Ms Pat Wingshan Wong

Contact

Email: w.wong@kingston.ac.uk
Location: Kingston School of Art, Knights Park
Faculty: Kingston School of Art
School: School of Design
Department: Department of Illustration Animation

About

Pat Wong Shan Wong is an illustrator, researcher, and educator. In 2019, she initiated Barter Archive (2019- ongoing), a community-led project investigating how the new and the old interact in the 300-year-old Billingsgate Fish Market. The project won the Varley Memorable Award in 2020 and received a project grant from Art Council England last year. The project is still ongoing with connection to the Museum of London, Brighton University, Royal College of Art, and with curators from the Tate Archive and the Whitechapel Gallery. And it is now collected by the Museum of London, where she also works as a researcher. Barter Archive has widely press coverage, including The Guardian, The World of Interiors, It's Nice That and The Londonist, SCMP(HK), etc.

Currently, she received a project grant for the project Barter Company(2022-2023) from Hong Kong Art Development Council to work with an interactive architect from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL to co-curate an art-tech exhibition about disappearing old stores in Hong Kong.

From 2016 to 2022, Pat published her first illustration book The Scenery of Old Shops (2016) and the second book Once Upon a Time in Tai Kwun (2018). She has collaborated with various arts organisations including Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Art, Hong Kong Museum of Art, West Kowloon Cultural District, M+ Museum and Hong Kong Science Museum. She held an exhibition 100 Faces of Tai Kwun (2018) in Central, Hong Kong and her artworks have been included in the collection of the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

Academic responsibilities

Lecturer

Qualifications

MA Visual Communication (illustration), Royal College of Art
BA Creative Media (animation), School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

Teaching and learning

Level4, Illustration Animation BA (Hons)

Research

I initiated Barter Archive(2019- ongoing), which is a research library that, the first of its kind, provides the most comprehensive collection on bartering activities taking place between artists-researchers and mongers in London wet markets through the Barter Residency programme. Barter Residency encourages its researchers to use barter as a research tool to immerse themselves in market cultures and draw out findings from an alternative perspective. During the residency, researchers are tasked with collecting material, products and services from the traders to create a living, growing research database. The Archive aims to document the dynamic relationships between people, food, materials, and most importantly, the immaterialist memory, the collective knowledge of which is often hidden, undervalued and forgotten.The core of the Barter Archive is the barter process, an alternative economic system that involves the exchange of goods and services through trading objects. During a barter, the interaction between two parties involves negotiating, bargaining, and various language systems. Bartering is not a new concept; it is a time-honoured tradition used to form relationships, mutual trust, and build communities for the common good. Barter has been used in London wet markets for generations and is an integral part of the city's market culture.

Areas of specialism

community-led project
archive