Hong Kong outdoor sculpture show: funny, functional, minimalist, whimsical – how will art go down with the public?

Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Yayoi Kusama and Jenny Holzer are among the contributors to the temporary Harbour Arts Sculpture Park, which runs until April, and uses Victoria Harbour’s world famous skyline as its backdrop

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Roman Standard (2005) is a tribute to David Tang by Tracey Emin at the Hong Kong Harbour Arts Sculpture Park alongside Victoria Harbour. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 8:15pm, 25 Feb 2018Updated: 3:23pm, 26 Feb 2018

It is appropriate that one of the highlights of the first Hong Kong Harbour Arts Sculpture Park – a temporary outdoor exhibition beside Victoria Harbour – is dedicated to David Tang Wing-cheung. The late entrepreneur, bon vivant and philanthropist was an enormous believer in the necessity for art in society, and argued passionately for Hong Kong to have more art accessible to the public.

Hong Kong the backdrop for outdoor sculpture show beside Victoria Harbour

The work in question is Tracey Emin’s A Moment Without You , 2017, based on an earlier work called Roman Standard (2005) that was conceived as a retort to historically masculine victory columns. Slimmed down to narrow poles, the top of the columns are occupied not by male generals but by birds about to take flight.

On the occasion of its exhibition in Hong Kong, Emin has dedicated it to Tang, a friend and “a true free spirit and now even freer”; she has also rebaptised the work as a symbol of “hope, faith and spirituality”.

It is one of 21 sculptures on public display on the harbourfront between Central and Wan Chai until April 11.

Hong Kong artist Matthew Tsang’s Before Collapse (2018). Photo: Jonathan Wong

Prodigious cultural firepower lies behind this celebration of public art in the city, led by its presenter, the Hong Kong Arts Centre.

The curators are Tim Marlow, artistic director of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and Fumio Nanjo, director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.