The signage on the upper level read “Department of Immigration & Multicultural Affairs”. On the lower level, an array of artworks created dotted lines and marks across the space. The site is the Australian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur; the works constitute the exhibition Fourth World, young artist Sharon Chin’s second solo exhibition since her return from Melbourne in 2004. As I toured the exhibition, I felt that this space should similarly be marked by a signage that reads “Site for Multi-material Translations and Relations”.

Fourth World encapsulates a multitude of relations, formed by a gathering of disparate materials, ideas and cultural references, culled from everyday life, subjected through thoughtful and skilful acts of selection, balancing, and manipulation, to be moulded into translations of one form to another. Take for example, in the series titled “Sailors’ Knots” – a primary set of texts such as Salleh Ben Joned’s “The Transformasi of a Language”, lyrics of the song “Substance 1987” by New Order, and “Keterangan Anwar Ibrahim di Mahkamah – Fragmentasi” (Anwar Ibrahim’s Testimony in Court – Fragmentation) and one love letter are aptly and lyrically translated into and embodied in visual form as various knots such as Garrick Bend (used for joining 2 heavy or stiff ropes), Ordinary Knot, Tomfool Knot (used as handcuffs) and Bow-line, effectively adding layers of meaning and commentary onto the primary texts through the forms and functions of the knots.

The site, being the politically and bureaucratically charged space of an embassy housing activities of intergovernmental diplomacy and immigration control, has prompted an alternate response from the artist. She has chosen to define Fourth World as a space for personal engagements, personal liberties and self realisations. However, personal liberties and assertions are indeed political, and within this fourth world, we find the thoughts, aspirations and struggles of lover, writer, songwriter, novelist, journalist, politician – deposited within texts reflecting multifarious aspects of human creative and expressive output – all eloquently reincarnated as knots (which have been pivotal to the progress of civilisation) – markers of the shorelines of humanity’s banks of knowledge.

And in employing what she terms as ‘democratic and economic means’ of art making – actions and gestures such as pouring, dipping, folding, rolling, tearing, tying, sewing – her works pointedly underlines the activities of the site; that of selecting, employing and controlling human labour, in the process of procuring useful, productive labour as defined by each government’s consideration of potential immigrants’ contribution to the economic growth of a particular nation.

Images and references to seas and shorelines, sails and seafaring fill the space, as well as allusions to movement and entrapment. The installation “Mare Clausum (Closed Sea)” sets up a contingent of sails that will never set sail, stranded as they are within the concourse of the site, and cuts off direct access to the administrative space of the embassy, creating barriers that coerce the visitor to take a detour. The emerald green sails, made from scaffold mesh stretched out horizontally, mimic the undulating movement of the sea. In responding to the site, Chin stated that the issue of access became prominent in her mind. As seas divides continents and humanity, “Closed Sea”’s occupation of the embassy’s main concourse, seem to enhance a sense of alienation and distance, even as it maps the expanse traversed by today’s increasingly migratory populations, crossing seas in search for opportunities or refuge.

The space of a gallery, often in form of a white box, provides an ‘artificially-naturalised’ space for viewing art, existing for the sole purpose of receiving the artist’s actions and gestures. However, the interior of the embassy with its thick rectangular concrete columns with burnished steel veneers, suspended lighting rods, parquet wood fake ceiling, glossy ceramic tile flooring with marbled pattern and suspended columns displaying signage, amongst other elements, created a very noisy visual environment for “Closed Sea”. Visually, although the environment created much intrusion into the work, yet it managed to assert its presence in the space, due to its soft flowing forms contrasting the hard surfaces of the surroundings and perhaps the garish green of the scaffold material.

“Mare Liberum (Open Sea)” appears to be a weaker work; its frilly outlines and thin crisp cookie-like layers contradict the character of cement and works against the materiality of cement. The sorry-looking blobs appear like castaways abandoned within the squeezed in-between space lining the glass walls and the outer walls of embassy.

Chin’s works invoke active corroboration of the viewer’s memory and imagination. In “Sailors’ Knots” series, the primary ‘text’ selected by the artist withholds it visibility from the viewer. We may or may not know Salleh Joned’s “The Transformasi of a Language”, but we would most probably not know the contents of “One Love Letter”. The invisible wields a different, and arguably greater, power than the visible. Texts work through mental imprint, whether on private or shared memory, and gain power through recall and invocations. In “Knots”, the text’s invisibility teases this memory out from the viewer, while the corroboration of our knowledge of the text strengthens our identification with the work.

The weakness that I perceive in the Knots series is what I read as a romanticising of the content, by use of decorative border, and the prominence given to description of the knots written in decorative script. Presenting it as if it is a page from old illustrated manuscripts on knots has its particular charm of fashioning contemporary material in the style of old knowledge; however one cannot see beyond this charm, and associations with colonialist aspirations slip into the picture. The ‘text-knots’ become illustrations and I feel this reduces their power as objects. If text merged with and into the knots to form a blissful marriage – then the decorative border is akin to an extramarital affair.

“Paper Shores” comprise of 7 sheets (referring to the seven seas) of paper dipped in dye mixed with seawater, and “Plastic Shores” of 7 sheets of perspex covered with a seawater and cement mixture, producing tonal gradations that mimic the effect of shifting shorelines and water margins. The inclusion of sea water (which was also used on the paper in the “Sailors’ Knots” series) introduces instability and triggers the onset of an extremely slow decay, a minuscule movement, indiscernible to the naked eye, yet produces slow shifts, as lines on a loved one’s face, to be observed over the years. Many of the art pieces are already sold one week into the exhibition, and I imagine that it marks the onset of a gently ‘bourgeoning’ relationship between collector and collected. In terms of reflecting Chin’s aspirations to show forth the ‘materiality’ of materials – expressed in her interview with Wong Hoy Cheong printed in the exhibition catalogue – I feel that “Plastic Shores” is the most successful work of the exhibition. The runny, textured transparency of cement, as it clings onto perspex, caught between the acts of obeisance and resistance, produces an array of captivating qualities.

My overall impression of Chin’s Fourth World is that it is infused with very romantic visions, of beholding the world in acts of wonderment, directed at things small and ordinary. From images and references to sailing, the artist’s relationship with her ideas, curiosities and dreams; her fascination with words, sounds, sights, text; of giving all these a physicality; to a personalised way of transcribing, translating and transforming the world around her. Yet the works in Fourth World demonstrate, through their ideational and material transformations in the process of production, the fact that undergoing the journey concealed within these passages of ‘romance’ involves much work, will and vigour, bringing forth comprehension of the meaning of ‘labour’.

Chin, as a young artist, acknowledges that much about the language and aspirations of her works are influenced by her mentor and teacher Elizabeth Pressa, an Australian sculptor, and shaped by her training in Melbourne. With her intuitiveness, intensive engagement and dialogue with material, sites and sight, she is well on her way to developing her own distinctive language. Fourth World delights with manifestations of the application of a curious and generous mind and of personal energies in transforming everyday facts and materials into flights of imagination; where words, images, materials and forms can roll around and play off each other; where ordinary elements are recognised and celebrated for their un-ordinariness.

Sharon Chin's Fourth World exhibition runs until 15 May 2006 at the Australian High Commission. For a fuller description of the works, as well as the artist’s biography, please visit 4ourthworld.blogspot.com.

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Chu Yuan is a visual artist who finds writing a way of self education.