Swirling, Swirling
Hang Zhang + Jun Rui Lo
23 March - 27 April 2025
Open Daily
Threshold is excited to launch its new 2025 programme with
Swirling, Swirling by Hang Zhang (London/Leeds) and Jun Rui Lo (Manchester/Leeds). The exhibition takes place in Threshold’s outdoor gallery space in LS4, Leeds.
The exhibition opens on Saturday 22 March with an opening event between 3 - 6pm. No booking is required, everyone is welcome.
Come, embrace me, whirl us into a storm,
Where kisses stir waves a thousand feet high.
I’ll sink the world along with you,
For my love for you is as vast.
Verse from 漩渦 (Syun4 Wo1) by Cass Pang and Anthony Wong, lyrics by Wyman Wong. Released 2000, Hong Kong.
Hang Zhang and Jun Rui Lo first met in the common room of the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at University of Leeds where they both studied Fine Art and connected over a shared love of 1990s Cantopop music:
We were both surprised to find that we were both fans of 90s-early 2000s Cantopop - especially since I’m from North Mandarin China and Ryan seemed born too late to be into it. Since then, we’ve become best mates, and the poetic and sappy cantopop lyrics often pop into our chats. When feelings are difficult to put into words, we send each other old Cantopop tracks. (Hang Zhang)
漩渦 (Syun4 Wo1) has inspired the title of this exhibition and is a Cantopop song that Zhang and Lo hold dear. 漩渦 (Syun4 Wo1) is about painful love, a common theme in Cantopop lyrics in the early 2000s.
Ryan’s work has constantly reminded me of this song, not only because of the whirlpool-shaped graphics but also because of knowing so well the person behind the practice. We have both been practically researching ‘Swirling Swirling’ by ourselves spiralling through challenging love whirlpools from time to time. (Hang Zhang)
For ‘Swirling Swirling’ Zhang and Lo have brought their work together for the first time, and introduced new materials and techniques including metal fabrication to make sculptures that capture the tension and euphoria of falling in love. The artists are connected by an interest in exploring identity and relationship to place through sculpture. They share a sensitive approach to integrating found objects with trace histories into their sculptural assemblages. Zhang’s often humorous sculptures combine fragments of architecture, craft objects or toys with newly fabricated elements like neon or inflatables. Their sculptures become hybrid installations that weave biographic and fictional narratives with ethnographic research. Lo’s work explores gender and diasporic identity, captured in their elegantly fluid drawings and sculptures that incorporate everyday objects. Lo’s work intentionally taps into painful and beautiful seams of emotion to give form to feelings of melancholy and alienation.
The artists have collaborated on a new neon sculpture that will illuminate the exhibition and be available to purchase as a limited edition through Threshold Editions. This edition depicts the form of a whirlpool – hand-drawn by Lo and translated into neon by Zhang for whom it is a signature material.
‘Swirling Swirling’ is curated by Julia McKinlay.
Later on in the exhibition a limited edition publication will be published that documents the exhibition and weaves in other artworks and texts by the artists and writing by curator and researcher Sunshine Wong. This will be available to buy online through Threshold Editions. Sales from this publication will go towards future commissioning at Threshold.
More information about the artists:
Hang Zhang
Hang Zhang (b. Tianjin) is a Chinese artist and researcher based between London and Leeds. Her practice explores the intersections of place, beings and stigma, and focuses on social and species constructions viewed through the lens of inequality.
As a full-time immigrant/part-time migrant, a borderline woman/non-binary person, and a background straddling both working- and middle-class environments, Zhang investigates her own experiences of social alienation and that ever-familiar lost sense of belonging. Her practice often balances three critical methodologies: ethnography, field research, and fictional narrative. These methodologies artefact utopian or dystopian scapes that blend realities and imagination, encouraging audiences to re-evaluate their feelings towards the world they live in and how they fit (or don’t fit) within it.
Zhang is a practice-led PhD candidate at the University of Leeds, her project investigating the cultural images of South American camelids and how their cultural roles have evolved under colonisation and globalisation. Zhang gained a BA in Fine Art in 2021 and MA in Fine Art in 2022, from University of Leeds.
In 2023, she was awarded the British Institutional Fund by the Royal Academy of Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include: Hangover Square, (The Florence Trust, London, 2025) and Through the Party Ring (The Art House, Wakefield, 2022-2023). Recent group exhibitions include: ING Discerning Eye Exhibition, (Mall Galleries, London, 2024); Air Open, (Air Gallery, Manchester, 2024); Total Recall: Myth and Memory, (Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, 2023); NAE Open, (New Art Exchange, Nottingham, 2023).
@hangzhang.art
www.hangzhang.hotglue
https://hangzhang.art/
Jun Rui Lo
Jun Rui Lo (b. Hong Kong) is an artist and curator based between Leeds and Manchester. Lo gained a BA in Fine Art from the University of Leeds in 2024.
Approaching art as an emotional response, Jun Rui Lo’s work explores identity politics and the aesthetics of ambiguity.
As a non-binary individual from Hong Kong living and working in the United Kingdom, the interrogation of queer and diasporic identity forms the foundation of Lo’s practice. Influenced by queer theory which advocates for gender and sexual non-conformity and freedom from normative tendencies, their work pursues the fluidity of identity and attempts to give tangibility to feelings of melancholy, alienation, and rootlessness.
Recent solo exhibitions include Ashes in Your Eyes (Haarlem Artspace, Derbyshire, 2025) and A Nostalgia Akin to Love (Village, Leeds, 2024). Recent two-person and group exhibitions include Moments That May Follow (Serf, Leeds, 2025), A Pocket Full of Plenty (Hypha Gallery Netil House, London, 2025), Tracing Connections (Manchester School of Art, Manchester, 2024), Welcome to the UK (Ugly Duck, London, 2024), and Sacred Play Secret Place (East Street Arts Patrick Studios, Leeds, 2024).
@ryanmoyii_
https://lojunrui.com/