AS THE WEST Kowloon cultural hub row continues, a minor artistic revolution is quietly taking place on the other side of Victoria Harbour. When Tobias Berger arrives in Hong Kong in a fortnight to take up his new job at Para/Site Art Space, he will become not just the Sheung Wan arts collective's first paid curator, but also the first in the visual arts scene to have been recruited from abroad.
Hong Kong has its fair share of locally born curators of international acclaim, such as Oscar Ho Hing-kay, for whom Para/Site recently held a retrospective.
But it's significant that Para/Site has invested much money and effort to create a specific portfolio for Berger to help the gallery become a vibrant, outward-looking bastion amid an ever-growing regional arts scene. The gallery has already had artists represented at the previous two Venice biennales, in 2001 and 2003.
Before his appointment, Berger was the director of Artspace, one of New Zealand's best-known and progressive art galleries, and was the curator of New Zealand's contribution to the Sao Paulo Biennale last year.
Add to this his experience as the artistic director of the 8th Baltic Trienniale and his work as a curator at Kassel in Germany - home to international visual arts event Documenta - and Berger is well-placed to propel Para/Site forwards. 'In Hong Kong, the independent art institutions like Para/Site Art Space, 1a[space] or the Asia Art Archive positively surprised me,' says Berger.
'From the visual art point of view, there's a lot of potential in Hong Kong, but there must be a more professional and international approach,' he says. 'Hong Kong's institutions aren't well known internationally and it seems that there's not enough international art exhibited. For a city like Hong Kong, the art scene is under-represented. Many professional curators and critics, as well as important artists, pass through on their way to other Asian cities. I hear from a lot of friends that they visited Hong Kong but didn't see any art.