All posts tagged: Firenze Lai

Various artists

Published by Artomity Magazine

Contagious Cities: Far Away Too Close / Tai Kwun Contemporary / Hong Kong / Jan 26 – Apr 21 / Diana d’Arenberg Parmanand / In 2003, the SARS outbreak led to a shutdown of Hong Kong. The virus infected 1,755 people in the city, killing 299. Fear of the epidemic led many, mainly expats, to flee. Those who didn’t leave avoided public spaces. A housing estate was put under quarantine, public transport and public areas were deserted, and schools were closed. At the height of the SARS crisis, iconic Hong Kong actor and singer Leslie Cheung jumped to his death from Central’s Mandarin Oriental hotel, adding to the trauma, gloom and anxiety that were already consuming the city. The crisis impacted Hong Kong physically, psychologically and economically, and like epidemics before, it shaped the city and its habits, policies and people. Contagious Cities: Faraway Too Close at Tai Kwun Contemporary, a group show with works by 10 local and international artists, attempts to explore the psychological and emotional dimensions of disease and contagion. Presented by the Wellcome Trust, a biomedical institution …

William Lim

Published by Artomity Magazine

Architect William Lim discusses four of his favourite works from his collection. William Lim had known Samson Young as a musician, but first saw his art at the 2013 Para Site exhibition A Journal of the Plague Year. Fear, ghosts, rebels. SARS, Leslie and the Hong Kong story. Young had intended the piece on show, Liquid Borders 1, to be a series of four works. Lim was intrigued by the idea that Young wanted to record the sound along the border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Young was working with AM Space gallery at the time, and Lim ended up collecting Liquid Borders 1, 2 and 3. These works are constantly lent out to exhibitions, with Lim happy to share works from his collection to promote Hong Kong artists. This year Young will represent Hong Kong at the Venice Biennale. He works with three galleries internationally, and Lim continues to buy his works from all of them. Lim aims to collect the works of artists he likes at key turning points in their careers, but …

Alan Lau

Published by Artomity Magazine

Alan Lau started collecting Hong Kong art about 10 years ago. He talks about three of his favourite works from his collection. Tozer Pak’s Love Letter (2011) was allegedly dedicated to the artist’s wife when he proposed to her. It is a conceptual, poetic work consisting of four books and the receipt from the bookshop where the artist bought them. Pak plays a game with the Chinese titles of the books so that reading every second character spells out a sentence. In the version in Alan Lau’s collection, it says “I am thinking about you”. The collector likes the idea of finding poetry in a commercial transaction. It also reminds him of traditional Chinese poetry, in which scholars subtly hid messages. The piece itself contains a secret and has its own story: when the work was displayed at Para Site’s annual fundraising auction, a thief entered the gallery and stole the books – and nothing else. Both Pak and Lau found this hilarious, and Lau wanted to buy the piece, or at least a representation …