moves are not limitless or unbounded. The pace and reach of our movement are set by the appearance of a strip of black, painted towards the top right. It marks a wall which, effectively, limits interior movement.

In Competition, space is apprehended as fluid and indeterminate, despite the inclusion of the screen, which generates multiple readings of passageways and extensions, inwards. In a picture titled Mind Race, an interior is partitioned into distinct yet related sub-units of space.

"Mind Race"

A table with its top tilted upwards is placed towards the right; beside it are two chairs, one of which is partially outside the picture proper. A paper fish suspended from a high ceiling, chimes quietly. A single-paneled screen painted in earth colours extends the height of the room, its narrow width accentuating the sense of height. This screen separates the foreground from an inner space, which appears as recessed. In it, two figures are stooped over a board, engrossed in the unfolding game. A little further on a door, painted in red, serves to halt the reach of space in this sector. The attitudes of the figures, their absorption, qualify the tenor of this space. It is represented as a private, hushed enclave, set aside exclusively for the players and to enable their play.

In these two compositions, I have drawn attention to depictions of interior spaces and their intricate representations. These are not the only interests in Christine Mak’s pictorial practice. In Spiral Spin, for instance, connections between the interior and the exterior are of central importance. In elaborating them, elements of sight and seeing are deeply involved.

Let us examine the picture. Two figures, seated on the end of a bench, look out in the direction of three children who are spinning tops on a ground outside. A doorway, reaching to extensive heights, provides an uninterrupted passageway from the inside towards the outside, and vice versa. Doorways, passageways and windows have multiple functions in the visual arts. At practical levels, they serve to connect spaces and facilitate movement between and among spaces. They also are channels along which sight and seeing are directed. In many of Christine Mak’s pictures in this exposition, seeing is installed as a vital representational and symbolic feature.

"Spiral Spin"

Acts of seeing are abiding topics in Spiral Spin. In one sense, they are internalized in the composition as the two figures gazing at those who are spinning tops, consolidate the situation. This does not, however, preclude or negate the beholder’s share. We may well witness the top spinning companionably; that is to say, as beholders we may see the three on the outside along the cone of vision of the two figures seated on the edge of the bench, figures who are sited at the threshold separating the inside from the outside. As beholders we may, additionally enlarge our scope. We may gaze at the two figures who in turn see the children spinning tops on the ground outside. In considering these registers, we realize that seeing is largely conditional and mediated. Seeing is deeply implicated by multiple interests and intervening engagements.

"Find Me"

Seeing and beholding, and the representation of intrinsic space are reigning interests in Christine Mak’s compositions. In developing them she aligns her practice with contemporary representational interests in painting. In my view, Find Me is a picture in which these interests are hoisted onto subtle, compelling levels. Four figures are playing hide-and-seek in the courtyard. A table and a bench signify domesticity and hospitality. A door implies an interior that is unspecified. Even as I am able to describe and relate the representational elements connectedly, these elements do not correspond to actual things seen in the world.

Earlier I pointed to them as thin, weightless and insubstantial; these are not the outcome of ineptitude or neglect but of deliberate aesthetic decisions. When we behold the imagery in Find Me in its entirety, it slips away from the world as seen and observed. It slips away from an empirical world and slides into a remembered world that is articulated in the imagination.