Do the Art Walk
It’s that time of year again, when art and wine lovers alike take to the streets of Central to participate in the art scene’s largest open evening. And hey, it’s all for a good cause.
“ArtWalk is one of the few art events where the participants are the ones who really make it happen,” says John Batten, organizer of ArtWalk, the annual event in which galleries all over Hong Kong throw open their doors and invite the public to come and admire their works over a glass of wine and a plate of nibbles. Since its launch in 2000, ArtWalk’s participants have grown in number from 700 to 2,000. It returns this year on March 11 with 65 galleries and more than 50 food and beverage outlets taking part. And as always, all proceeds go to charity.
“ArtWalk is not only something that makes people feel good about giving to charity, it is also about art appreciation. It’s a social event,” says Nicole Schoeni, director of Schoeni Art Gallery. Having participated in ArtWalk since its inaugural year, Schoeni will for the second time provide a venue for an exhibition put on by SoCO (the Society for Community Organization), ArtWalk’s sole beneficiary. Their Cage Home Exhibition will feature a life-size replica of a cage home, the tiny chain-link “rooms” rented to street sleepers, in order to highlight the living conditions of many low-income workers.
Last year, ArtWalk raised and donated $678,000 to SoCO, whose mission is to improve the lives of the 1.3 million Hongkongers living below the poverty line. They prefer to take an interactive approach to raising awareness of their cause. “We didn’t want to be just a beneficiary, which is why we decided to set up this exhibition,” says SoCO’s director, Ho Hei-wah. “Cage homes remain a real housing problem in Hong Kong, and when you see one close-up, it really drives home the reality of living in poverty.”
Aside from promoting local galleries and their art, ArtWalk will transform Central’s streets into a stage for performance artists. Some of the highlights of “ArtWalk Extra” feature street performances by students from Baptist University’s Visual Arts Academy. Third-year student Li Suk-ling will highlight our obsessive quest for perfection in “Overdone,” which will see her apply makeup continuously for an hour. Meanwhile, her classmate Abby Wong Mei-hung will record the sounds of the streets and galleries with a cassette recorder, before folding the magnetic tape into lucky stars for her work “Sound Story.”
A new addition to this year’s “ArtWalk Extra” and an absolute must-see is the Complaints Choir. Originally from Finland, the choir gathers people’s various complaints and frustrations—from bureaucracy to a broken finger—and then sings about them on the streets as a way of venting frustrations. A preview exhibition will be held in the Culture Club to collect complaints and recruit new members.
Besides the huge variation of exciting art pieces on display, a major part of the ArtWalk experience is, well, the walk. According to Batten, one of the reasons why the route is exclusive to Hong Kong Island is the concentration of art galleries around one of the city’s oldest and most historically fascinating areas. “I hope that people can walk along the streets and appreciate Hong Kong’s history and character,” he says.
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