Conceptual art the focus of couple’s new gallery in Hong Kong, particularly the works of women and queer artists
- ‘We were fed up with the status quo,’ says Willem Molesworth of his and Ysabelle Cheung’s decision to open their own art gallery in Causeway Bay
- Meanwhile, Rossi & Rossi gallery is back in Wong Chuk Hang, alongside the new Hong Kong branch of New York’s Denny Dimin Gallery
Expectations have been high among Hong Kong art lovers ever since Ysabelle Cheung and Willem Molesworth announced in 2021 that they were starting their own gallery together.
The couple, barely in their thirties, have shone brightly since moving to Hong Kong from New York in 2016.
Cheung, who grew up in the UK but had lived in Hong Kong before, was managing editor of ArtAsiaPacific magazine until she quit full-time work in 2019 to focus on her own writing.
Her impassioned and experimental prose and poetry about the Chinese diaspora experience and life in a city going through major upheaval have been published by well-regarded literary platforms.
Meanwhile, her husband was director of de Sarthe Gallery for five years and instrumental in setting up the gallery’s open-studio residency programme in Wong Chuk Hang on Hong Kong Island’s South Side.