The home of architecture and design in Asia-Pacific
Get the latest design news direct to your inbox!
Get the latest design news direct to your inbox!
A round-up of our favourite art events that have happened and are happening in the city in March and April 2018.
April 10th, 2018
A total of 248 galleries from 32 countries participated in the sixth edition of Art Basel Hong Kong. Held annually at the end of March at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, the international art fair received 80,000 visitors to the 2018 edition.
As usual, the fair featured its fair share of Picassos, alongside Alexander Calder sketches, paintings by South Korean artist Kim Tschang-Yeul, Pakistani artist Ali Kazim’s ceramics and watercolours, and installations by Cho Yu-Cheng, Toshikatsu Endo, Subodh Gupta and much, much more.
UBS was the lead sponsor on the event, and, notably, Chinese artist Ding Yi’s dynamic painting Appearance of Crosses 20060-03 (2016) was on display at the UBS Lounge at the fair, having recently been acquired by the UBS Art Collection.
The fourth edition of Art Central acted as an impressive satellite fair running parallel to Art Basel Hong Kong. Situated in an architect-designed structure on the Central Harbourfront, the modern and contemporary art show ran from 27 March to 1 April.
Photo by Jacquie Manning
More than 75 percent of the art exhibited came from the Asia-Pacific region, and, alongside gallery stalls were installations – including Marjan van Aubel’s ethereally beautiful Cyanometer for Swarovski, which was powered by solar cells incorporating custom-made Swarovski crystals. This year’s show was widely considered Art Central’s best yet, and it included a performance programme in collaboration with 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney and talks in partnership with Asia Society.
Harbour Arts Sculpture Park turned Hong Kong Island’s waterfront into an outdoor art exhibition, with works by emerging and established local and international artists on display between Wan Chai and Western District. Life-size horses, metallic rocks, giant feet and teddy bears made of bronze rubbish bags are just some of the works on show. Among the 19 artists on show are Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Ko Sin Tung and Matthew Tsang Man Fu.
Presented by the Hong Kong Arts Centre, the outdoor exhibition featured Tim Marlow, Artistic Director of the Royal Academy of Arts, and Fumio Nanjo, Director of Mori Art Museum and Director of International Programmes at Hong Kong Art School, as co-curators. Harbour Arts Sculpture Park closes on 11 April 2018.
From 20 March to 8 April, Garden Court at Pacific Place was transformed into a visual kaleidoscope, thanks to a site-specific installation by British artist Jim Lambie. His work consisted of curving, black-and-white forms that ran from one end of the floor at Garden Court to the other, made up of strips of vinyl tape layered to create a giant, dynamic floor sculpture.
Lambie then dotted neon ladders, inset with mirrors – which deprived them of their functionality – throughout the space. It brought pops of colour to this otherwise monochrome space, while encouraging different perspectives (does one look up, or down in a space like this?).
Like Spiral Scratch, Morning Dynamics is part of Swire Properties Arts Month 2018, and it saw the tunnel to the Taikoo Place exit at Quarry Bay MTR station transformed, bringing vibrancy to the morning commute through graphic pops of colour and energetic lines and forms. British artist Remi Rough was behind this urban art project, which was commissioned by Swire Properties and MTR as part of their Art in MTR initiative.
On 23 and 24 March, Taikoo Park was alive with artists working on vast canvas murals and spectators watching them at work. The artists were Phil Ashcroft, Xenz and Mr Jago, each of them renowned British street artists. Swire Properties partnered with international architecture and design studio Aedas to make the event happen.
The canvases they created are actually made up of 40 smaller canvases each, and these individual works (50 x 40cm in size) are now being auctioned online to raise money for a programme run by the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation for underprivileged and disadvantaged youths. The auction will be live until 13 April 2018.
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
