Roland Buckingham-Hsiao

Artist Statement

These photographs were taken with a Holga toy camera in the Far East; they represent research undertaken into Chinese and Japanese aesthetic principles and traditions of representation. The elements and principles of art have been used to translate the characteristics of Japanese short poetry, such as economy and the linking of dissimilar things, into the syntax of visual language. As “visual poems” however, the works consist entirely of the associations and allusions suggested by the images. The viewer / reader is left to decide or create the meaning as the poems are open-ended and meditative, having floated free of words.

Roland Buckingham-Hsiao is an artist and researcher based in the UK and Taiwan. His work investigates the boundaries of language – text/image, text/body and text/object relations – often via East-West cultural exchange. His creative practice is interdisciplinary but revolves around photography, calligraphy and poetry. He studied Art at Universities in Canterbury, Belfast and London, U.K. and Mandarin and Chinese calligraphy at University in Taichung, Taiwan. He has exhibited artworks at many museums and galleries around the world including Tate Britain in London, UK and is currently engaged in practice-based doctoral research at the University of Sunderland, UK. https://buckinghamhsiao.wordpress.com/