The Collector | How a Guangzhou gallery engaged its market stall neighbours with the art world
- Clever moves by Fei Gallery have brought art into the local community
- The exhibition space featured a series of photos of its market stall neighbours’ hands
There is no doubt the proliferation of private museums and non-profit galleries in China has done much to popularise contemporary art in the mainland. Yet, few of the newer institutions set up either by individual collectors or companies have clearly spelt out their long-term raison d’être beyond a vague philanthropic urge to promote art and culture.
That was the position of Guangzhou’s Fei Gallery ahead of its 10th anniversary, in 2017.
In 2006, a new office block in Guangzhou’s Yuexiu district had just been built. Its architect, Michelle Yip, happened to be helping artist friends find a venue for a temporary art exhibition at the time. Her client, a Hong Kong businessman who owns the building, let them use the lower floors as a pop-up gallery. Soon, the idea of a permanent art space that is free and open to all was born.
Yip doubled as the director of Fei Gallery, and her team organised dozens of curated shows in a professional, neutral “white cube” space that were well-received by the art crowd. Disappointingly, it was mostly just the art crowd that came.
“It had trouble getting people within this business and residential neighbourhood to come,” says Jason Ho Zhisen, an architect and university lecturer who joined as the gallery’s academic director in 2017. “So ahead of its 10th anniversary, the gallery started thinking about doing more for the community and how it could dismantle the ‘wall’ between art and people not used to going to galleries.”
Ho, who has none of a collector, a curator or an artist’s reticence in bringing art to the general public, began engaging the neighbourhood.