While much of our work has been public, accessible, and outdoors, every once in a while we’re given the opportunity to experiment with contexts that challenge us to think differently about the powerful effects of context on art-making.

Unlike many artists, we haven’t worked inside clean white walls for quite sometime. When Whanki Museum in Seoul, South Korea contacted us to be part of a Light + Sound exhibition in Autumn/Winter, we were delighted to partake, in part as a challenge to ourselves.

After some discussion about the mood of the exhibition, we settled on showing two works at Whanki – SOLAR FLARE and BELLWETHER. Both have previous contexts – SOLAR FLARE was installed last January above a pedestrian street in downtown Calgary, and BELLWETHER was created for the Lexington Art League’s group show, Luminosity, at Loudoun House (a gallery less about white walls than it’s extraordinary setting in a centennial mansion).

(left) SOLAR FLARE in Downtown Calgary, photo by Tom Fitz

(right) BELLWETHER in Lexington, Kentucky, photo by Caitlind Brown

And so began our adventures in Seoul, a place we found both giant and intimate, urban and wild, bustling and quiet, (depending on the day)

After a month in downtown’s freezing weather, SOLAR FLARE required some cleaning and re-imagining. The same could be said for BELLWETHER, which we shipped cheaply (ie. baggage handlers were perhaps not as gentle as they could be…) and called for significant fixing.

Our short weeks in Seoul were an adventure to be sure, filled with wandering, working, sampling local delicacies, and feeling out the context of working between white gallery walls. Site Whanki_Wave is still on exhibition in Seoul until the end of December. We’ll publish more about the exhibition over the coming days.