THIRTEEN exhibitions - ink on paper, oil on canvas and the inside of umbrellas, photography straight and manipulated, ceramics functional and fanciful, installation art, public space and private parts. The Fringe Festival is less than a week old, but there are more than three dozen exhibitions to go in venues across the territory.
A bit like a carnival tombola, you sometimes win a prize of value, most often you come up with less than what you hoped for. But it is a gamble worth taking.
While young artists often wear their moral hearts and conceptual minds prominently displayed on their sleeves - intentions outstripping execution - there is the occasional artist, such as photographer Tse Ming-chong, where vision fulfils the purpose and promise of the Fringe Festival.
Gender stereotypes, their meanings, boundaries and social construction, is a post-modernist pre-occupation very much in evidence at this year's festival on stage and at exhibition venues.
Despite its title, Femme Fatale, Shieh Ka's eight ink on paper drawings of actresses and singers in the renovated lobby of the Fringe Club appear more quizzical than cunning, more demure than demonic. Ka's women are individual and appealing but hardly cutting edge.
Among other issues, David Lui and the Tix Group at the Heineken Gallery explore in Hong Kong Sur-Reality, with photographs and small scale constructions, the body and sex as a commodity in consumer society. The slick images are hardly distinguishable from the assaultive advertising they are attempting to deconstruct and deflate.
Much more successful in their exploration of the feminine form, along with other natural and geometric forms, are the white porcelain and earthenware sculptures at the Pottery Workshop by Anissa Fung, the first Chinese to earn a masters degree in ceramic sculpture from London's Royal College of Art. She plays with ideas as well as clay with confidence and subtlety.