Biography
Eric Fong’s practice is driven by his interest in the juncture between art, science and technology, informed by his knowledge and experience as a former medical doctor. He works in a range of media, including film, photography, sculpture and installation.
Fong’s process is often interdisciplinary and collaborative, involving in-depth engagement with his collaborators and extensive research into the subject. As a result, his work shows an empathic observation of and a sensitive response to the subject and the people he works with. The topics he has explored include mental illness, disfigurement, blindness, and the phantom limb phenomenon. More recently, he has been immersed in the field of forensic anthropology and crime scene investigation, working with forensic anthropologists at two UK universities. In addition to archive research, he attended lectures, seminars and workshops in laboratories and off-site locations. Inspired by film noir, black and white crime scene photographs from mid-century police archives, and insight gained from his research and collaboration, his recent works are dark and haunting, and examine traces of physical presence, markers of absence and loss, and entropy.
Fong’s current projects include developing a new body of work inspired by an archive of glass plate negatives of portraits of patients in Victorian mental asylums, and an artist residency in collaboration with forensics psychologists from the 21st Century Transnational Crime theme at the Institute for Global Innovation, University of Birmingham.
Fong has exhibited his work across the UK and internationally, including Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York; Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest; EAST International, Norwich; Exposure Photography Festival, Contemporary Calgary; Royal Academy of Art Summer Exhibition, London Group Open, Shape Open and Creekside Open, London; Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester; Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto; and numerous international short film festivals.
Fong has works in private and public collections, including Arts Council England Collection, The Lightbox Gallery, Woking and York University, Toronto. He was selected as one of the top 125 artists for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2021 and included in the Future Now anthology. He has received exhibition prizes awarded by Victoria Miro at Creekside Open and by Yinka Shonibare MBE at Shape Open, London. He is also a recipient of grants from Arts Council England, British Council and Leverhulme Trust.
