Numbers carry meaning in this work. In Chinese, 4 sounds like death and 3 like life, opposites that cannot exist without each other. And 4 + 3 = 7, a week. In Western culture, 7 is lucky. East and West arrive at the same number from entirely different directions. The rituals we repeat daily and weekly, a coffee, a tea, a meal, a memory, are how we hold onto where we came from.

Yuenyeung 43 is a series of 43 handmade papers made from post-consumption materials: used coffee grounds, tea leaves, milk and sandwich bags marked with dates and tallies from daily café routines. These everyday remnants become quiet records of labour, time and nostalgia. By giving new life to the discarded, the work invites reflection on material memory, sustainability and how environmental awareness can begin with the smallest, most overlooked traces of daily life.

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Yuenyeung 43 was first created for Coffee & SerendipiTea, Bankstown Arts Centre, 2024.

Subsequently shown in Fading Glow, Blank Gallery, Sydney, 2025, with an additional sound element recorded in a cha chaan teng by a friend.

Shown as a finalist in the Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design Prize, Manly Art Gallery and Museum, 2025, with six brown sandwich paper bags on the ground, each holding coffee beans and tea leaves.

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