Acquisitions Justification
Acquisition Record
1999


[transcription]

Ken Lum
b. 1956, Vancouver


Hum Hum Hummm 1994
laminated colour print on sintra, lacquer, enamel, aluminum
182.9 x 243.8 x 5.1 cm

Donor: Bob Rennie
Appraised Value: tbd (PADAC)
Provenance:
Exhibited:

Phew, I'm Tired 1994
laminated colour print on sintra, lacquer, enamel, aluminum
182.9 x 243.8 x 5.1 cm

Vendor:Bob Rennie

Provenance:
Exhibited:


Ken Lum received an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University in 1980. During his time at SFU, he took an art history course with Jeff Wall and decided to change careers. After doing research towards a Master of Arts degree at the Department of Fine Arts, Education, New York University in the early 1980s Lum returned to Canada and was director of the OR Gallery in Vancouver from 1983 to 1984. He received an M.F.A. in 1985 from UBC and has taught in the Department of Fine Arts at UBC since 1989. He has twice been a visiting professor at L'École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Over the past fifteen years Lum has exhibited his work throughout Canada, the US and Europe. A major solo exhibition of Lum's work, which was hosted by the VAG, was organized by the Witte de With, Rotterdam, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1990. Recently his work has been included in exhibitions at the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff; Art Institute of Chicago; Aix-en-Provence, France; and Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Staten Island, New York. Ken Lum is represented by the Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, and Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.

While Lum has employed sculpture and painting in his practice it is his photo-text works that have gained the artist international attention in recent years. Using the portrait as his working model, Lum comments on various elements of contemporary life and art by juxtaposing text, whether it be a person's name or a fragment of a thought or dialogue, with photographs of stereotypes of people in ordinary (but staged) situations and environments. The friction that is created between the text and the image, while usually ironic, is more often unsettling and always ambiguous. In works that deal with issues such as race and class in a multicultural society and the influence of corporate power and mass media there is a critical edge that in some ways appears to make an intimate crisis or situation very exposed but this critique is less about the social type portrayed by Lum than about the inadequate social landscape that engenders such disfunction. In the end the viewer often feels some kind of kinship and sympathy for the characters in Lum's dramas.

Hum Hum Hummm is part of a series that Lum produced in 1994 which were presented on large

Hum Hum Hummm is part of a series that Lum produced in 1994 which were presented on large aluminum panels and described as "hybrid objects, not just photographs, paintings, sculptures or text works, [but] all of these." (Watson) In this work Lum pairs up photographs with various texts that appear to be the thoughts or fragments of dialogue of the characters portrayed. In some cases the text takes on a tone of anger, fear or anxiety. In Hum Hum Hummm a small child is seen lying down along the lower end of an outside staircase. There are a number of possible interpretations to this photograph — the child could be waiting for someone, daydreaming, skipping school, running away or be hurt and unable to move. The text paired with this image — "Hum hum hummm, hum hummmm" etc. — suggests an optimistic reading. According to Scott Watson, in this work "the moment of utopian possibility is taken further. A child rests on a school step. Her thoughts are focused on nothing but being. She embodies the utopian type, freed from conflict and thoughts of necessity. As a child she represents a new generation and the hope for the future. It is the one work in Lum's new series where the difficulty and conflict have been removed and the problem of identity is at rest."

There are 10 works by Lum in the Gallery's collection representing a range of the artist's activities including an installation, paintings, working drawings and photo-text works all dating from the mid to late 1980s. There are no recent works by Lum in the collection and the addition of these works will give us excellent examples of this important body of work. This acquisition will enhance the Gallery's holdings of this internationally known artist and be the most recent work in the collection. Lum's work relates to a range of photo-based work and portraiture from the collection by artists like Ian Wallace, Thomas Ruff, Jin-me Yoon, Cindy Sherman and Jochen Gerz among others.


Recommend acceptance.


Bruce Grenville
Senior Curator

Research: Linda Sawchyn
Assistant Curator