Contrarily, Wei Leng focuses a different eye to the photograph. Her practice has consistently addressed personal relationships, family histories and patterns of migration by probing modes of perception and representation. In this series of works, she unearths analogue film slides of family photographs taken by her parents in the 1970s, during a time of transition and upheaval. In order to move away from a nostalgic impulse, Wei Leng places these slides, quite literally, under the microscope in order to examine the physical layers of time that have equally literally accumulated. The materiality of the film photograph, itself a dated medium that is intensely textural and relies on the physicality of interactions between light, chemical processes, and the film surface, is layered with traces of organic material, hair, dust, debris, chemical degradation… surfaces upon surfaces.
PLURAL ART MAG | Progressive Disintegrations, Collective Accumulations
Yun Teng, PLURAL ART MAG, January 26, 2021
Wei Leng Tay, One full frame 135mm E-6-processed Ektachrome colour reversal film slide. ‘Ruby colour service’-branded made in Germany plastic slide mount. In ‘Colour Transparencies processed by Kodak’-branded yellow plastic slide box with typed labels “FULL FRAME” and “POSTAGE PAID PERTH W.A. AUST. 6000.” // 20x magnification. Partial coaxial episcopic illumination. Cropped. // 37.5x50cm archival pigment print on Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag paper, 2020. Yes, the title is deliberately long and all-encompassing to reveal the technical processes and parameters that lie behind the image, which extends the artist’s preoccupations with representation and depiction.
