A controlling father, an introverted son, a shared love – artist’s relationship with his late parent suffuses solo exhibition
SCMP
Art was an escape from the rules Jeremy Fung’s father imposed on his life. Now it is the medium through which he recalls the unspoken love they shared.
The paintings and drawings of Hong Kong scenes in his new solo exhibition were inspired by walks the pair used to take before his father’s untimely death.
A Forgotten Page 1 (2016) by Jeremy Fung Mang-chung. His solo exhibition commemorates his relationship with his father, who died of a stroke when Fung was still in high school. Photo: Jeremy Fung Mang-chung
As a young boy, Jeremy Fung Mang-chung feared his father.
The Hong Kong artist describes him as a traditional man who wanted full control over his son’s lifestyle and that of his three younger sisters. Any deviation from his father’s idea of the proper way of living was considered wrong and drew his ire.
Art was an escape from this. Fung would hide in a small wardrobe in his room, away from his father’s gaze, where he would doodle on a notepad. It was the only way he, a self-described introvert, knew how to express and calm himself.
“But he loved us very much,” Fung says. “He’s like me, he wouldn’t express it with words.” Instead, his father would take Fung on walks through the city’s streets, and he would wake up early to make congee because he knew his children did not like bread for breakfast.
Fung was in high school when he had his father’s breakfast congee for the last time. Soon after, he died of a stroke.
“I couldn’t bring myself to accept it,” the artist, now 30, says. Tears fall when asked if he has accepted his father’s death now, more than a decade later. “It was most regrettable that we had incompatible personalities, but we loved and cared for each other. He left so suddenly and I have no chance now to try to get along with him.”
Fung’s solo exhibition at Gallery by the Harbour in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, commemorates his relationship with his father, says Sharon Cheung Po-wah, who is making her curatorial debut with the show.
The exhibition features 19 of Fung’s works, in mediums that range from graphite on wood to oil on canvas and charcoal on paper, the diversity of which impressed Cheung.
His earliest work on display, A Forgotten Page (2016), reflects his time hiding away from the world in his cramped wardrobe. Doodles, scribbles and stick figures overlap and intertwine in this giant notebook, split into twin panels for the show. Handwritten Chinese characters on it have been transposed from his school notes, whose meaning and connotation Fung says he did not understand as a child but does now.
‘It’s just like how my dad and I got along,” Fung says. “I didn’t try to understand what he did and, of course, he didn’t consider my feelings and stuck to his way of doing things. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realise that if I had taken a step back and got to know him, our relationship might have got closer.”
“For every artist – it’s like a child growing up – the earlier the work, the more precious it is,” Cheung says of A Forgotten Page. “Those works really show the original mission; they’re the purest.”
Most of Fung’s oil paintings and charcoal drawings depict scenes of urban Hong Kong and its parks. These more recent creations are similarly inspired by the time spent with his father.
When I was small, I had few recreational activities. The closest I had to that was my dad taking me on strolls and to the parks,” Fung says, adding that he never said no because of his introversion.
The father and son would amble through their neighbourhood without exchanging a word. “All I did was to look left and right [at] the objects by the streets and follow their movements,” he says. “I’m not good at expressing myself, but I like looking at things and adding to them my thoughts. That makes everything that much more interesting – I can project what I want to say onto things.”
The exhibition is a deeply personal reflection on Fung’s childhood. He was reluctant to open up about it to Cheung until she pushed him. She was curious why so many of Fung’s works were woodcuts, but in the many evenings they spent discussing the show, Fung did not explain.
Maybe I pushed him too far,” says Cheung, a former journalist. Irritated, Fung said, “Because wood doesn’t give you looks. Non-living things don’t give you looks,” she recalls. Fung then told Cheung about his father and his death – a secret he had kept from her, despite their long friendship.
Fung continues to speak through his art, and says he has grown to realise that speaking one’s mind is essential – something he wished he had known when his father was alive. “Understanding each other is part of human nature,” he says. “We knew we cared for each other through our actions, but we just never told each other.”
