Hong Kong art space Oi! hosts ‘Today is the Past of Tomorrow’ exhibtion featuring artists Kingsley Ng Siu-king and Lee Kit
- Housed in the former Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, the pair of installations allude to the fact that the past has to be acknowledged before the future is revealed
- There are echoes of past works in both Lee’s visual poetry made of found objects and Ng’s transformation of spaces with sound and light
Visitors to Oi!, a public art venue in a cluster of historical buildings in Oil Street, North Point, will notice a sort of elevated glass house being built next to the 113-year-old red brick former yacht club. The new annex will open in spring 2022 in a major expansion of the venue.
This coming together of new and old is being addressed in “Today is the Past of Tomorrow”, a pair of exhibitions by Hong Kong artists Kingsley Ng Siu-king and Lee Kit being shown in adjacent rooms.
There are echoes of past works in both Lee’s visual poetry made of found objects and Ng’s transformation of spaces with sound and light. In Oi!’s evocative atmosphere, these abstract expressions invite the audience to reflect on self-awareness and subjective meanings.
Ng’s “Flow” begins in pitch darkness with the ring of a bell, a harbinger of a light display accompanied by the sound of trickling water. Fragments of light appear, gliding across the space like droplets, converging and disappearing, then the cycle repeats. The short accompanying text alludes to the idea of water having a memory, and the ceaseless cycle of life that water represents, in two literary references: “A restless flow, through the seasons”, a line written more than a thousand years ago by Tang dynasty poet Han Yu; and a haiku by Edo poet Kobayashi Issa, “The world of dew / A world of dew it is indeed, / And yet, and yet …”
The darkness demands honesty as viewers reflect on their own thoughts and memories, and each person will take away something different as they walk back into the light. This cathartic quality of water is expressed through the Chinese exhibition title, which can mean the falling of tears.