It was only four months ago when OP fotogallery held an exhibition to boost morale among young local photographers. 'Photography, though a dying plastic art, is still the most powerful visual medium around,' the three-year-old photo gallery said in a stoic statement. It also hoped the show would rekindle local photographers' fading creative passion.
Since then, Hong Kong's only degree course in photography, offered at Polytechnic University, has been scrapped and, at the end of this month, OP fotogallery on Prince's Terrace, Central, is to close down. Which is a shame, not only because it is among the very few venues devoted solely to exhibiting photographic imagery but also because the works it has brought here have always been interesting, inspiring as well as thought-provoking.
'We have not applied for an Arts Development Council [ADC] grant in the coming year,' says Blues Wong Kai-yu, a founder of OP fotogallery. 'The council used to give us a yearly grant in one instalment. Over the past couple of years, the grants have come in four instalments. So we have had a real cash-flow problem. We often ended up paying up front for the exhibitions ourselves. Also the criteria for grant applications have become more strict, they even send people to inspect our gallery.'
But isn't that the normal procedure? 'Yes, but the ADC is being slow in handing out the cash,' Wong says. The gallery, which on average staged 10 shows per year, received $300,000 from the ADC for 1999-2000. The grant covered administrative costs and wages but a large chunk was spent on staging exhibitions.
The Hong Kong Ballet has just returned from its first European tour and its production, The Emperor And The Nightingale, seems to have gone down well. One German newspaper called it a 'piece of good European dance tradition in the world of tomorrow'. That should be a confidence booster for the group which embarks on its first American tour scheduled for next September.
