The Worlds of Lowe Kong Meng and Jong Ah Siug, 2015

Digital prints on photographic paper and chalk on blackboard-painted archival cotton paper plus two single thread hand-sewn embroideries

49 works, 320 x 1350 cm overall

1866 THE WORLDS OF LOWE KONG MENG AND JONG AH SIUG
Boroondara City Council Collection
Arc One Gallery, Melbourne, 11 March - 11 April 2015
The Lives of Celestials, Town Hall Gallery, Boroondara, 31 August - 20 October 2019

In the mid-1800s, two young men arrived in the colony of Victoria to seek their fortune in the goldfields. Lowe Kong Meng (Liu Guangming 劉光明, 1831-1888) was an educated Chinese-Malaysian merchant from Penang, Malaysia, who at 22 years of age arrived speaking four languages. Jong Ah Siug (c. 1837–1900) was an illiterate miner, aged 18, who landed following an arduous boat journey from Zhongshan, Southern China. By 1866, the paths of these two migrants had diverged dramatically. Lowe Kong Meng had risen to become one of the colony’s powerful elite, owner of a fleet of trading ships, active in Australian politics and a board member of the Commercial Bank of Australia, now Westpac, whilst remaining connected to the Qing dynasty as an overseas Chinese. In contrast, Jong Ah Siug had been sentenced to 33 years of incarceration in the Yarra Bend and Sunbury lunatic asylums following a violent altercation with a fellow miner, where he remained until his death in 1900 despite his longstanding attempts at self-exoneration.

Young presents these two distinct poles of experience in order to conceptualise the parameters of life for Chinese Australians in the 19th Century in a manner that challenges the dominant perception of Chinese migrants during this period as caricatures of abject miners or market gardeners.