All posts tagged: John Batten

Moments in Time – Available for Immediate Purchase, exhibition and text at opening reception of watches and other items for sale, Sotheby’s Maison, Central, Hong Kong, 21 August 2025.

Published by John Batten

A few months ago, contributor Sam Knight’s article How a Billionaire Owner Brought Turmoil and Trouble to Sotheby’s was published in The New Yorker, following similar reports in art publications. Each discussed French-Israeli telecommunications billionaire Patrick Drahi’s ownership of auction house Sotheby’s, which he purchased in 2019. The article outlines Drahi’s propensity for cost-cutting, staff downsizing and extracting capital from the businesses he operates. Since his purchase, Sotheby’s debt has risen, nearly a quarter of its staff have left and US$1 billion of dividends have been paid to its holding company. Also, a disastrous recent attempt to introduce a new fixed set of fees for buyers and sellers at its auctions backfired. The fixed fees did not allow Sotheby’s art specialists any leeway to negotiate fees with potential consignors. Christie’s duly undercut its rival. Sotheby’s specialists consequently struggled to find stock for their auctions. Just seven months later, amid falling business, Sotheby’s reverted to its old fee structure. The above photograph could be illustrative of Sotheby’s recent approach to business. It also reflects the transactional …

Bridesmaids and photographers photographing a bridal couple on Isamu Noguchi’s ‘Playscape’ sculpture, M+ Rooftop Garden, West Kowloon, Hong Kong, 12 February 2023.

Published by Artomity Magazine

Playscape is one of many sculptures for playgrounds that American-Japanese artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) intentionally designed (but rarely realised) for children to climb on and play around. A selection of these sculptures are displayed on the M+ museum’s rooftop. The stepped concrete form of Playscape, looking more pyramid than rectangle, comprises blocks and in-between voids. There is an element of risk if jumping across one block to another; the gap is slightly more hazardous than safe, and a missed jump could result in a six-metre fall to ground. But, no-one falls. The M+ rooftop, lobby, Mediatheque of videos to watch, and the basement Found Space are all free entry within the non-payment areas of the museum. Consequently, the rooftop has become a favoured spot for wedding photography, including for couples travelling from the mainland. The rooftop offers contrasting scenes. Bisected into two halves by the tall inverted ‘T’ of the building’s large LED screen, the ‘front’ – the Victoria Harbour side – of the rooftop has magnificent waterfront views looking towards Hong Kong island and …

GOING, with aeroplane in distance, at end of day, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong, 19 July 2024.

Published by John Batten

“Final bids” on an auction item are called and then, with hammer raised and nothing more from bidders, the auctioneer’s “Going, going” brings it to an end: “Sold!”  This photograph hasn’t much to do with auctions, but it was taken as Sotheby’s and Christie’s were both preparing a radical reorientation of their businesses in Hong Kong. Taking over a space previously occupied by fashion house Armani, Sotheby’s new first-floor retail outlet in Central’s Chater House will sell a range of artwork, including designer furniture and antiquities, on consignment – and, no doubt, dabble in art’s primary market, artwork directly from an artist: always a point of chagrin for galleries, who believe auction houses should deal only in the secondary market. At ground level is another large viewing space that will host the auction floor. Meanwhile, Christie’s has taken space at The Henderson, Zaha Hadid Architects’ newly completed building in front of the Bank of China Tower and overlooking Chater Garden. The smart interior design, with movable panels and private client areas, is by Hong Kong-founded …

A reminder of I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower, …

Published by John Batten

… steel scaffolding and tape, on the street, Shek Tong Tsui, Hong Kong, 27 May 2024 / The large retrospective exhibition devoted to the Chinese-American architect IM Pei (1917-2019) organised by Hong Kong’s M+ museum motivated me to look again at his Bank of China Tower in Central. Built on the site of Murray House, the former officers’ quarters of the British Army at Murray Barracks, its location, surrounded by major roads and on a sloping site, was described at the time of construction as “difficult”. If there were initial spatial restrictions, these are not obvious now. The tower has good ground-level pedestrian access and an imposing presence, with an architectural height of 315 metres; together with its two distinctive antenna masts, the building’s total height is 367 metres. The tower’s height impressively overwhelms the tight site and reaches upwards to overshadow lower adjacent buildings. Working with long-time structural engineering collaborator Leslie E Robertson (1928-2021), IM Pei developed the building’s form from four steel corner columns, onto which its weight transfers from its distinctive triangular/diamond framework. …

Chan Hau Chun 陳巧真

Published by Artomity Magazine

Silent Sojourns /WMA Space / Hong Kong /Apr 19 – Jun 30, 2024 /John Batten / Hong Kong documentary filmmaker and artist Chan Hau Chun’s Silent Sojourns is the second project commissioned under WMA’s 2023/24 theme of “Home”. Chan has reconstructed-as-installation a Hong Kong residential unit divided into separate, black-panelled rooms inside WMA Space, its gallery in a nondescript office building. In these small-roomed exhibition spaces, Chan attempts to recreate the interior atmosphere of what she describes as an “ordinary-looking (residential) building” housing many subdivided flats in an undisclosed location in Hong Kong, possibly Sham Shui Po, where many such flats are located. Chan initially visited “a homeless acquaintance” in this building in late 2018. Over the following five years, she visited regularly and lived in the building, meeting residents from different floors. She began filming, including talking to residents, in 2019. In an excellent, zine-like booklet, containing photography, drawings, one- or two-line aphorisms, a formal explanatory essay and four pieces of poetry, Chan outlines her own observations, emotions and the reflections of residents. This …

Preparing to pour concrete, Central waterfront reclamation, Central, Hong Kong, 7 February 2024

Published by John Batten

A pile foundation is given its final preparation while a group of construction workers on the ground wait for the all-clear to lift a large concrete pourer (on the ground, middle of photograph), to begin the pour. The anticipation of the moment is captured, to be repeated again-and-again as a waiting line of concrete-mixers deliver more concrete. This is the site of the ‘Central Reclamation Phase III’, which officially began in 2003 and became controversial when the old ‘Star’ Ferry building in 2006, and a little later, amidst public protests, the former Queen’s Pier were both demolished. Twenty years later, after the completion of the Central to Wan Chai underground by-pass road as ‘necessary’ infrastructure to justify this reclamation, ground-level construction is only now beginning.  The entire Central waterfront will be altered from its late-1950s holistically planned historic City Hall precinct to provide a linked harbourfront pedestrian walkway from Kennedy Town to Causeway Bay and a large area on which commercial and retail buildings will be constructed. However, the final design of the Central reclamation …

Wong Yankwai 黃仁逵

Published by John Batten

Wong Yankwai: Half(s) & Halves of…Translated by Mak Suyin (in English & Chinese, 261pp)Published by Mount Zero Books, 2023 Published to coincide with a comprehensive exhibition of his paintings at HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity in late 2023, Wong Yankwai’s book of 25 loosely connected short stories is part memoir and part simple observation. Uppermost, it is contemplative: the writer musing, often cigarette in hand on a street corner, or on his walks to and then back from buying a packet of cigarettes or food at the market, featuring his wry surveillance of the changing streetscape and conversations with fellow street-habitués. Each story is complemented by two accompanying landscape-format photographs placed vertically underneath each other, a format that is also regularly seen on his personal Facebook page. They are not quite a diptych and not quite a sequence. But they are matched, sometimes perfectly, like a mirror image, often quietly dissimilarly – but usually the two photographs bounce together with a similar playfulness. For example, on page 67, two scenes look directly along …

Artist-parents’ ideas: alternative ways for parents 藝術家父母的創意：別樣的親子互動方式

Published by Artomity Magazine

Talk 講座 Artomity at Art Basel Exchange CircleFriday, Mar 29, 1.30 pm – 2.30 pm 3月29日下午1時30分至2時30分John Batten, Yim Sui Fong, Joey Chung 約翰百德、嚴瑞芳、鍾晧怡 Art Basel Exchange CircleLevel 1 Concourse near Entrance 1AHong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre Artomity at Art Basel Exchange CircleRooftop Institute Inspired by the 1960s art collective Fluxus, Hong Kong’s Rooftop Institute has published a new book, Event Scores 2: Ideas between Artist-Parents and Their Kids, exploring ‘instructional art’ between artist-parents and their children, contributed by 45 artist-parents from around the world. These alternative ways for parent-child interactions are suggestions for action open to the reader’s interpretation, ranging from helping parents and children co-create with anything around them, to reflecting on their relationship and getting along with each other. Editors Yim Sui Fong and Joey Chung introduce the story behind the book and share examples, when as artists and young mothers they originally collected ideas from other artist-parents that all parents could use while their children were at home during COVID.Event Scores 2 is a new book, published in English and Chinese, of further alternative ideas by artist-parents from around the world. 香港的天台塾受1960年代的激浪派（Fluxus）文藝派流啟發，新出版了《事件譜2：藝術家父母與子女的點子》，邀請 45位來自世界各地的藝術家父母共享他們與子女的「指令藝術」。這些別樣的親子互動方式提供了行動建議，任由讀者解讀和演繹，有的幫助親子利用身邊事物共同創造，亦有對雙方關係和相處的思考。 …

Mark Chung

Published by John Batten

The Next Level / Mark Chung’s exhibitions often feature opposites and duality. Objects are intentionally broken or deconstructed alongside ones that are carefully built. Claustrophobic installations are created in which settings, artwork and videos offer freedom and space, depicting or alluding to grids-as-cages set against free-floating-clouds. There are intense, blinding light and spots of darkness; technical skill and analogue craft-worship. Objects used for one purpose are skilfully reobjectified. At times, there are moments of anger and then great empathy, often sudden.  Everything in Mark’s exhibitions is considered and holistic, his efforts often a balance of raw individuality and boyish camaraderie with friends who have assisted. There is considerable thought and a striving-for-better anxiety: to remain genuine and true, and not to be a slacker. That motivation is familial, a matter of working as his paternal Hong Kong Chinese and maternal Austrian families would expect: striving for the next level. For a time, after his Wheezing exhibition in September 2020, and before he began studying in Amsterdam in late 2022, we would meet for lunch or …

Family having cake and coffee, overlooking a misty Victoria Harbour, from Rooftop Garden, M+, West Kowloon, Hong Kong, 12 February 2023.

Published by John Batten

After allowing free entry for the first year of its operation, M+ – Hong Kong’s new international museum – recently introduced admission charges. The museum has however maintained free access to the cinema and its outdoor areas, including the third floor rooftop garden. Positioned alongside the city’s West Kowloon harbourfront where this photograph was taken, the museum’s south elevation has uninterrupted views towards Hong Kong island and Lantau island. Recently installed moveable seating now allows visitors to flexibly find the best view and follow the sun in winter and shade in summer. The north section of the rooftop garden with views over the adjacent Palace Museum, the West Kowloon ship mooring area, Stonecutters Island and the Kowloon hills, has a wonderfully interactive installation of ‘Playscape’ sculpture by the American-Japanese artist Isamu Noguchi. Particularly loved by children and as a location for wedding photos, the sculpture can be touched and climbed on. This fundamental change in entry policy has never been openly debated. During its first year of free entry, the museum saw record numbers of visitors. Charging admission will undoubtedly impact visits made by …