About project Air Hunter

The anchor point for Wei Weng’s lates exhibition Air Hunter is a photograph taken inside a hot air balloon at dusk. Titled The Pace Of Ambition, this encounter in near darkness likens her own perception of ambition, at that point in time, to the invisible flow of ambition, inflating within a snoozing carrier.

Sticking to this airborne delight, for her first solo project in Melbourne, the artist dedicates Air Hunter to a fictional French botanist Dr. Elyas N. Jean-Baptiste. At Void_Melbourne gallery, Wei transforms locally sourced hot air balloon envelopes into old fashioned heiresses, she re-appropriates from museum digital archive details of a Japanese makie-e lacquerware lectern from the Edo era, she plots a new garden variety out of lacquered paper maché, and she adorns locally sourced building materials with transformed eggshell configurations.

A month after the launch of Air Hunter at Void_Melbourne gallery (July 2024), in August 2024 the artist extends her study of botany, heiresses and lacquer history to create new site specific installation at Kyoto RPS Gallery. During this two-weeks residency the artist works in close collaboration with curator Yumi Goto, developing exhibition and publication material for The Heir Hunter Office.

As a cross pollination between people, exhibition spaces and cities, both projects Air Hunter and The Heir Hunter Office follow the beast of ambition that sometimes simmer in the dark, and according to the artist as she moves between cities in pursue of the Air Hunter, she sheds light on the life forces that link human ambition, inheritance and migration.