Setting Off
Singapore Biennale, 2016–17

The suspended elements unfold in a spiral through the atrium, almost like a cascade.

Panitam, Paris
Passage du Grand-Cerf, 2019

The strips take the form of vertical blinds, seen from both inside and outside.

Panitam, Musée de la Soie
Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort, 2024

The arrangement responds to the machines and materials of the silk museum.

Occasionally, I return to an older etching, printing another time in my work onto what is already there. An Australian bush landscape may meet a later impression. In a few pieces, I have also added small, intricate hand-embroidered motifs.

I join two strips back to back to give each suspended element two printed faces. I choose their sequence and partly shape the horizontal groupings of colour and pattern. Slight movements bring fragments into view, let others recede, or offer a glimpse from the side. A little of the composition remains open.

Jotana Series

  • Marine Ky Art – Jotana 01

    Jotana 01

  • Marine Ky Art – Jotana 01

    Jotana 02

  • Marine Ky Art – Jotana 03

    Jotana 03

  • Marine Ky Art – Jotana 04

    Jotana 04

  • Marine Ky Art – Jotana 05

    Jotana 05

Peace Series

  • Marine Ky Art – Love /Unity I

    Love / Unity I

    Dimensions : 28,5 x 29 cm

  • Marine Ky Art – A Changing Phenomenon I

    Peace: A Changing Phenomenon I

    Dimensions : 95 x 94,5 cm

  • Marine Ky Art – A Changing Phenomenon I

    Peace: A Changing Phenomenon II

    Dimensions : 95 x 94,5 cm

  • The Gap : That Which is Subject to Decay I a

    The Gap : That Which is Subject to Decay I a

    Plate dimensions : 90 × 60 cm

  • The Gap : That Which is Subject to Decay I b

    The Gap : That Which is Subject to Decay I b

    (Details)

  • The Gap : That Which is Subject to Decay II a

    The Gap : That Which is Subject to Decay II a

    Diptych – Unique state

    Combined plate dimensions : 90 x 120 cm

  • The Gap : That Which is Subject to Decay II b

    The Gap : That Which is Subject to Decay II b

    (Details)

  • Marine Ky Artwork – Plate I Triptych

    Plate I

    Triptych

  • Marine Ky Artwork – Plate II Diptych

    Plate II

    Diptych

  • Marine Ky Artwork – Plate III Diptych

    Plate III

    Diptych

Marine Ky – Setting Off Exhibition – Singapore

Setting Off is a suspended mixed-media installation composed of hundreds of elements. It brings together etchings on paper and silk, engraving on felt, stitched forms, embroidery and photographic fragments. Lantern-like structures are covered in silk printed from etched plates.

Setting Off
2016
Singapore Biennale, Singapore

marineky-SettingOff32.jpg
MARINE KY, SETTING OFF, SINGAPORE BIENNALE 2016.JPG
marineky-SettingOff29.jpg
marineky-SettingOff2.jpg
marineky-SettingOff7.jpg

Se transcender pour transformer le monde
2013
Centre Culturel Français, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

This installation combines works developed through printmaking, textile and repeated imprinting processes.

Copie de Ky 7Footprints.JPG
Tuol Sleng Installation Institut Francais.JPG
Transcending oneself to transform the world.JPG
Forest.JPG

La Collection La Traversée

Soft-ground etching

The dresses move between object, imprint and image. Their textures are transferred through soft-ground etching, allowing the same form to shift from strongly material presence to something almost spectral.

Across contexts

Mekong: a work across contexts

Happy Art Home II
2005

Musée de la Soie
2024

End of cycle
2025

Mekong is shaped through collective making, with hundreds of children contributing materially to its formation. Their participation questions authorship labour and how an artwork comes into being.

At the Musée de la Soie, this collective making meets histories of weaving, embroidery, industrialisation and anonymous labour. Its displacement draws attention to those who decide where and how art is shown, legimised, preserved and stored. The setting also challenges the white cube as the supposedly ultimate space for art.

Its final burning makes those questions irreversible. Who makes, authorises, preserves or ends an artwork? What remains once its material existence is gone?

Robe de bal

Soft-ground etching on black paper

Installation view, Musée de la Soie
2024

Through material, inking and context, these soft-ground etchings shift between tangible presence and apparition.

Optical Screens

In the Optical Screen series, repeated circles form a permeable layer across earlier images. Superimposition makes some forms visible while obscuring others, shifting the image as the eye moves between its different layers.

These works became preliminary studies for The Gap, where appearance and disappearance would become increasingly dependent on material, light and the viewer’s position.

  • Marine Ky Art – The Journey – Corset sur papier

    Corset I

    Soft-ground etching on paper

  • Marine Ky Art – The Journey - Butterfly

    Papillon

    Soft-ground etching on paper

  • Marine Ky Art – The Journey – Folded Kimono

    Kimono plié

    Soft-ground etching on paper

  • Marine Ky Art – The Journey – Crochet Dress

    Robe au crochet

    Soft-ground etching on paper

  • Marine Ky Art – The Journey – Japanese Dress

    Robe japonaise

    Soft-ground etching on paper

  • Marine Ky Art – The Journey – Lace

    Dentelle

    Soft-ground etching on paper

Unlike the first version of Happy Art Home, whose prints were displayed on walls or framed, Happy Art Home II became a space to enter and inhabit. With each new installation, more prints were made and added. Dozens became hundreds, gradually expanding the work.

By Installation IV, it occupied 16 square metres and comprised hundreds of mandalas printed by hand from copper plates onto wool felt. The installation also hosted art and poetry workshops for children, tea gatherings and haiku sessions.

2005-06

Fukuoka Triennale of Asian Contemporary Art, Fukuoka Asian Art | Fukuoka | Japan

Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery | United Kingdom

Happy Art Home II / Installation IV

  • Marine Ky Artwork – Haiku Flowers 01

    Haïku Flowers

  • Marine Ky Art – Haiku workshop with Utsumi-san

    Haiku workshop with Utsumi-san

  • Marine Ky Art – Mapping Connections — Workshop with Children

    Mapping Connections — Workshop with Children

  • Marine Ky Art -In a Kimono with a Friend

    In a Kimono with a Friend

  • Marine Ky Art – Happy Art Home

    Happy Art Home

2004

Marine Ky Artwork – Happy at Home 1 - Art brochure pages 1 and 2

Mandalas printed on Khmer organza and Japanese silk, Thai handmade paper, Japanese washi and other supports are brought together with textiles and fragments developed through children’s workshops across Australia, Southeast Asia and Japan.

Some of these fragments carry the marks of several children, made at different times and places.

In Aomori, local participants contributed through sewing, using fragments of fabric while reflecting on events of the Second World War, adding another layer to the evolving work.

Marine Ky Artwork – Happy at Home 1 - Art brochure pages 3 and 4

Aomori Contemporary Art Centre | Aomori | Japan

Happy Art Home I / Installation III

Archival portraits from Tuol Sleng were repeatedly transferred, from digital files through photocopy and fine used silk onto acid-free printmaking paper. Through these successive transfers, the faces became fragmented and distorted, acquiring an eerie, unsettling presence.

Many of those photographed remained unidentified; the attempt to recover their identities sits against images that seem to appear and disappear before the eye.

The complete series was subsequently lost during a house move and now survives through documentation.

2000

Pray/Prey | 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art | Sydney | Australia

  • Marine Ky Artwork – Tuol Sleng 02

    Tuol Sleng 02

  • Marine Ky Artwork – Tuol Sleng 20

    Tuol Sleng 20

  • Tuol Sleng 07

  • Marine Ky Artwork – Tuol Sleng 14

    Tuol Sleng 14

  • Marine Ky Artwork – Tuol Sleng 17

    Tuol Sleng 17