HONG KONG.- Galerie Ora-Ora is presenting Hong Kong-based artist Nina Pryde’s third main exhibition with the gallery. Infinity on view from July 16 through August 17.
Infinity features a career-defining collection of landscape and semi-abstract landscape ink works, focusing on the versatility of Nina Pryde’s art-making as painter, calligrapher, collage artist, and photographer. Pryde is a modern artist, and a thoroughly modern Hong Kong artist at that. Although she works primarily in ink, her newer mixed-media works now incorporate increasing colour and veer towards the semi-abstract, infusing elements that draw from Western influences such as expressionism, impressionism, and abstraction. As the title suggests, nothing is out of range: the exhibition explores the infinite possibilities of not only her various talents and positive approach, but celebrates her coming of age as an artist who is now in her element.
Take the monumental landscape pentaptych, Passing Through (2017) : the charcoal of her brushstrokes depicting the rising mountains contrasts with the white space that she gives the impression of leaving blank. In this case, less is more. Pay attention and you can almost feel the power of the air or “qi” – the immense energy coursing through the mountain tops, the swirling mist that settles calmly into early morning dew. Another of nature’s classical elements – water – is also at play here, in the form of ravines and waterfalls, ponds and lakes. They play supporting roles alongside the main character and element – earth.
In Pryde’s universe, all elements co-exist in balanced harmony, and are metaphors for her own personal hopes and feelings. In Chinese culture, water symbolises wealth and prosperity, and these can only be achieved through peace and harmony – Pryde’s wish for the place she calls home, even more poignant now in times of uncertainty. Air embodies vitality and stamina, the boundless source of energy and strength that makes the world turn. They are encapsulations of the larger forces of nature at work, exemplifying the openness with which Pryde views the world, full of positive potential and limitless possibilities.
Infinity is a culmination of Pryde’s art-making for the past 30 years, a career-asserting celebration of her accomplishments not solely as painter, but versatile multi-talented artist. Just as she is fascinated with nature and awed by its greatness, she invites her audience to do the same, encouraging them to stretch their minds and to think of its endless possibilities. Having reached a milestone in a career that only one with confidence and maturity is able to achieve, she continues to amaze us with her ability to transcend boundaries, connecting us to history yet firmly rooting us in the present.
Born in 1945, on the day when Hong Kong was liberated from Japan’s occupation, Nina Pryde grew up as one of nine children. She left school early to play her part in raising what was a large family in difficult financial circumstances. At the age of 13, she received a second-hand vintage camera from her relatives, she started her photography as a steppingstone to develop her aesthetics sense. Throughout this time, Art was a passion, and she was later to develop this at an academic level, studying fashion design and pottery. Nina joined a Masters course in fine arts jointly run by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the Hong Kong School of Art from which she graduated in 2007 with the Outstanding Student Award for her work, “The Sound of Silence”. Her works have been exhibited in Taipei Dangdai (2019), Tokyo Art Fair (2018) , Art15, London (2015), Fine Art Asia, Hong Kong (2014) and others. Nina was also a finalist at the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial Awards in 2009.
