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Free to Express – Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival
By Karen Chu / The impact of dementia on a family; a straight-A student’s struggle with a speech impediment; kintsugi, the ancient Japanese art of repairing ceramics; premature ejaculation; prostitutes, rappers and farmer-robbers – the 2019 edition of the Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival is a kaleidoscope of youthful creativity. Alongside an international selection, a Japanese and Taiwanese talent showcase and the opening gala...
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Power and Perspective: Charles Esche
By Remo Notarianni / If every picture tells a story, then like the picture, that story has a perspective. According to art writer, curator and museum director Charles Esche, the story of art in Asia has been told, over time, from countless perspectives by writers from around the world, in what he sees as a journey towards greater understanding. “It was still not that long...
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Women in Art: Hong Kong
Au Hoi Lam, Fang Zhaoling, Jaffa Lam, Ko Sin Tung, Man Fung-yi, Mediha Ting, Choi Yan Chi / By Seth O’Farrell / As I walked down the corridor of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge at the new exhibition Women in Art: Hong Kong, the words of writer Eileen Chang came to mind: “Between memory and reality there are awkward discrepancies, producing a solemn but subtle...
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The WMA Commission Recipient Natalie Lo: Ecology is full of self-contradictions
By Fizen Yuen / The WYNG Media Award (WMA) is a series of non-profit making programmes developed to inspire public participation and promote awareness and discussion of social issues in Hong Kong through photography and visual arts. The theme this year is Opportunity, and the WMA Commission selected Natalie Lo Lai Lai as a recipient, commissioning her project The Days Before Silent Spring. On a...
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Isaac Chong Wai
By Caroline Ha Thuc / A multimedia artist known for his performances in public spaces, Isaac Chong Wai (b.1990) explores the relativity and ambiguities of our collective norms and values, inviting us to rethink our experiences of daily life and our physical presence within society. As he exhibits a soft wall unable to stand by itself, a boat made with fences that takes on...
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Performing Society: The Violence of Gender
By Christie Lee / Half-used paint. Paint-streaked trainers. Crinkly plastic drop cloth. Three panels in shades of pink and orangey-red. A scene of unfinished business. But there is also a palpable sense of energy to it. On the wall opposite, an oil painting depicts a row of female nudes ascending the stairs, their bodies half-translucent, their flesh cutting into each other, giving a sense...
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Atlas 4013
By Gerhard Bruyns / Cities are constructions. They consist of streets, lanes and alleys. Walls, windows, ceilings and a succession of doorways. Buildings, loose structures, canopies and streets. Trees, shrubs, bushes and garden pockets. In a variety of combinations and orders, the binding together of any of these elements crystallise other formations: spatial complexes and neighbourhoods, articulating cultural burrows and areas of affluence. In its totality it represents...
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Lee Kit
We used to be more sensitive /Hara Museum / Tokyo / Sep 16 – Dec 24, 2018 / John Batten / Lee Kit’s exhibition occupies, as a single installation, the entire Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, an adapted modernist 1930s former residential building surrounded on two sides by a Japanese garden with an open lawn at the rear. Selections from the museum’s permanent contemporary sculpture collection are shown...
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Wesley Tongson
The Journey / By DeWitt Cheng / The idea that life is a spiritual journey was once common in European and American religious culture: Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan’s 1678 allegorical adventure of a Christian soul, used to be required reading. Spirituality has largely fallen by the wayside, however, replaced by modern materialism. In developed countries now we focus on scientific and economic progress, and largely...
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Oscar Chan Yik Long
By Christie Lee Hong Kong artist Oscar Chan Yik Long talks demons, horror films and his big move to the City of Lights Chatting with Oscar Chan Yik Long at a coffee shop on D’Aguilar Street, Central, it’s hard to imagine that the sunny artist, decked out in one of his trademark vibrantly patterned shirts, lives his life haunted by demons. Born in Hong Kong...
