MLitt Fine Art Practice School of Fine Art
Xiaotong Xiong
Through the fissures of urban forgetting, Xiaotong’s work reveals the texture of time with an archaeological sensibility. Using techniques such as frottage, painting, and sculptural casting, she traces erased streets and fragmented surfaces, transforming them into a fictional archive of memory. Weathered maps, crumbling walls, and scattered ceramic shards become more than material residues—they speak of absent narratives and fractures in collective history.
This body of work continues her long-term project Wornstone Lane, situated within a speculative framework that blurs the boundary between fact and fiction. Sampling urban surfaces, questioning systems of temporal control, and mourning erased places, the artist invites us to consider: when memory is erased, can ruins still speak?
Fragments I
This series consists of eighteen terracotta fragments, cast from the surfaces of urban backstreets. Each piece captures a tactile imprint of forgotten lanes—setts, asphalt, and cement pressed into clay, fired into fossil-like records. Arranged in grids, they evoke an archaeological rhythm, suggesting that even the most mundane cracks contain layered time. These fragments are not just remnants, but indices of a city’s eroded skin and memory.
Relief Series
In this triptych of 30×30cm mixed media works, texture becomes both subject and language. Layers of stone clay and pigment form subtle reliefs, echoing traces of moss, rust, and mildew on city walls. These images do not depict specific places, but rather conjure the atmospheric presence of forgotten spaces. The tactile surfaces invite viewers to sense, not to identify—to dwell in the mood, not the map.
Paintings
Comprising two 60×100cm paintings and one 97×140cm canvas, this body of work explores the affective weathering of urban surfaces. Pigment washes seep into handmade paper, creating mist-like stains and corroded hues that evoke neglected walls and rusted textures. These works offer no central narrative; instead, they drift between abstraction and architecture, between presence and disappearance. They ask: What is left behind when a place is erased?
St Vincent Lane
These three large-scale fabric rubbings were created at the beginning of my project, marking my initial, direct physical engagement with the urban textures of Glasgow. Conducted during late-night walks, these rubbings capture the cracks, bumps, stones, and traces of moss embedded in the street surface. They serve both as records of material time and as a way for me to build an intimate connection with the city. The works embody my early exploration of concepts such as Genius Loci and Topophilia, and laid the groundwork for my later fictional projects.
Wornstone Lane
This photolithographic map originates from my fictional urban archive Wornstone Lane. Within the narrative, this area—codenamed Zone Moon—has been erased from official records after its residents refused to conform to the national time regime. The map shows streets that are redacted, blurred or manually reconstructed, simulating a censored governmental document. The use of reddish-brown ink evokes oxidation, rust, and temporal erosion, making the print appear both archival and speculative. It questions the objectivity of cartography and the mechanisms by which state power edits memory.
