IMPRESSIONS OF HONG KONG’S CONTEMPORARY ART SCENE
I have an unforgettable memory from the 2005 Venice Biennale when one of the artists I met asked me the question ‘Are there any Hong Kong artists’. For me, this sounded like, does your city have dreamers? Where is your art and culture? I paused. I was shocked and felt naked. I want to fight back. But how?
Hong Kong artist, Lam Tungpang1
W
hile the month of May felt decidedly French in the bustling metropolis of Hong Kong, given ‘French May’ festivities, my search was for Hong Kong’s contemporary art. A first-timer to this Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China and its art, my first few days were about sifting through the sheer sensory spectacle and tangled labyrinth of Hong Kong’s everyday, urban culture in search of contemporary art. I wondered about a community of Hong Kong contemporary artists—where they worked and where they exhibited. Surely there was more happening than what was reflected at the major public art gallery, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, with its modest exhibition Chinglish, held in a small gallery dedicated to contemporary art—the exception to the Museum’s more historical Chinese art collections. And while there are a lot of galleries in this big city, it is still hard to ascertain what is going on in Hong Kong art; what gets shown at the auction houses and the array of commercial galleries is often a very different vision from what is happening on the ground, and artists from mainland China tend to dominate the art market in Hong Kong too. Nevertheless, I did find the pulse and energy of Hong Kong’s contemporary art scene and learnt of... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline