Falling into the Water

Falling into the Water (2024) is a multi-colour etching printed on Somerset paper, the heavy mould-made cotton sheet long associated with the Royal College of Art's print studios where Wong took her M.A. The shift from single-plate monochrome work — the dominant register of her 2024 HKOP catalogue — to colour intaglio marks a discrete development in her practice. Multi-colour etching is achieved either through sequential printing from multiple plates registered to the sheet, or by à la poupée inking, in which different colours are dabbed into separate areas of a single plate before each pull; either method demands tight registration and a planned tonal scheme. The title proposes a moment of immersion or descent, and intaglio is unusually suited to such subjects because the embossed plate mark and the wiped plate tone together suggest a surface — the page becomes the water meeting the figure. Within the wider body of work, the print signals Wong's willingness to move beyond the deep blacks of straight etching toward the more diffuse, atmospheric possibilities of layered colour, while keeping the small-format intimacy that defines her HKOP output.