A free online gallery is giving local artists global exposure

"What is art?" Yeone W. Moser Fok asks rhetorically. "What is your body without your mind, your heart and your soul?"

Coming from an investment banker who helps companies raise billions from the stock market, this sort of philosophical question is perhaps slightly odd.

But while banking is her day job, Fok also helps run the Art Banking Charitable Foundation, or ArtBCF, a non-profit organisation set up in 2010 to promote the interests of home-grown artists in Hong Kong.

"So much of the art industry in Hong Kong is dictated by the galleries and it's so financially motivated," says Fok, "The idea is that the artist has control over everything. It's a platform that's built for the artists.

"We've seen some fantastic art fairs and exhibitions and galleries from abroad that are planning to move, or have moved, to Hong Kong. However, the amount of local art we see in most of these high-profile locations has been far smaller than you would want."

So far the site has attracted artists including sculptor Jaffa Lam, painter Tang Ying-chi and multimedia artist Grace Tang Ying-mui. The non-profit recently appointed Yu Kei-kei as its first curator-in-residence, a one-year programme to support the vocation in the city. Lai Wai-yi is the artist-in-residence.