Now showing
@taurangaartgallery the Chinatown Tote is the latest work in a series that began in 2018 with my Mum, Doris Tsui, an avid cross stitcher. Mum was the main maker in the Amah Bag Project that explored a correlation between the unaccounted hours behind domestic labour and domestic craft forms. Hand-stitching this mass produced pattern, our series resulted in works adding up to 240 hours of combined labour and over 27,000 individual stitches. The work in progress in the last image was exhibited
@pagegalleries and much to Mum’s surprise became part of
@thedowse art collection. This project with Mum was a formative and a pivotal part of the my art practice. I then went on the produce a solo exhibition dedicated to the redwhiteblue bag
@masterworksnz
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Chinatown Tote 2023 – 2025
mercerised cotton, glass beads, synthetic bead thread
300mm x 300mm, plus beaded handles
“Publicly exhibited for the first time, Chinatown Tote is a laboriously woven bag with delicately beaded handles. Handwoven in 2/2 twill, a traditional tartan weave, the artist recreates the original pattern of the Amah bag – the red-white-blue Hong Kong domestic servant’s bag made common across the globe as an exportable, mass-produced item.
The origins of the Amah bag come from nylon fabric developed in Japan in the 1960s, which was imported to Taiwan, and then adopted for popular use in Hong Kong.” ~ Van Mei, curator
@taurangaartgallery @deathbypdf
#redwhitebluebag
#doristsui
