Over Mountain Over Sea

6 Sep 2025 - 23 Nov 2025

SOUTH HO SIU NAM

[ OPENING ]
6 Sep 2025, Sat | 6pm – 8pm

[ DIALOGUE ]
South Ho, in conversation with KY, founder of Blank Canvas
7 Sep 2025, Sun | 2pm

The dialogue session will be conducted in Cantonese, with English translation provided.

RSVP via our WhatsApp

Two island cities, surrounded by sea, punctuated by mountains – Hong Kong and Penang are related yet distinct, familiar yet strange, close yet distant.

Over Mountain Over Sea explores this gap which connects and separates the two cities. In a body of work created for Blank Canvas’s new home at Lorong Soo Hong in George Town, South Ho Siu Nam, known for his gentle yet perceptive photographs of his hometown Hong Kong, turns his eye on the streets, hills and waters of Penang.

Approaching George Town as a flâneur – a wanderer, walking the streets with a photographer’s eye – he investigates the character of the island in broad strokes and fine detail. But he is also a traveller, a Hongkonger, and in each image he finds echoes of his own home.

Alongside photography and video, South Ho ventures into new mediums for this exhibition with tin sculptures and a kinetic installation. A Datuk Gong shrine is reimagined as a set of painted bamboo blinds and tin pineapples, rearranging the iconography of Penang’s living cultural symbols into something both familiar and new.

For us Penangites, Over Mountain Over Sea invites us to look at our hometown through Hong Kong eyes, to become aware of what is constant and what is changing, what is shared and what is unique, what is said and what is left unsaid.

A dusky leaf monkey watches the sun play on the water from a rooftop on Penang Hill, with Gurney Drive and its land reclamation before her. Somewhere invisibly over the horizon, Victoria Harbour and the Peak gaze back.

ABOUT Artist

South Ho Siu Nam’s (b. 1984, Hong Kong) artistic practice is centered around photography, a point of departure from which he delves into other mediums including mixed-media, performance, and video. His photographs integrate drawing and painterly interventions, imbued with personal reflections and observations. These works transcend mere documentation, being emotive, introspective, and conceptual. Ho’s works coalesce individual and collective consciousness surrounding place and time, unfurling his ongoing dialogue with the city he calls home.  

Ho’s works have been exhibited at international institutions including M+ (Hong Kong, 2024), Chinese Cultural Center of San Francisco (San Francisco, 2023), Saatchi Gallery (London,2023), Para Site (Hong Kong, 2023), Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (Taipei, 2021), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, 2020), Asia Society (Hong Kong, 2019), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, 2018), Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (Hong Kong, 2018), Museum Folkwang (Essen, 2015), Casal Solleric (Palma de Mallorca, 2015) and Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Yamanashi, 2014), among others. Ho has recently participated in the 8th Yokohama Triennale 2024.  

In 2022, Ho co-founded NewPark, as a revamp of 100 ft. PARK, a non-commercial art space that he runs with Billy HC Kwok and researcher Michelle W T Wong, seeking to instigate conversations. In 2009, he was awarded the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial Awards. His work is collected by the Burger Collection (Hong Kong), M+ (Hong Kong), Hong Kong Heritage Museum, the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (USA) and Vancouver Art Gallery (Canada). Publications by Ho include Space and Energy (commissioned by Tai Kwun Contemporary, 2017), good day good night (2015), and Every Daily (2013).  

Ho currently lives and works in Hong Kong.

Website: https://sixsixho.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southho66/

The Artist

Past Shows

Current Show