Gayle Chong Kwan

Gayle Chong Kwan
Gayle Chong Kwan by Georgia Kuhn, 2013
Born	1973 (age 43–44) Edinburgh, Scotland
Known for	Photography, Visual Arts

Gayle Chong Kwan (born 1973) is a London-based artist whose large-scale photographic, installation, and video work has been exhibited and published internationally.

Chong Kwan is a Research Candidate in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, London, (2012-). She holds a BA Hons Politics and Modern History, University of Manchester (1994), where she specialised in Post-Colonial Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa; an MSc in Communications, University of Stirling (1995); and a BA Hons Fine Art, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (2000).

Gayle Chong Kwan is a British artist who is known for her large-scale mise-en-scene environments and photographs, created out of waste products, found materials and documentary sources, and which are often sited in the public realm. Her work highlights the ambiguous relationship between reality, appropriation, fictional contemporary mechanisms, and latter day myths and has focused on contemporary developments in tourism, trade and development in relation to their impact upon the landscape. Chong Kwan develops her work through a process which can involve sensory activities, participation, and historical or archaeological inquiry, to create settings or props through which more fantastical modes of experience or re-visioning can take place.

The Pan Hag, Easington Nature Reserve, East Durham, commissioned by Forma (2015–2016), was an outdoor event, inviting the public to explore the lost and overlooked traditional skills and customs related to crafts, growing, food and nature. Local enthusiasts worked with Gayle Chong Kwan to lead activities and workshops including peg looming, proggy mat making, woodturning demonstrations, recipe tasting, sea glass collecting, creative nature walks, and art and craft sessions. Visitors were also invited to cast their vote at the world's first Pan Hag Championship.The Pan Hag takes its name from the regional dish of pan haggerty, or panacultym amongst other names – a favourite amongst miners – and is the culmination of two years of research, events, and activities by Chong Kwan in East Durham. A printed legacy, The Pan Hag Map, will be available from early 2017.