MASS artist talks - Mei Zhao in conversation with Daniel Press

For MASS, Mei Zhao depicts the underrepresented history of Chinese market gardens along Greendale Creek in Curl Curl. The market garden was located on the corner of Abbott Road and Harbord Road, opposite where Manly Selective High School is today. Here, during the 1930s, Cheung Lee and his Chinese workers lived and worked on their market garden. Their house was a tin humpy with hessian bags for doors and kerosene lamps. Market gardens like these dominated the production and distribution of vegetables in New South Wales from the 1880s to the 1930s. Zhao's conscious material choices map this history, using acrylic, pigment, and concrete on hessian stretched on wooden frames.
Water is a dominant theme that flows through the exhibition. Each artist responds to the coastal suburb of Curl Curl; from the waterway that stretches from Greendale Creek downstream towards Curl Curl Lagoon and the ocean. Each artist has a shared research background centred on the artist’s bond to the environment. MASS responds to the sheer density of our climate crisis.
Artists: Penny Coss, Kristy Gordon, Joyce Lubotzky, Emma Pinsent, Chrystal Rimmer, Brigitta Summers, Sarah Yaacoub, and Mei Zhao.
Daniel Press was awarded the 2024 Northern Beaches Emerging Curator to develop MASS. MASS exhibited at Curl Curl Creative Space from September 18 to September 28, 2024.

[@margaretling1724]

Well done Mei