RoCH Fans & Legends is an exhibition of new commissioned work by susan pui san lok, featuring single-screen and multi-screen moving image film works and animations for the gallery and online. This new work draws on fan uploads of over forty different media adaptations of The Condor Trilogy, a classic ‘new wuxia’ epic published in the late fifties by Hong Kong-based author Louis Cha (aka Jin Yong). RoCH stands for ‘Return of the Condor Heroes’. Wuxia is a distinct genre of Chinese fiction, television and cinema concerning the adventures of male and female ‘knight errants’, martial artists, heroes and warriors, usually featuring fantasy and swordplay. RoCH explores some of the genre’s fantasies, landscapes, and archetypes, the trilogy’s numerous translations across popular culture, and recurring images of weightlessness.

RoCH is commissioned by QUAD and the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA), in partnership with Animate Projects and the University of Salford. RoCH will launch at QUAD with a limited edition artist book. The project will then tour to CFCCA as part of their 30th anniversary programme. The solo exhibition at CFCCA will be accompanied by a richly illustrated e-publication, featuring commissioned texts by Chris Berry, Alice Ming-Wai Jim, Jean Hui Ng, Marquard Smith, Wenny Teo, Henry Tsang, Luke White, and Andy Willis.

RoCH Fans & Legends is supported using public funding by Arts Council England, with additional funding from Middlesex University and University of Salford. susan pui san lok’s work ranges across installation, moving image, sound, performance and text, evolving out of interests in notions of nostalgia and aspiration, place and migration, translation and diaspora. https://susanpuisanlok.wordpress.com/