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Pak Sheung Chuen
Making Thousands of Suns
2010
vinyl, wooden shelf and books
Making Thousands of Suns
is an installation that emerged from an invitation from MAAP for
artist Pak Sheung Chuen to take part in a Brisbane residency. In the first stage of the project, Pak
studied the State Library of Queensland, responding to the site, architecture, social environment
and internal systems of the institution. Two features of the library in particular piqued the artist’s
interest. One was the social and artistic potential of the interlibrary loans system, wherein public
libraries across Queensland are able to exchange collections with the State Library. The other was
the interplay of light in the library’s Red Box reading room – a window-wrapped space that nearly
hovers over the Brisbane River.
In a poetic gesture quintessential to the artist’s practice, Pak sought to cast ‘thousands’ of suns
into the library, using the sun as a source in a number of ways. As a starting point, Pak engaged
public librarians across Queensland to contribute to his large-scale montage of book covers
featuring images of the sun. The books were delivered to the State Library of Queensland via the
interlibrary loans system, and later displayed as part of the work. The ellipses of his sun-montage
were then rendered as the negative space of a window sticker, allowing light to permeate and
create an array of sun-shapes on the floor below. In Brisbane, the work was featured on the bright
