Date: 2008 - ongoing

Making an Exhibition of Your Self

Responding to the National Heritage site Rufford Old Hall in Ormskirk, Lancashire, and the Great Hall where it is believed that William Shakespeare had once performed, Yuen Fong Ling’s work re-created the life model set-up for Nicolas Hilliard's Portrait of an Unknown Man Clasping a Hand from a Cloud (1588), also believed connected with the young Shakespeare.

The work transposed the mythology of the site and the portrait, through the life class, and speculated on the creation of the myth. The work developed into a series of life drawings, videos, photographs, and commemorative ceramic plates, working with members of the Lancashire Artists Network, Jonathan Purcell, Rachel Jane Holland, and Art Tranpennine 08. The overall final presentation of works, objects and artefacts produced a slippage and fictionalised the event, weaving together historical conjecture and fact.

Other works in the Life Class Series of similar enquiry include: Life Class: Westegermany Berlin, recreating Prince’s 1999 sleeve photo art with the Islington Mill Art Academy (2008); and Life Class: The Collection Lincoln, recreating J.H. Lamprey’s ethnographic photographs, part of New Art from Sichuan exhibition (2008).