I believe bunny will be—there from 8 to 9 (2011)

I believe bunny will be - there from 8 to 9 is a series of photographs taken during a ritual I set to search for a bunny between 8am to 9am in April 2011 at the Necropolis in Glasgow. The ritual was undertaken in response to a coincidence on Easter Monday, where my sighting of a bunny at the Necropolis coincided with news that a friend contracted cancer. At that point, I had a strong belief that the appearance of the bunny during my search would be a sign that my friend would live.

During the search for the bunny, there were moments where I had imagined seeing a bunny. These proved to be stones, or patches of white, which I took photographs of. I gave up the ritual after three days, feeling by then that my belief was unfounded and ludicrous.

An encounter with Wallace Stevens’ poem, “A rabbit as king of the ghost” altered my memory of what I went through. Similar to the rabbit in his poem that mentally transforms the cat from a “monument” into a “little green cat” and a “bug in the grass”, it was my imagination, based on hope, that led me to visualise the bunny. The natural environment, from the luxuriantly green grass to the fresh and crisp air was also another way for me to immerse in the experience, similar to how the rabbit in Stevens’ poem inhabited the “full” grass and “wideness of night”.

Layered with Stevens’ poem, the photographs that previously recorded a shift towards disenchantment, now represent for me a search of hope, imagination and experience of nature.

Presented as:

Photographs and text on wall -

Graduate Show

Master of Research in Creative Practices

The Glasgow School of Art

10 - 11 September 2011

Image slideshow -

Open Studio: Magdalen Chua

Artist-in-Residence at Studio Haegue Yang

Schönleinstrasse 15A, 10967 Berlin

9 - 11 April 2014