Month: January 2020

Liz Lau

Ceramics maker and LUMP Studio owner Liz Lau talks about three works by local artists in her collection. Chris Lo Sze Lim became my ceramics teacher when I moved back to Hong Kong from London in 2015. He was a generous and invaluable advisor when I was planning the opening of my own workshop, LUMP Studio, and we have worked closely since then on the Hong Kong Dragon Kiln Concern Group, which is dedicated to the preservation of an 80-year-old, 20-metre-long outdoor ceramic kiln in Tuen Mun. I love Chris’s works because they are full of the ebb and flow of emotion. This piece was made for his last solo exhibition in Hong Kong, in 2016. It tells a beautiful, bittersweet story of Ah Bo the stuffed koala bear. Chris used to take Ah Bo everywhere and loved pressing his face into its round head. One day, more tired and stressed then usual, his mom was tidying around the house when she found Ah Bo under the couch. Frustrated by the mess, she ripped Ah Bo’s head clean …

Community arts: Supporting or Subverting the Establishment?

Published by Artomity Magazine

By Samson Wong / “Is [sic] the community arts becoming too close to the establishment?” my fellow contributor Queenie Liu asked me during the writers’ panel at the launch of Art Readers on Art – Hong Kong (I), a new bilingual volume by seven local artists and scholars. All seven were in attendance, including art historian Linda Lai Chiu Han and artist Ho Siu Kee. Liu’s chapter is on political art, while mine looks at the experiential side of participation in community art, defined here as a practice in which the art-making process aims to help people with their wellbeing – two very different artistic approaches to social intervention. The question presupposes a suspicion of the state that current applies in Hong Kong but is certainly not limited to it. Liu’s observation, though pointed, is commonly put to community artists. The argument has been most strongly formulated by art historian Claire Bishop, one of community art’s harshest critics. She described the UK’s community art movement between 1970s to 1980s as simply “an agitational force campaigning …

Tang Kwong San, Kwong Man Chun, Apple Wong Hiu Fung

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Long to Belong / Contemporary by Angela Li / Hong Kong / Nov 21 – Dec 14, 2019 / Valencia Tong / In a city divided by prolonged social upheaval, three young emerging artists from Hong Kong contemplate their place in the world and what it means to belong. A common thread that links the works on view at the exhibition Long to Belong at Contemporary by Angela Li is a hazy sort of nostalgia, which arises from these individuals’ deep, dream-like introspection. Amid the prevailing anxiety that lingers like thick fog over the city’s uncertain future, the show, part of Hong Kong Art Week’s Art Gallery Night, draws a large crowd. To the left of the entrance, Kwong Man Chun’s oil painting Huang Cen Ling and Tenement House (2017) captures the artist’s journey of retracing his roots while simultaneously juxtaposing scenes of the past against those of the present. He flattens both space and time as they collide into the depiction of a single interior space, visualising his transition from a rural setting in mainland China …

Shirley Tse

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Stakeholders, Hong Kong in Venice / La Biennale di Venezia / Venice / May 11 – Nov 19, 2019 / John Batten / “Butterflies stir a breeze and the ripples flow unceasingly: far away the cyclones swirl. It’s a whole, connected world. Oh, Gaia!” * Shirley Tse’s tactile, predominantly hand-crafted installations at last year’s Venice Biennale were a unique offering. Her Stakeholders presentation in the indoor ground-floor rooms and adjacent outdoor courtyard of the three-storey residential building in the Hong Kong pavilion at the Venice Biennale was not whizz-bang technology or smart-idea-as-art; nor was it not big-so-I-must-be-noticed or I’m-backed-by-a-big-gallery. It was refreshingly uncomplicated, using found and natural objects, unconsciously recycled and studiously repurposed. It allowed contemplation and a place for the public to rest and consider: the artist installed a row of simple aluminium bleachers; elevated, rowed seating usually found next to a sports court. Directly in front of these seats was an imagined abstracted game of badminton, Playcourt. Inside, glimpsed from the courtyard through open doors was the sprawling installation Negotiated Differences. Thinking was encouraged at the Hong Kong …

Onnie Chan 陳安然

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By Richard Lord / No one’s route into as niche and demanding a field as immersive theatre is a straightforward one. But for Onnie Chan, founder and artistic director of Banana Effect, Hong Kong’s first immersive theatre company, hers has particularly deep roots. “My father died when I was very young,” she says. “It made me a bit disconnected from people, and kind of confused about my own identity. When I was about nine or 10 years old, I realised I could get connected with the world again through drama.” That search for connection, she adds, has powered her entire career. “That word is very important throughout my theatre journey. Through acting, I thought I could connect with people around me.” It eventually led her to apply for the acting course at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts behind her mother’s back, and after five years of study, she was offered a full-time job by the Hong Kong Repetory Theatre. It was her dream come true – but something was missing. “A big theatre company is like a corporation; everything …

The 3rd Jockey Club New Arts Power Presents: Borrowed Scenery & Flâneur

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Dec 14, 2019 – Jan 12, 2020 12 to 7pm Unit 12, Cattle Deport Artist Village63 Ma Tau Kok RoadTo Kwa Wan, Kowloon Multimedia exhibition Borrowed SceneryThe multimedia exhibition Borrowed Scenery is exploring urban development issues in the 21st century. The participating artists include C&G, Ko Sin-tung, Kong Chun-hei, Vvzela Kook, Sarah Lai, Lai Lon-hin and Ocean Leung. Through installation art, video, photos and other media, the partaking artists illustrate their imagination generated by the urban space, interpret their observations and feelings of the city, and reveal their expectations for the liberation of public realm and the civil rights. The artists also look at the current issues from their unique perspectives and, in the process, explore and examine the way in which art reflects and responds to the urban phenomena. Extended outdoor performance FlâneurPresented as an extended performance of the exhibition, curators André Chan and Jing Chin-yin Chong collaborate with choreographer Sarah Xiao to create the 30-minute outdoor performance Flâneur deliberately for busy downtown Tsim Sha Tsui. The name of “Tsim Sha Tsui” was recorded in the classics as early as in the Ming Dynasty. Subsequently, …