Manor
Shih Yung-Chun
時永駿
Production date
2019
Object Detail
Media
oil on canvas
Measurements
248.5 x 327 cm
Notes
‘Manor’ is based on an installation that Shih Yung-Chun made by arranging objects on the actual bed in which he had slept for eight years. As a child Shih had lived in a Taiwanese army ‘military dependents’ village’ – communities established as provisional housing for Guomindang (KMT) soldiers after they retreated to Taiwan in 1949 – and all the objects in his installations and paintings relate to his memories of the simple, somewhat impoverished surroundings and distinct cultures of his home village, where he felt warm and secure. The bed was acquired second-hand from an employee dormitory in a military dependents’ village near his home in the mountains outside Taipei. On it he has created a little community of houses, barns, trees and creatures made from unfired clay, symbolising the internal world of the dreamer who sleeps in this bed each night. Painted from a high viewpoint with faithful realism, the work conveys a sense of an enclosed community, its fairy-tale whimsy undercut by the pair of legs and feet that emerge from under the bed.
Accession number
2019.052