The Collector | Sketch Hong Kong exhibition shows how art is flowering in the grassroots
A fresh perspective on a growing art movement in the city.
A few years ago, people in Hong Kong started using the phrase “lei dei”, meaning “lifted off the ground”, to describe politicians and officials deemed too detached from the real world. Today, the phrase is used to attack anything that challenges the intellect or purse. Abstract, conceptual art and the prices it commands at auction are easy targets.
There is nothing abstract or expensive about the ongoing exhibition at Pacific Place, in Admiralty. Organised by a group called Sketch Hong Kong, the show is as grassroots as art gets. Displayed are sketches of Hong Kong by 34 amateur artists, who work en plein air, and sell their pieces for HK$380 each, or HK$580 framed. The money goes to the Hong Kong Society for Education in Art, a 24-year-old charity that promotes creativity and art appreciation among the young.
The 58 sketches are mostly of buildings, street scenes and local dishes. True, the quality varies. But sketches have an immediacy that gives them easy charm, even if the hand that executes them is not professionally trained.
That may explain why sketching has become popular in Hong Kong. Last month, another non-profit local group, the Urban Sketchers, celebrated its third anniversary with an exhibition at the Fringe Club. There’s also the much older Hong Kong Sketching Society, which was established in 1978.
Contemporary art dealer Calvin Hui, who founded Sketch Hong Kong two years ago, says the group sketches for enjoyment, not for profit, and sells only to raise money for charities.
“We don’t want to charge so much that people will be put off coming. We want art lovers of all kinds to come to the exhibition,” Hui says.