Fonny Lau   劉月寶

Graduated from the Graphic Communication program at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Fonny started her career as a graphic and exhibition designer in the Hong Kong Museum of Art, inspiring her to further explore her own passions for art and design. Driven by her diverse passions, she pursued her studies in ceramics at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and floral art at the Sogetsu School of International Ikebana, and recently graduated as a Master of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University. Fonny works with natural materials to create art, which exudes human warmth and delicacy. She creates her installations by bringing ‘things’ together, allowing the juxtaposed materials to speak for themselves. She ‘rearranged’ ‘things’ into artworks, drawing attention to the interdependent relationships between these materials and the space surrounding them.

The Artwork

Zen Mopping
Mixed Media, Dimension Variable
2012

That was an extremely hot and humid summer afternoon when my sisters and I were home alone in our tiny apartment because my mother was out for grocery shopping as usual. As the eldest daughter of ten years old, I was responsible for baby-sitting, in fact I always able to improvise some kind of entertainment for ourselves and that is how we spent so many summer holidays happily together. However, that was a really extraordinary afternoon when I transformed our balcony into a “swimming pool”. By plugging the drainage of the balcony with a Horlicks glass bottle and a towel and then filling it up with a few inches deep of water, a mini swimming pool became ready. By the time my little sisters came back, they were all so delighted to change into their swimming suits and we played happily. We got all wet and carried away until we suddenly heard my mother opening the door. All of us were so stunned and my youngest sister just could not help starting to cry.

Strangely, my mother did not punish us but just told us to change back into dry clothing. Until now, we are still unsure of why she let us off so easily. I wondered if the scene was too surreal for her to comprehend on the spot. The image of the floor tiles of the balcony being under water is still very vividly imprinted on my mind today.

A while ago when I started to think about the topic of my Urban Intervention project, I realized that the “balcony swimming pool” in our 16th floor apartment might actually be my very first intervention piece. And I believed that it must have been a rather successful one because up until today, all my sisters are still so exuberant whenever we talked about the experience. This inspired me to consider creating a project that we can play with water which is always a great medium to work with both now and then. I really enjoy working with water because of its plasticity and this time I chose to experiment with making watermarks on the cement floor.