The Collector | Are intense emotions fuelling a great period of art-making in Hong Kong?
- Long dismissed as a place where art is sold and not made, a recent exhibition reflected a new energy in the city’s art scene
- Organised by the artists themselves, ‘What’s On Paper’ exhibited works linked by community not theme
However, this may be changing, a gallerist from New York remarked at a recent exhibition of works by 36 local artists at the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, in Mid-Levels.
“Before, people’s impression of Hong Kong was that it didn’t have much of an art scene, that it was a market and one that was dominated by foreign artists,” says Katie Alice Fitz Gerald, founding partner of Manhattan’s Denny Dimin Gallery. But the works in December’s “What’s on Paper” exhibition, she says, showed how an intense “percolation” of emotions is fuelling a great period of art-making in the city.
There was a palpable sense of mission at the opening even though the exhibition had no particular theme or agenda.
Chak Chung-ho, the artist and writer who devised the show, says: “I started preparing for this six months ago. It was a nebulous idea initially, that there should be an exhibition that’s started by artists themselves rather than by professional curators, and a selection of artists based on community rather than any particular theme. The 36 of us are friends, or friends of friends, and all decided to join through word of mouth.”