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NOW: A Dialogue on Female Chinese Contemporary Artists
Multiple venues in the UK. Until September 2, 2018. By Margot Mottaz Over the past two months, six institutions across the UK have come together to celebrate the women at the forefront of contemporary art in China. A project spearheaded by the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester, in collaboration with the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Nottingham Contemporary, Turner Contemporary in Margate,...
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Wolfgang Tillmans
By Diana d’Arenberg Parmanand Although his photographs had graced the pages of magazines like iD and Interview magazine, for a couple of decades it was at nightclub Berghain’s Panorama Bar in Berlin that the work of Wolfgang Tillmans really seared itself on my mind. The work in question, Phillip III (1993), depicted a man exposing his anus with his hand. The Panorama Bar, known for its...
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After the Deluge
A site-specific project by Kingsley Ng and Stephanie Cheung. By Tessa Moldan. Standing in the dark belly of Hong Kong’s oldest floodwater storage tank is without doubt one of the more powerful ways in which to contemplate the impact of rapid development on the city. Such was the experience granted by Kingsley Ng’s site-specific project after the deluge (January 1–31, 2018) in Sham Shui...
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Annie Wan
By Katherine Volk Hong Kong artist Annie Wan is known for her conceptual approach to ceramics and moulding. Her exhibition Zan Baak Fo, part of the Jockey Club New Arts Power programme, and an extension of her 11th Gwangju Biennale presentation Everyday a Rainbow (2016), took place across two Hong Kong locations: a grocery store in Ping Shek Estate, Choi Hung and an old...
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Toshio Matsumoto
Everything Visible is Empty Empty Gallery Hong Kong Sep 9 – Nov 18, 2017 Katherine Volk Visitors to the new Toshio Matsumoto (1932-2017) show at Empty Gallery were immersed in the artist’s experimental visuals as soon as the elevator doors to the gallery opened. Pulsating, coloured waves radiated from a central void and filled the opposite wall, while the entrance space was filled with cosmic sounds. White...
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Crossing Hong Kong’s Harbour
By John Batten The very first art objects mass-exported from China to buyers in Europe, Asia and the Ottoman Empire were designed-to-order, ceramic and porcelain chinoiserie items, often purely utilitarian: crockery dinner sets, jars and storage urns. In the 18th century worldwide trade expanded due to growing demand, sturdier ships and established trading routes. Canton, as Guangzhou was then known, was China’s only port open for...
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Ink Art at M+ Pavilion
By André Chan As early as the Spring and Autumn Period (about 771 to 476 BC) and the Warring States Period (about 47 5 to 221 BC), people in China began to use ink as a writing tool. For the next 2,000 years, ink became the preferred creative medium in the Chinese cultural sphere, including much of Asia. In those 2,000 years, ink –...
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Chow Chun Fai
By Elliat Albrecht “I want my identity back”, “China is not ruled by Chinese anyway”, “History can be changed”, “Our city changed irrevocably” and “You think a Hong Kong triad can outlive a Mainland businessmen?” make up a few of the subtitles of the paintings of film stills for which artist Chow Chun Fai is known. Chow’s politics are hardly concealed in these works, for which...
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The Un/Safe Reading of Spectrosynthesis – Asian LGBTQ Issues and Art Now
By Anthony Leung Po Shan Spectrosynthesis – Asian LGBTQ Issues and Art Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei in September proclaimed itself to be Asia’s first “LGBTQ art” exhibition at a state-owned museum. In addition to being the icing on the cake after Taiwan became the first Asian country to legalise same-sex marriage, it also marks the homonormative order finally gaining acceptance...
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An Empty Apartment. A Painting. Afternoon: Law Man Lok at Things That Can Happen
By Michele Chan Opening with the starkest, barest of scenes – “A country. A tree. Evening.” – Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot sends viewers on a reflexive rummage for revelation and meaning. There is an analogous barren yet expectant vacuity in the closing exhibition at things that can happen in Sham Shui Po: the door opens onto an empty Hong Kong apartment, its walls painted...
