Hong Kong artists, Kingsley Ng and Stephanie Cheung transform everyday materials into poetic, sensory experiences, exploring themes of migration, belonging and connection. This project is an evolution of their earlier installation Over The Ocean, which premiered in Hong Kong in 2017.

The participatory activity will begin in June 2025, when Kingsley and Stephanie will visit Portsmouth during Refugee Week and work with 432-Nomads to collect ocean-related stories from local communities. These will then be shaped into an immersive installation at Portsmouth Historic Quarter’s Boathouse 5 later in the year.

Visitors to the installation will tune in to true stories of those who have travelled thousands of miles to call Portsmouth home, listening, reading and imagining these journeys and setting off their own candle-lit paper boats in a microscopic ocean. As these little boats cross paths on illuminated waves and touch off resounding notes, people from all walks of life share a moment of togetherness. Beyond spectacle, the work will be a space for diverse communities to come together for art-mediated conversations.

This site-responsive work builds on an artistic dialogue that began in Hong Kong, when our Artistic Director Rachel first connected with them through a UK / Hong Kong arts exchange trip. Their exploratory visit to the Solent region in 2023 further deepened the collaboration, as they engaged with local sites and histories to inform the project’s development.

A Sea of Words for Portsmouth is part of the planned 432-Nomads Our Sanctuary: Ocean of Voices programme and the Portsmouth Creates In Our Words literacy celebration. It is being developed in partnership with 432-Nomads and Portsmouth Historic Quarter and in association with Portsmouth Creates, Portsmouth City Council, Aspex Portsmouth and the Sustainable Conservation Trust.

This project forms part of Crying Out Loud’s Solent Cultural Collaborations and Solent Stories programmes.