Thuy Tien Nguyen: Press, Release

Working primarily with sculpture and installation, Tien examines personal and collective memories by investigating how they are adjusted, translated, and reconstructed over time. By juxtaposing materials, she questions the narrative associations we have with commonplace objects, creating spaces that feel familiar yet distorted. Commissioned by Gasworks and the Thailand Biennale, Press, Release takes the form of a skeletal conveyor belt installation. Evoking systems that process and circulate goods, like those in a factory or airport, the work is constructed from modular polished steel and intricately carved wooden fragments salvaged from balustrades, boats and door frames. Resting on the moving conveyor are Vietnamese, Thai and British vernacular objects. These include krathongs – small, decorative bouquets made from banana trunks and leaves that are floated on waterways to release negativity and make wishes for the future. On Tien’s conveyor belt, they follow a choreographed routine. Set to a soundtrack of recontextualized pop music, they shudder forward and back, never quite reaching their destination. Snaking through both gallery spaces at Gasworks, Tien’s sculpture mimics the mechanism of industrial production yet resists any kind of efficiency. The work embraces contradiction, creating tension across multiple registers: between rigidity and movement, memory and erasure, glamour and debris. Just as travellers pack aspects of their lives into suitcases, fragmented identities jostle with one another through cities and across territories. By incorporating the local histories of Phuket and South London, the work references a global system of circulation through which labour and goods flow, and cultures are transformed. Thuy Tien Nguyen’s exhibition is commissioned by Gasworks, London and the Thailand Biennale, Phuket. Supported by the British Council Biennials Connect, Henry Moore Foundation, Art Fund and public funding from Arts Council England. With thanks to Articulate Studio, ICAT Logistics, Goethe Institut London and Truong Phat Company.