All posts tagged: Howie Tsui

Howie Tsui 徐浩恩

Published by Brady Ng

When Howie Tsui and his family settled in Canada’s Thunder Bay, a sparsely populated, blue-collar corner of northern Ontario, his connection to Hong Kong was getting stretched. It was 1984, after a few years in Lagos. But like many members of the Hong Kong diaspora who were born in the 1970s and 80s, one medium dropped him back into the city’s orbit: its pop culture and entertainment.  It arrived on videocassettes, mailed from Hong Kong and flown across the Pacific Ocean before it landed in the city, situated by Lake Superior. For young Tsui, that connection had a particularly personal layer: to satisfy the requirements for being new immigrants, his father had started a videocassette manufacturing business in Canada. The tapes that his uncle used to record programmes in Hong Kong could have been products made by the family business. On these tapes were slapstick comedies, wuxia action flicks and other output from a golden age of Hong Kong cinema, starring the likes of Andy Lau, Tony Leung, Stephen Chow and Michael Hui. There were …

Hung Up on You at Ping Pong Gintonería 

Published by Artomity Magazine

Chan Ting, Dony Cheng Hung, Magdalen Wong, Annie Wan Lai Kuen, Kwan Sheung Chi, Wong Ping, Oscar Chan Yik Long, Winsome Wong, Nadim Abbas, Wong Kai Kin, Andrew Luk, Benny To Kai On, Doris Wong Wai Yin, Lulu Ngie, Howie Tsui, Hilarie Hon, Louise Soloway Chan, Tap Chan, Chow Chun Fai, Angela Su, Green Mok Hung Up on You Mar 19 – Jun 15, 2024 Ping Pong Gintonería 129 Second StreetL/G Nam Cheong House Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong +852 9035 6197 Tuesday – Sunday, 6pm – 10pm pingpong129art.com Hung Up on You, which features paintings, drawings, video installations and sculptures by some of Hong Kong’s leading contemporary artists, marks Ping Pong Gintonería’s 10th anniversary.

Howie Tsui

Published by Artomity Magazine

Parallax Chambers / Burrard Arts Foundation / Vancouver  / 10 Jan – 7 Mar, 2020 / Elliat Albrecht / Two years ago, while passing by Aberdeen Fish Market after it had closed for the night, Howie Tsui wandered inside to consider the tanks in the dark. As the artist stood there alone, he noticed inky liquid steadily sloshing over the market floor and into his shoes, later realising that it was part of a nightly ritual in which stagnant water is flushed out of the aquariums. A similar teeming tank is a recurring motif in Tsui’s exhibition Parallax Chambers at Burrard Arts Foundation in Vancouver, where Hong Kong-born Tsui is based. The centrepiece of the show is the fantastical animation Parallax Chambers (2018-), made from scans of hundreds of Tsui’s ink-and-marker drawings. Projected against one wall in a darkened room, the work features spectral imagery inspired by the wuxia martial arts fiction series Legend of the Condor Heroes, Hong Kong cinema and a grisly fish in a tank with a fluctuating water level. Various haunted-looking characters are seen impaled by …

Howie Tsui

Published by Artomity Magazine

Parallax Chambers /Art Labor Gallery / Shanghai / Nov 10, 2018 – Jan 8, 2019 / Nooshfar Afnan / As the martial-arts fiction community mourns the recent death of well-known wuxia novelist Jin Yong (1924-2018), it is refreshing to see his characters and stories live on in the works of Vancouver-based artist Howie Tsui. The artist grew up consuming endless hours of old Hong Kong martial-arts movies, including video adaptations of Jin Yong’s books. In retrospect the artist has realised that they were a lifeline to his cultural roots in his birthplace, and still provide a rich source of inspiration.  Tsui’s first solo show at Art Labor in Shanghai follows on the heels of his exhibition opening at Ocat Museum of Contemporary Art, Xi’an. The Xi’an exhibition showcases his giant, 20-metre-long, scroll-like video installation Retainers of Anarchy, originally commissioned by the Vancouver Art Gallery. Set in the fabled and now demolished Kowloon Walled City, it depicts in minute detail the lives of ordinary residents and martial-arts practitioners in the self-ruled community. The show at Art …

Howie Tsui

Published by Artomity Magazine

Retainers of Anarchy By Elliat Albrecht There was a time when lawlessness was king and opposing forces lived, plotted, colluded and fought out their differences without the intervention of authorities. Virtue was valued but bravery and resourcefulness were crucial above all else. Such an anarchic atmosphere was characteristic of both the now-levelled Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong and the stories of wuxia, known in Cantonese as mou hap, a genre of fiction centred around martial-arts figures in ancient China. Hong Kong-born, Vancouver-based artist Howie Tsui drew from both for his solo exhibition Retainers of Anarchy at the Vancouver Art Gallery. His was one of three presentations in Vancouver by Hong Kong artists that marked the approach of the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from the UK to China in 1997; in addition, the Vancouver Art Gallery also hosted group show Pacific Crossings: Hong Kong  Artists in Vancouver, and Tsang Kin-Wah presented three public works around the city. The centrepiece of the exhibition was the eponymous Retainers of Anarchy (2017), a 25-metre-long digitally animated scroll …