Slide into memory i
Painting, 100x150cm, 2025
 
Artwork Statement
Slide into memory I presents an empty playground suspended between memory and reality. Through saturated pink, purple, and blue tones, the familiar structure becomes emotionally distant and dream-like. The central ramp suggests movement without a fixed destination, holding the viewer between childhood and adulthood, presence and absence, belonging and estrangement. Within In Between, the work reflects how familiar places can hold multiple emotional states, and how the self may change even when the environment appears unchanged.
 
Artist Bio
Kenneth Yu is a Hong Kong-born artist based in Melbourne. His practice explores liminal spaces, nostalgia, urban isolation, and the uncanny atmosphere of transitional environments. Through painting, Yu depicts empty cinemas, playgrounds, alleyways, and abandoned commercial spaces, using vivid colour and deep shadow to evoke memory, displacement, and emotional tension. His work reflects on how familiar places become strange when emptied of people, carrying traces of personal history and decay.