Overview

Minor Attractions returns for its third edition taking place from the 14-18 October 2025. This year's event will feature 50+ international and domestic galleries alongside an extensive nightlife, performance, and events programme.

 

ai. will be presenting works by Woo Jin Joo (b. 1995, Korea; living in London) and WeiXin Quek Chong (b.1984, Singapore; living in Madrid).

 

Location

The Mandrake Hotel, 20-21 Newman St., W1T 1PG

 

Opening times 

Tuesday, October 14: VIP Opening | 12-8 pm 

Tuesday, October 14: Opening Night Party | 9-11 pm (General Admission)

Wednesday, October 15: General Admission | 12-8 pm

Thursday, October 16: General Admission | 12-8 pm

Friday, October 17: General Admission | 12-8 pm

Saturday, October 18: General Admission | 12-6 pm

 

To preview list of works: info@a-i-gallery.com

Press release

Woo Jin Joo — The Plaice Man and Three-headed Fish

From the ongoing series 水神 Water Deities

 

In The Plaice Man and Three-headed Fish, artist Woo Jin Joo embarks on a mythopoetic journey that elevates marine life into the divine. Through intricate embroidery and storytelling, this diptych presents hybrid sea creatures as deities—beings of reverence and ritual—within a new pantheon of ecological myth.

 

Part of an ongoing series, 水神 Water Deities, the works explore how myth, ecology, and folklore intertwine. Joo draws inspiration from the Korean colour theory of obangsaek (오방색), the traditional five-directional colour spectrum rooted in East Asian philosophy. The use of deep blue, vibrant red, golden yellow, white, and green is not merely aesthetic—it imbues the embroidered forms with elemental and spiritual resonance. Each colour traditionally represents a cardinal direction and natural element (wood, fire, earth, metal, water), reinforcing the divine status of these oceanic beings and situating them within a cosmological framework.

 

The flattened, ornamental forms and saturated surfaces echo religious iconography while disrupting naturalistic representation. The Plaice Man, a characteristic oval-shaped flatfish with speckled markings assumes the position of a head which sits on the shoulders of a human body, while Three-headed Fish—part serpent, part chimera—unfurls across a backdrop of stylized waves and sky. These beings, while fantastical, speak to the very real reverence we might rediscover for life beneath the surface.

 

Joo’s series proposes a speculative ecology—one where forgotten or overlooked marine life is reimagined as central to our spiritual and cultural consciousness. Through tactile freehand embroidery and symbolic precision, Water Deities offers a reckoning with nature’s divinity in the age of ecological crisis.

 

About the artist

WOO JIN JOO (b. 1995, Korea; living in London) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work delves into the boundaries of human perception, drawing from mythology, folklore, shamanism, and alternative modes of knowing. Her practice is that of myth-making, where even the most mundane interactions can harbour potential for meaning and transformation. Traditional symbols, characters, stories, and rituals are told and re-imagined in her work, whilst newly conjured imageries, bodies, and forms challenge our perception. Joo's artistic practice is guided by her background in textiles and craft.

 

Joo graduated with an MA in Mixed Media Textiles from Royal College of Arts, London (2021). She has exhibited internationally with ai. gallery at Untitled Miami (2024), play at Ruup & Form (2024), Geen Woorden Maar Draden at Wereldmuseum, Rotterdam (2023) amongst other exhibitions. Upcoming group shows: Myths, Dreams and New Realities at Saatchi Gallery (24 October -  30 November 2025) and New Generation Open Call at Korean Cultural Centre, London (27 November - 27 February 2025). Joo is a Cockpit Bagri Award holder (2023) and Elephant Trust Award holder (2023). Her work is held in the public collection at the V&A Museum, London.

 
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WeiXin Quek Chong - Grub Dreams
 
Grub Dreams, 2024 (8m00sec) by WeiXin Quek Chong will be screened as part of Minor Attractions Moving Image Programme. Date & time TBA.  In the artist’s tightly framed work, the material, latex, operates as a screen. Text is interspersed with the imagery of a pair of seemingly disembodied arms which are sealed in vacuum bondage. These arms endowed with agency: the hands touch and gently caress, stretch and contort the latex material creating folds and swellings that visibly articulate their presence. 

‘In the state of deep slumber’

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‘Liquifying sleep’

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‘Ghost limbs twitch’

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‘Paralysed in crossfire’

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About the artist

WEIXIN QUEK CHONG (b. 1988, Singapore) is a visual artist known to work with image, objects, audiovisual, and at times, performative elements to play with perception and tantalise the senses. 

 

Chong received her MA from the Royal College of Art,London, and her BA (Hons) from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. She works between Madrid, Singapore and London, and has exhibited extensively. She currently has a solo exhibition with ai. titled moulting pangs (22 September - 25 November 2025). Recent exhibitions include: shedding:::selves, group show, Queer East Festival, London (2024); La Casa Generación 2024, group show, showcasing commissioned works by winners of XXIV edition of Generaciones, Madrid (2024); and Gestures of Resistance, group show, ai. x LINSEED Projects, London (2023). Chong has also been chosen for several residencies including Holstebro Dansekompagni, Denmark in 2024, De Singl Arts Centre, Antwerp in 2023 and, Grey Project, MMCA Goyang, Korea in 2022. Chong’s upcoming residency at Singapore Art Museum will begin October 2025 and her first public sculpture commission will be unveiled during Singapore Art Week in January 2026.

Works