PRESENTER:

One of the most fascinating things about this piece is how the artist, Irene Chou, used really unconventional tools to create such an engrossing image. We spoke with her son, Michael Yang, about his memories of her practice.

MICHAEL YANG:

She’d use anything! She’d invite friends over to her place, show them biscuit tin lids she’d used to draw the circles and things like that. Hair dryer, spraying the paint—she used everything; household things, kitchenware and things like that. Different types of cooking utensils, brushes and things, not painting brushes but brushes for whatever else. Bits and pieces of sheepskin for her to splash inks and things like that.

Oh, the type of ink she uses, she got people to go to the hardware store to buy different types of ink, different types of paint and things like that. So, she's just always thinking of weird things and incorporating them. After she passed away, we had to clean her apartment. That was an amazing sight. A lot, a lot of weird things. Weird and old things there!

PRESENTER:

Hairdryers and sheepskins aside, Irene worked on this piece during a particularly dark period in her life, something often discussed in art criticism. We asked Michael how he felt when he looked at the artwork in this light.

MICHAEL YANG:

This one, ‘Impact II’, 1977 was around the time when my father was sick or dying or things like that. I think I quite like it because it looks quite nice. But apart from that, she was painting this among the time which was a dark period of time; there’s a lot of black and grey and things, but this one did have a bit of other colour as well. When I look at the paintings, her dark paintings, I really felt so sorry that my mother's depressed.

But when I look at that, my first reaction is—not as an art critic or whether I like it or not—but thinking that, ‘Geez, my mother wasn't that depressed after all, probably’. So, I'm quite happy to see that she got a bit of colour in it. She's not that bad, although she's always very depressed and things. So that strikes me the most.  

I see this as quite a big, huge and powerful work here, however, when you look at the painter, my mother, she's not such a big and powerful person. She can make it this way, but she got lots and lots of thoughts and very delicate, very sensitive thoughts in her as a person. She tried to show off her power to make a big, powerful painting, but she does want to show off a delicate, sensitive part as well. She did try to do things like that, she didn't just want to draw a pretty-looking painting.

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