Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1975 London

Died:

Biography

Painter and multimedia artist Gordon Cheung was born to Hong Kong Chinese parents in London in 1975 and studied at Central Saint Martins (now UAL) and the Royal College of Art. His parents, originally from Hong Kong when it was still a British colony, migrated to the UK in search of a better life. Having since retired, they eventually returned to Hong Kong. Cheung's art practice is influenced by geopolitical events, particularly memories from his childhood, including the Brixton Race Riots, as well as events from his student days, such as Hong Kong's handover to China in 1997. Additionally, his early career was influenced by the 2002 financial crisis.

Cheung’s oeuvre includes both traditional brush techniques and modern technology. His practice explores repetition and mirroring of historical events in contemporary times, global narratives as crafted by the victors, and power hierarchies. He describes his identity as ‘in-between’ his British and Chinese roots, treating Western and Eastern iconography with equal importance and with the same techniques. One of his earliest and most enduring themes is the historical reflection of the contemporary world through the lens of the Dutch Golden Age’s ‘Tulip mania’ of the 17th century, which led to the world’s first global crash. Cheung layers open-sourced images of tulips with ripped pieces of the Financial Times and sand, symbolising the economic metrics that dominate our daily lives. His bespoke software deconstructs these images in a non-destructive manner, creating a digital effect that emulates the sands-of-time effect or a 'glitch'. His ongoing series of glitch prints, which began in 2013, has evolved to include a series of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) featuring tulips, animated on structures based on Bitcoin data, showcasing Cheung’s technological agility. Much of Cheung’s work is based on what he calls datascapes, predominantly using the Financial Times as material, to explore the rapid movement of capital that can lead to the creation of both utopias and dystopias, as well as the dominance of the financial world in daily discourse. Cheung tears up the Financial Times to use as the background for his images or wraps it around polymer structures, as seen in his Chinese Window sculptures (Arrow to Heaven, Paris, 2022) and the Scholar’s Rock (Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2024). Cheung’s more recent works, from 2020 to date, depict buildings representing opposing discourses of historical transnational power, from ancient Chinese to industrial Chinese infrastructure projects. These ‘landscapes’ layer Chinese iconic cultural geometries onto maps of contemporary Chinese cities, now sites of significant power.

Cheung has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. The title of his 2023 exhibition The Garden of Perfect Brightness at the Atkinson, Southport, is a direct translation in English of the Chinese name Yuanming Yuan (also known as the Summer Palace in Beijing), which was razed by British and French troops during the Second Opium War in 1860, an event still regarded as a catastrophic act of imperial cultural violence. Despite this, the work is lush and colourful, deliberately meditative, a contemporary rendering of ancient Chinese gardens and their distinctive tropes of Scholar’s Rocks, Chinese windows, and painted mountainous landscapes. However, the references are global rather than inward-looking, capitalist rather than Daoist. Cheung has spoken candidly of his ‘wanderlust in me to travel beyond the histories written by victors’ (Cheung, 2023, p. 30). He has articulated his vision of Hong Kong in his work as the intersection of old and new architecture from a sci-fi perspective (Cheung, 2023, p.30) and has explored his own personal and ancient lineage (Cheung, 2023, p. 30). Critics have observed that ‘It is rare to see a contemporary artist who is equally knowledgeable and comfortable within both Chinese and Western cultures and histories, referencing art history and global financial narratives. His personal background and genuine sensitivity enable Cheung to play with images and ideas […],’(Cheung, 2024). Cheung’s exhibition at Almine Rech in Shanghai in 2024 continues to explore the parameters of the Chinese garden through multimedia and ceramic sculptures, using classical Chinese ‘jinhuidui’, a form of collage often used to refer to social change, while the group show, The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester presents Cheung's take on the contemporary still life.

Cheung has also created several digital art commissions for private organisations. In 2021, he was commissioned by Meta to create artwork for their London headquarters. The same year, he created a digital artwork to celebrate Chinese New Year (the Year of the Ox) for the Michelin-starred restaurateur A Wong in London. Scanning a QR code and downloading an app allows the viewer to see an animated hoarding blooming with Chinese spring flowers. Gordon Cheung continues to live and work in London. His work can be found in public collections in the UK, including the British Museum, British Council, Central St Martins, and the Royal College of Art.

Related books

Tristram Aver, Gordon Cheung: Here be Dragons, exh. cat. (Nottingham: Nottingham City Museums and Galleries, 2016)
Gordon Cheung and Christopher Moore, Gordon Cheung: The Solar Cry, exh. cat. (London: Edel Assanti, 2012)
Charlotte Mullins, Gordon Cheung: Tulipmania, exh. cat. (London: Alan Cristea Gallery, 2012)
Eva Langret, Gordon Cheung: The Light that Burns Twice as Bright, exh. cat. (London: Alan Cristea Gallery, 2011)
Deborah Robinson and Paul Hobson, Gordon Cheung: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, exh. cat. (Walsall: The New Art Gallery, 2009)

Public collections

Related organisations

Central St Martins (Student)
Royal College of Art (Student)

Selected exhibitions

Peaceful Retreat (solo exhibition), Almine Reich, Shanghai, China (2024)
Rise and Fall (solo exhibition), HOFA Gallery (The House of Fine Art), Mykonos, Greece (2024)
Summer Exhibition 2024, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2024)
The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain (group show), Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2024)
Augmented Reality Mural (solo installation), Meta HQ, London (2023)
Garden of Perfect Brightness (solo exhibition), Atkinson Gallery, Southport (2023)
Paradise Found Projects (solo exhibition), Richard Koh Fine Art, Singapore (2023)
Arrow to Heaven (solo exhibition), Almine Reich, Paris (2022)
Tears of Paradise (solo exhibition), Edel Assanti, London (2021)
The Evolution of Communication (group show), Park View Gallery, Shenzhen, China (2019)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Gordon Cheung ]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Gordon Cheung artist