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Kung Chi Shing
By Aaina Bhargava / The first part of Kung Chi Shing’s haunting video City Inside a Broken Sky, Deep Night alternates black-and-white imagery of a construction site amid debris and scaffolding, the colonial-era building of the Oil Street Art Space, and a young boy. Familiar construction noises are interspersed with occasional wailing, an eerie, melancholic sound conveying despair. “Dark in every sense,” in the...
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Andio Lai 黎仲民
By John Batten / Andio Lai’s path as an artist has been refreshingly indirect. Each personal misstep and doubt forced a self-assessment and redirection to where he is now – and “now” does not necessarily refer to his status as a visual artist. It is a label that sits uncomfortably for him, but if the word “artist” is associated with musicians, cartoonists, gamers, players...
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「阿輝」A’fair
By Aaina Bhargava / In the midst of Wan Chai, a neon pink roller shutter poses a seemingly innocent question: “What did you dream of last night?” Reading like an ad, a phone number and website, halfdream.org, are listed above and beneath the question. Surrounded by an eclectic mix of shops plastered with flyers and notices, bustling Hennessy Road might be the last place you’d expect to see...
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Yin Xiuzhen 尹秀珍
Sky Patch / CHAT / Hong Kong / Oct 31– Feb 28 / Ysabelle Cheung / There were multiple entryways into Yin Xiuzhen’s solo show Sky Patch at the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile, but the timeliest introduction was situated at the main atrium of the building. Here, diaphanous suitcases, stitched together by the artist and her volunteers using recycled clothing, hung like gliders...
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Lau Hok Shing, So Wing Po, Zhang Ruyi 劉學成、蘇詠寶、張如怡
Amid columns of art books at Blindspot Gallery’s Wong Chuk Hang office is what looks like an object belonging in a Chinese scholar’s study. But stare at it a bit longer and an image of a tear gas cloud – a common sight on Hong Kong streets in the second half of 2019 – comes to mind. Suddenly, an object that supposedly inspires turns...
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Bouie Choi Yuk Kuen 蔡鈺娟
By John Batten / Bouie Choi Yuk Kuen reminded me that we first met when she and fellow Chinese University of Hong Kong fine arts students were invited to use empty units of the former Police Married Quarters in 2008 to show their work before its closure for renovation into PMQ. This was a touching memory; the battle to save the historic PMQ was...
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Household Gods 「駐家寧神」
By Aaina Bhargava / Protests and pandemics have relegated us to the domestic sphere, where we’ve been forced to confront the anxiety and fear induced by the past year’s events. In addition to political, economic and social disruptions of unprecedented proportions, we’re experiencing emotional and psychological upheavals specifically reactive to this point in time. Articulating and reflecting on this complex state of being, Hong Kong artists Shane Aspegren, Nadim Abbas,...
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Andrew Luk 陸浩明, Stacey Chan 陳樂珩, Lau Wai 劉衛, Ip Wai Lung 葉惠龍, Moses Tan
Museum of Half Truths / 1a space / Hong Kong / Aug 8 – 30, 2020/ Brady Ng / The International Council of Museums cannot agree on what a museum does – or should be. The dispute dates back to 2016, when the organisation began to examine whether its definition of a museum, which has remained relatively unchanged for more than four decades, was outmoded. Each of us, though, in our...
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Virginia Overton 弗吉尼亞·奧弗頓
Signs of the Times / By Christina Ko / When you are dealing with works as large and savagely stark as Virginia Overton’s installations, it’s easy to reduce the importance of a scattering of pieces on paper, which might initially seem to be simply two-dimensional precursors or stylistic explorations that precede their sculptural siblings, forged of aluminium and light. To many artists, paper is...
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Tobe Kan Kiu Sin 簡喬倩
By John Batten / Tobe Kan Kiu Sin graduated from the Hong Kong Art School/RMIT University with a fine arts degree in 2017. It was a fortuitous education: she had previously applied to but was not accepted into Hong Kong’s two other established fine arts undergraduate programmes, at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Visual Arts. Undoubtedly,...
