AGNES WONG   FOREVER GIFT SHOP: I LOVE FOREVER POP UP                                                


Childhood nostalgia meets familiar kitsch in Agnes Wong’s FOREVER GIFT SHOP: I LOVE FOREVER. Inspired by a desire to grasp the intangible, Wong mines memories of people and places, imagined and real, with her handcrafted souvenirs. In (re)creating sentimental versions of everyday objects—jewellery, postcards, key chains, stickers—Wong exaggerates the intimacy and love in the commonplace, merging recollections of the past with thoughts and feelings of the present and future. In this contemplation of the elusive “forever”, Wong finds her aesthetic and conceptual home in attempts to signify infinity in objects.

Transience, too, is central to Wong’s explorations. Made partly in collaboration with loved ones, the pieces of FOREVER GIFT SHOP give viewers a glimpse into the artist’s personal world and intimate collaborations; each souvenir gestures beyond the threshold of the exhibition to that elsewhere existing solely in Wong’s memory. The work is situated at the intersection between curation, installation, and multiple. More a collection than standalone pieces, the objects are entirely contextualised in proximity and relation to each other. Questioning how do we experience an exhibition?, Wong invites people to recollect her fabricated world by taking a piece of the gift shop with them—a literal keepsake of Wong’s conceptual ones. Thus, FOREVER GIFT SHOP mirrors the mutability of time, changing whenever a viewer claims a keepsake for themselves. 

At once a gallery, a pop-up shop, a treasure trove, and a memory, FOREVER GIFT SHOP: I LOVE FOREVER is a proclamation of love for everything, everywhere, all the time, forever.

Curatorial text written by Levi DeCoste

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Learn more about Forever Gift Shop here.

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Alongside her exhibition, Agnes Wong hosted I HOPE IMAGES AND VIDEOS WILL LOVE ME BACK, FOREVER—a screening about collecting images and videos online. The experimental yet unserious selection of short videos and images were lovingly handpicked by Wong from an ongoing collection that has accumulated over years of being perpetually online. Collaborator and friend Lisa Oiwa gave attendees temporary tattoos from a flash she designed inspired by FOREVER GIFT SHOP.
Poster designed by Agnes Wong.
   
 



 

Poster designed by Agnes Wong.