Trevor Yeung’s work has always been about control, he says – and plants. The artist, who describes himself as a horticulturalist, links these concerns to a secret fish tank he kept as a child, and later to the carnivorous plants he grew at university because pets were forbidden in his student accommodation. ‘I learned how important it was to provide the right conditions to sustain life,’ Yeung recalls in his Hong Kong studio, which is filled with palms, small trees, and shrubs. ‘Being aware of this power started to shape me.’

Yeung made his first plant work in 2011, just after graduation: an installation designed to grow a Venus flytrap, which requires a lot of attention, he’s quick to mention, since they’re picky about water and deplete their finite energy reserves whenever their jaws open and snap shut. Cutely titled I could be a good boyfriend, the plant was housed in a bell jar, which encased the microcosm Yeung produced for life to grow while highlighting his containment of that life as a result. Care thus transforms into authority or guardianship, depending on your perspective. That tension charges Yeung’s work, which isn’t about plants so much as it is about living within relational systems – something the artist will explicitly explore in his first institutional show in the UK, slated to open at London’s Gasworks on September 28, 2023.

‘Soft Ground’ revolves around the so-called fuck tree in London’s Hampstead Heath, a historic cruising spot that George Michael apparently frequented. In a woodland clearing, an oak has grown horizontally before curving upwards into a cobra stretch, making it such a perfect sex bench that sections of bark have been buffed due to its use for that purpose. Extending from the artist’s 2022 London residency at the Delfina Foundation, when Yeung cast a part of the tree’s surface into a stainless-steel slab titled Rubbed by tummy (naked) (2022), ‘Soft Ground’ will present a creamy soap cast of the tree infused with aromas of oak, musk, soil, and moss.

Smell is a defining element in the show, calling back to The Helping Hand, a misting machine Yeung installed in the Cruising Pavilion exhibition during the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, which vaporized eucalyptus oil in homage to the fragrances gay bathhouses deploy to mask bodily odors. ‘The exhibition is dark, so it relies on scent, because that’s what cruising is,’ Yeung explains. ‘When you go to the woods at night your vision is limited, so senses are heightened.’ Amplifying this sensory intensification are the painted walls, whose tones will be muted by the room’s only light source: a moonlight heat lamp used to recreate night conditions in a reptilian vivarium. ‘The idea is that your perception can be manipulated because you can’t be sure of their actual color,’ says Yeung. Hence, the title of this wall painting series: ‘Gaslighting’.

‘I’m interested in destroying the meaning of symbols, because when people read artworks, they often read them as metaphors,’ the artist continues, which is somewhat surprising given how plants function metaphorically across his practice. Take Suspended Mr Cuddles (2019), which uses yellow and blue ratchet straps to horizontally suspend a money tree – five Pachira aquatica trees braided together ­– in reference to the 2018 ‘Super Typhoon’ Mangkhut that brought Hong Kong to a standstill. Or Mr. Cuddles Under the Eave (2021), which responds to the experience of Covid lockdowns with 13 money trees hung from the ceiling with straps to loosely form an upside-down pyramid.

Referring to events stemming from the natural world that forced people into isolation, these installations highlight the inescapable causality that binds humans with nature, which the money tree parallels in its mortal coil. Tied together by human hands to grow as one, each pachira has found itself within a closed loop, after all. ‘The way they are bonded is beautiful,’ Yeung muses, ‘but imagine: as each trunk grows thicker they start to press down on each other, and if one dies the rest go with it. It’s a disaster.’ In that respect, there are echoes of Mr Cuddles in ‘Soft Ground’ – even if, as Yeung clarifies, this project is about a specific oak rather than oaks generally, because the artist’s plant metaphors always return to the plants themselves.

‘Think about what the fuck tree has experienced, being pressed down for years,’ Yeung continues. ‘Of course, we’re not the tree and it could be perfectly happy, but you can see it’s kind of falling apart.’ To center this fragility is why Yeung cast the tree in soap, which wears away with every rub. For the artist, the tree demonstrates how desire turns into physical form, which connects to his interest in creating the conditions for plants to grow. By foregrounding the fuck tree’s vulnerability as a living entity, ‘Soft Ground’ challenges audiences to grapple with the implications of that consideration in a world where human actions shape environments. While it’s impossible to ask plants for consent, to suggest they are owed that concern unravels the illusion that humans are entitled to use nature as they please.

Maybe that’s what Yeung meant about destroying symbols, because monolithic abstractions obscure the muddy complexities of life on the ground. This relational awareness extends to the queer culture the artist has referenced since his 2016 exhibition at Magician Space in Beijing, ‘The Dark Room That Is Not Dark’. Drawing from a visit to a gay bathhouse in Sydney, where he wore a staff T-shirt to define his position as an observer, Yeung opened the show with The Locker Room (2016). T-shirts with ‘staff’ printed on them (Staff, 2016) were placed within some of the installation’s mirrored cabinets. Whoever wore them could access hidden spaces, thus replicating Yeung’s experience of maintaining a paradoxically intimate distance from within the sauna’s working structure – a different kind of cruising.

Yeung also kept to himself at the fuck tree. ‘People don’t believe me,’ he says, ‘but why should going to a cruising site mean that something has to happen?’ The artist is quick to note that he’s not against cruising. ‘The thing is, the LGBTQ community is a minority but some people in that community are the majority, so when it comes to queer culture, I think about what doesn’t get said.’ Embodying the unspoken in ‘Soft Ground’ is the fuck tree, a voiceless entity whose sculptural representation functions as both an interface and mirror. ‘In traditional Chinese painting and poetry, we project our emotions onto the landscape,’ Yeung points out. ‘It’s never just a landscape you’re seeing but your interpretation of it.’

Yeung makes space for these interpretations across his installations, with spatial choreographies that have their roots in Seven Gentlemen (2012). That exhibition debuted Yeung’s second ever plant work, of seven butterfly palms positioned on rotating stands to cast shadows in a gold, purple, and green lit room clouded by moss and buttermilk mist. Later recomposed into Mr. butterflies at a waiting corridor (2020), Yeung likens the installation to a gallery opening and the anxieties of being in a space where looking comes with being looked at. But rather than magnify that unease, Yeung sees Mr. Butterflies as ‘a space that trees would probably really like’ and where introverts can comfortably interact. ‘You can mingle, but don’t have to talk,’ he notes. ‘You can intentionally engage with your body, whether moving between plants or hiding behind them.’

That invitation to comfortably engage is reflected in the lamp that will illuminate ‘Soft Ground’ with the same glow defining Yeung’s ongoing ‘Night Mushroom Colon’ series, which turns mushroom night-lights into luminous sculptural growths. ‘That work is about being comfortable alone in new environments,’ the artist explains, since ‘a night light offers security in strange places.’ Light thus provides relief in a literal and figurative darkness that magnifies the reality that, to quote Yeung, ‘we are all alone’ – a commonly singular and often unexpressed solitude that gets to the heart of the artist’s concerns.

‘Something I believe in strongly is how fragile we all are, and how protective we are of our own souls. But while we speak about care, we don’t place much importance on creating safe spaces to express or feel our deepest emotions,’ Yeung concludes, hinting at what might transpire when the artist represents Hong Kong at the Venice Biennale in 2024. ‘Addressing these issues has become very important to me.’

Trevor Yeung is represented by Blindspot Gallery (Hong Kong), and Galerie Allen (Paris).

Stephanie Bailey is Art Basel’s Conversations Curator, Art Basel Hong Kong, as well as the Art Basel Content Advisor and Editor, Asia.

‘Soft ground’ will be on view at London’s Gasworks from September 28, 2023 to December 17, 2023. The exhibition is commissioned and produced by Gasworks, London in partnership with Para Site, Hong Kong and Aranya Art Center, Qinhuangdao, with the generous support of the Henry Moore Foundation and Blindspot Gallery. 

‘Soft ground’ will be on view at Para Site during the 2024 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong. 

Published on August 21, 2023.

Caption for full-bleed images: 1. Installation view of Trevor Yeung, seven gentlemen at HARDNECK.hk, Hong Kong, 2012. Courtesy of the artist. 2. Installation view of Trevor Yeung, Mr. Cuddles Under the Eave at Art Basel Hong Kong 2023 Encounters, 2021. Photograph by South Ho. Courtesy of the artist and Blindspot Gallery. 3. Trevor Yeung, Mr. butterflies at a waiting corridor, 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Blindspot Gallery.