Featured Artist: Shipei Wang: Ground Floor Gallery

Better Than a Punch

Glasgow-based artist Shipei Wang (she/her) works across painting, printmaking, design and digital image-making mediums. Shipei's work uses repetition of motifs and dreamlike renderings of human and natural forms to confront the multifaceted nature and ambiguity of one's identity. Whilst orbiting one's immediate settings from the domestic to the public, the self is oftentimes by necessity contorted, tangled, and unrevealed. Shipei Wang's works feature in permanent collections of the Royal Scottish Academy and the Glasgow Kelvingrove Museum.

This exhibition features six new works that explore the cangue, a historical torture device that was used for public humiliation and corporal punishment, particularly in east Asia. The device restricts a person's movement, and would typically consist of a large, heavy flat board with a hole in the centre large enough for a person's neck and two smaller holes for two hands. It is fastened shut along the edges by locks and hinges. The prisoner would be confined by the cangue for a sustained period of time. In a law dating back to 1397, it was specified that a cangue should weight roughly 9 - 15kg.

Whilst the cangue's practical use retain a certain dark cache, it's metaphorical symbolism became ever so popular within literature and theatre, particularly finding its way into the elaborate repertoire of theatrical props used in the Chinese opera. The cangue evolves from being an object of punishment to becoming a symbol of resistance that reflect the suffering of the people against those in power. It also takes on the form of the fish to further convey the idea of being helpless, like the fish on someone's dinner plate. In contrast, the motif of the tiger is often used to convey the absolutism of law and order. In a broader context, it illustrates the partition of ideals between the state and the individual, both necessarily existing in precarious bondage to one another. Is it better to be the fish on someone's dinner plate, or is it better to receive that punch in the face. Or, is it simply better to look elsewhere and find comfort in the glossy and distracting lures of the world?

Glasgow Print Studio is a participant in OwnArt, which offers buyers the opportunity to apply for a 10-month, interest free art loan. Please contact the gallery for more information on how to apply.