The Hong Kong Art: Open Dialogue exhibition series has yet to begin but already it's creating a buzz in local art circles.
The series will see different guest curators produce exhibitions drawn to some extent from the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Each artist will look at artworks from a different perspective to bring new ideas to the museum and a fresh visual experience to the public.
The exhibition is a first for Hong Kong in both its scale and collaborative approach to promoting the local art scene.
Since last autumn, Eve Tam Mei-yee, curator of modern art at the Museum of Art which is hosting the series, and local artist Ellen Pau, a veteran new media artist who prefers to call herself a creative engineer, have been engaged in discussions, brought together by the series' first show, Digit@logue, which opens on May 16.
'It was important to have independent curators look at what government curators considered important for the community but also to interpret the art in a new way,' Tam says. 'In addition, we didn't have a big budget so the guest curators would find it difficult to commission all new works.'
In total, these exhibitions will span a year. After a short break, a new Dialogue series will feature both international and Hong Kong artists, to be organised by an overseas curator who is yet to be named.