Picnics & Parties

Parties and Picnics is about the escapist pleasures of consumption and intoxication. It depicts the ‘artificial paradise’, to quote the Decadent poet Baudelaire, of alcohol, cigarettes, food, and companionship, but also that of clashing patterns, lurid colours, and iridescent hues. The decorative becomes ‘drunk’, the ornamental detail dissolves into frenetic daubs, and artifice blends decadently with sensuality. Building up layers over several months, Wong works oil paint, oil pastel, and fluorescent pigments with brushes and her hands, combining hazy, fizzy scribbles with more lush, exuberant passages of paint. She cites Intimist painter Bonnard as a key influence, an artist who worked slowly and tactilely to ‘recover the savour of things’ — to relish a singular moment, extracting the magical and sensorial from the banal. Ultimately, in an age of decisiveness and efficiency, Wong opts for a protracted, indulgent process that favours an aesthetic of luxuriance and excess.