Month: January 2019

Miao Ying’s ‘Hardcore Digital Detox’, the first work in M+’s series of digital commissions

http://www.stories.mplus.org.hk M+ presents Hardcore Digital Detox, a work by Shanghai- and New York–based artist Miao Ying, commissioned expressly for the M+ Stories online platform. It explores the restricted Chinese internet—popularly known as the ‘Chinternet’—and is a ‘strategic lifestyle advice tool’ with the seemingly illogical premise of offering an online retreat from the digital world. This #spiritualretreatinchinternet parodies the widespread commodification of ‘wellness’ in Western societies, as well as the growing demand among affluent consumers for post-materialist experiences rooted in authenticity and nature—the kind that make for perfect Instagram posts. Miao considers herself a dual citizen of the Chinternet and the World Wide Web, and Hardcore Digital Detox operates in these two territories simultaneously, pitting mainstream internet users against Chinese censors by playfully instructing users to set their virtual private network (VPN) to mainland China, where popular websites and apps like Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, eBay, WhatsApp, Vimeo, and Amazon are restricted. For Miao, the images and ideas that are blocked by the Great Firewall of China are akin to liu bai (negative space) in traditional Chinese ink painting, as …

Oscar Chan Yik Long

Published 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 in 1988, Chan studied at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Visual Arts but it was an “abstract” fear of demons, planted in the artist’s mind when he was still a young boy, that weighs most heavily on his paintings. As much as he fears and is repelled by fear, he is also drawn to it. In his art, screaming skeletons, amorphous beasts and ghoulish, tear- or blood-shedding creatures fill walls and life-sized canvases. “I need to give fear a form,” he says. Chaotic and unabashedly confessional, they’re the portraits of a tangled mind that vacillates between fearing and repelling these creatures, and being drawn towards them. We sat down with Chan on the eve …

Kader Attia

Published by Artomity Magazine

Heroes Heridos / Lehmann Maupin / Hong Kong / Nov 1 – Dec 22 / By Diana d’Arenberg Parmanand / It is perhaps fitting that French-born Algerian artist Kader Attia is based in Berlin, a city of scars. A city where the ruins of a wall that once divided it are still visible; a city in which the atrocities committed during wars and by two repressive regimes are memorialised; where the architecture of communism and fascism stand side by side, sometimes pockmarked with bullet holes. It is a city where the scars are on display so that you are in constant confrontation with history and memory, and never able to forget the past. And so it is with Attia’s work. Working across diverse media and forms – photography, film, collage, sculpture, drawing and installation – the artist has built up a two-decade career defined by rigorous research. Through his work he critiques power and hierarchical structures by examining the scars, trauma and injury inflicted by colonial and imperial powers on non-western cultures. Exploring the relationship between non-western cultures and western thought, he regularly …

Celebrating the Inclusive Power of the Arts

Published by Artomity Magazine

By Samson Wong Kei Shun The policy report Celebrating the Inclusive Power of the Arts, released by the Our Hong Kong Foundation (OHKF) this March, is hamstrung by its own reductive view of inclusion and the power of art. Its failure to accurately define its own terms of engagement means that it is condemned to reach over-restrictive, unhelpful conclusions. OHKF is a high-profile, outspoken supporter of government policies. Its recent report Re-imagining Hong Kong with a Game-Changer: Enhanced East Lantau Metropolis was released at an event officiated by its chairperson, Hong Kong’s first chief executive and now a vice-chairman of mainland China’s CPPCC, Tung Chee-hwa. Similarly, media coverage of the launch of Celebrating the Inclusive Power of the Arts was bolstered by prominent speakers including Bernard Chan, convenor of Hong Kong government’s Executive Council; Gwen Kao, chairman of the Charles K Kao Foundation for Alzheimer’s Disease; Adeline Ooi, director Asia of Art Basel; Gavin Glayton of New York’s Arts & Minds; and Richard Ings of Arts Council England. With such influential backing, the report deserves closer scrutiny before its version of arts inclusion takes root …

Outdoor Interactive Exhibition “Home?” by GayBird unveils now!

Published by Artomity Magazine

3-22 January 2019 Central Pier No. 95-9 January 2019 Piazza A, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Tsim Sha TsuiMid-January 2019 Causeway Bay Taking place at various locations citywide, Home? is GayBird’s follow-up piece to a well-received installation that also premiered at the OzAsia Festival 2017. For the Hong Kong edition of the outdoor, interactive exhibition, GayBird adds a question mark to the end of the word ‘home’, inviting the audience to question the concept of home. Home? is inspired by the Chinese character “家” (home), which is composed of two parts: “宀” representing a roof, and “豕”, a pig. In modern Chinese, “家” can refer to identity, careers, schools of thought and even formal address when combined with other characters. This installation is a literal take on the combination of roof and pig that forms the Chinese character, and a ringing sound is activated upon entering the space which recalls a doorbell. Home? will be exhibited in Central, Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay. Presented in either a crowded, concentrated or a structured setting, each presentation guides the audience to embrace the sense of space …

Booked: Tai Kwun Contemporary’s Hong Kong Art Book Fair

Published by Artomity Magazine

11–13 January 2019Friday to Sunday Times Friday 11 January 1 – 9 pm Saturday 12 January 11 am – 9 pm Sunday 13 January 11 am – 7 pm VenueJC ContemporaryTai Kwun, 10 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong TicketsHKD$20/per ticket HKD$10/per ticket for children under 18, students and seniorsTicketflap link: https://www.ticketflap.com/booked2019 The inaugural Booked: Tai Kwun Contemporary’s Hong Kong Art Book Fair brings together over 60 art book publishers, artists and exhibitors from Hong Kong, the region and the world for the first time, to share their work in publishing and art through the medium of books. The art book fair takes place from 11 to 13 January 2019 within the JC Contemporary building, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and situated within Tai Kwun, the restored Central Police Station compound in the heart of Central, Hong Kong. As a landmark revitalisation project, Tai Kwun has welcomed well over one million visitors since opening in May 2018. As an annual three-day event, Booked aspires to create a platform for art book publishers and artists to display their range of works, from photography books, art albums, art historical and theoretical texts, …

GayBird

Published by Artomity Magazine

By Sarah Karacs Electronic composer turned multimedia artist Leung Kei-Chuek, aka GayBird, is in possession of two racks of vintage synthesisers, each as curious and complex as the next, and each containing its own unique functionality, its own language and a poetry of its own. His favourite is the EMS Synthi AKS, a vintage machine with colourful dials that was made in the UK in 1971, before he was born. “Because the technology is old, the electronics are not very stable,” says GayBird, describing how a sound he makes one day cannot be replicated the next. “The machine is already changed. Even if it’s on the same setting, has the same diameter and everything is the same, the sound is always changing.” GayBird’s workspace in his studio overlooking Chai Wan harbour is one of order, without frills or fuss. Barring a dark sphere placed near the opening of the apartment, the synthesisers are what draw the visitor’s eye in their vibrant, boxy strangeness, like the remnants of an old Star Trek set. He likes to …