Ellie Kayu Ng, Catching the Big Fish

Twilight Contemporary is excited to present Catching the Big Fish, the debut UK solo exhibition of Brooklyn-based painter Ellie Kayu Ng, which explores the blurred line between who we are and who we aspire to be, and between what we are doing and what we wish we were doing. About Catching the Big Fish in essence draws on this idea of ‘catching’ or obtaining something superior. For over a decade, Ng has painted herself into imagined scenarios, adorned in borrowed or rented garments that build alternate realities and identities. Inhabiting these outfits only long enough to capture an imagined version of self, highlighting the fleeting nature of our aspirations. These works create a fantastical paradigm which critically examines desire while leaving the audience space to explore their own hopes and dreams. In this latest series, Ng focuses her attention on boredom, particularly within the domestic sphere. For Ng, the domestic is not a site of comfort, but time to be endured, where the imagination is the only remedy for boredom. Across the exhibition, we see vivid, energetic, surreal scenes of domestic products in dialogue with dreamlike, highly stylised objects. Ironically, there is a powerful cognitive harmony between the fickle nature of the rented garment or surreal domestic reality and the warmth and intimacy of the journey we take through the artist’s daydreams. This duality allows the audience to closely relate these feelings of escapism and desire to their own lived experience, as the washing machine becomes a gateway into another reality. The seemingly absurd scenes of fish leaping, synchronised legs vertically protruding, and partially mirrored self-portraits are in fact rather soothing and recognisable because of their own ridiculousness. The act of Catching the Big Fish implies there is a period of waiting for the big moment or ‘big fish’ to come along. This, intertwined within the context of domestic, household chores, suggests that it is in itself an act of labour to wait for a dream to come true. It is the wandering thoughts, or even the nightmares that are worth waiting for. Ultimately, Catching the Big Fish is an exhibition that reflects on the role of imagination as a survival mechanism. As a tool of exploring the self, but also as a mode to help meander through the tasks of the day. These vivid, energetic works bring joy and humour to the everyday. Reverie: A state of being pleasantly lost in one’s thoughts; a daydream. Read more Toggle Painting