GALERIE La Vong, the Lan Kwai Fong gallery which specialises in Vietnamese art, celebrates its first birthday on June 29 with an exhibition of contemporary paintings from the country.
The show will be a mix of ''Old Masters'', established artists (including Do Quang Em whose own exhibition of striking shadows-and-light works at the gallery ends tomorrow) and emerging painters. It continues until August 10. THE fifth show of contemporary furniture design to be hosted by the Contrasts Gallery, Surrealism and The 1940s, presents the work of contemporary designers Cebuan de la Rochette de Beaucastel and Danny Lane with French period furniture from the 1940s.
Lane describes his furniture making as a ''fine art process''; one of his landmark works, the gallery says, is a glass bed ''where an undulating sea of stacked green glass is lashed to segments of tree trunks''. Cebuan de la Rochette's works combine fashion with furniture, with inspiration drawn from the marine world. Viewing is by arrangement only with the Contrasts Gallery (826 9162) until July 13. The gallery has produced a catalogue using typography based on the artist Jean Cocteau's handwriting: it is almost completely unreadable.
BEGINNING tomorrow at the Mandarin Oriental in Central, The Poetry of An Du features recent works by the Beijing artist who is inspired by Chinese masters such as Qi Baishi and Western artists such as Picasso in his expressive creations.
ON a more practical level, the Asian Cultural Council is showing works by Hong Kong artists who have benefitted from its travel bursaries to study in the US at the Heineken Gallery at the Fringe, Lower Albert Road, Central, until June 29. The beneficiaries have included Oscar Ho, Chu Hing-wah and Victor Lai. Upstairs at the Fringe, Jacqueline Li, Lee Man-sang and Peter Suart are In the Attic, presenting a mixed show of candlesticks, musical instruments and pictures until June 29. Next door at the J. R.
Guettinger, The Play of Light features contemporary Chinese watercolours until July 5.