What Lift You by Kelsey Montague & Joyce Yung

Hong Kong art gallery Art Supermarket presents What Lifts You featuring new artworks by international artists Kelsey Montague (creator of the famous wings murals in the USA) and Joyce Yung. This collaborative Exhibition by the American and the Hong Kong artist explores the question What Lifts You? 

The collaborative artworks by Kelsey Montague and Joyce Yung encourage people in a joyful way to contemplate on one of the most important questions in life: What Lifts You? What inspires you to get up in the morning, or pursue the day? Kelsey and Joyce think it’s essential for us to have something to seek for. Dreams and goals that make us look at life from a positive perspective, looking forward to tomorrow, to what comes next. What Lifts You? There is no right or wrong answer! The art by Kelsey and Joyce offers viewers the total freedom, to find their very personal answer.

It’s Kelsey Montague and Joyce Yung’s first collaboration. Kelsey, an accomplished street artist and illustrator, created a series of 10 pieces for the exhibition at Art Supermarket that explored the question What Lifts You? Joyce, an accomplished photographer and film maker, worked with Kelsey to create a series of light painting pieces on the shores of Malibu, California that mirrors Kelsey’s mural work. Each piece, expertly captured, mirrors Kelsey’s What Lifts You work but in an entirely different medium – light.

Kelsey Montague, USA
Kelsey is one of very few artists who is exploring how illustration, public art, interactive art and social media intersect. She believes that art should not be separated from the human experience. Instead the human experience should have a hand in creating the art itself. Kelsey Montague’s pen and ink drawings reflect a unique worldview. Originally from Colorado, Montague has lived in Florence, London, New York City and Los Angeles. She studied Art, Design and Media, with combined studies, at Richmond, the American International University in London, where she received an American Bachelor of Arts degree (summa cum laude), as well as a British Bachelor of Arts degree with First Class Honors.

Each work is intuitively created, revealing multiple, intricate layers. These “drawings within drawings” are imbued with memories, dreams, emotions and, above all, the artist’s uniquely creative style. Kelsey is most known for her large scale, interactive street murals around the world. Each piece provides an opportunity for people to step into the work and become a “living work of art”. Participants are encouraged to post pictures of the work, and their interaction with it, on social media under the hashtag #whatliftsyou. Thousands of people have participated in an online discussion about what inspires them in their lives. This art has been featured by Entertainment Weekly, Instagram, MTV, Buzzfeed, Refinery 29, Mashable. Photo published on Intagram with Taylor Swift reached 900,000 likes and the one with Vanessa Hudgens got 324,000 likes. With over 30,000 followers Kelsey uses her Instagram (@KelseyMontagueArt) to continue to explore how art can, and should, lift us up on a daily basis. In February 2016 she came out with her first coloring book for adults “What Lifts You” – a continuation of her global campaign.

Joyce Yung, Hong Kong
Joyce's photography focuses on details, colors, emotions, and movements. She is one of the few photographers in Hong Kong to leverage the light painting photography technique. She is fascinated with the ability to capture everything in one long exposure by using different types of light to paint a scene. In doing so, it compresses a specific period of time in one single frame. Her photography style is versatile, spontaneous, and captures the energy of that moment. She also specializes in portraiture and natural lifestyle photography for fashion and commercial work, but she always going to places with her camera ready to capture the moment for her personal projects. Her aesthetics sense and appreciation comes from extensive travel and exposure to different cultures throughout her life. She’s originally from Hong Kong, was born in Japan, and also lived in London, Bangkok, and New York City. She has been published in several magazines, and featured in a few photo exhibitions.
 
Joyce Yung also co-founded Random Art Workshop Media with her husband Derek Ting. RAW Media is a cutting edge strategic global media company engaged in multiple aspects of content production for movies, brands, and corporates, in both traditional and new media. She produced feature films $upercapitalist (Linus Roache, Derek Ting, Richard Ng, Kenneth Tsang), Always (Derek Ting, Danni Wang, Peter Shinkoda, Philip Chan, Ian Buchanan), and most recently completed production to the film Agent. RAW Media has produced for International Brands including Bloomberg, W Hotel, Intercontinental Hotel, Pernod Ricard, Fiji Water, CNN, Earth Hour/WWF, among others. 

Photos of the opening reception