ReviewAll tanks and no fish: Hong Kong show at Venice Biennale walks fine line between saying too much and too little
- Parts of artist Trevor Yeung’s exhibition representing Hong Kong at the Venice Biennale are transfixing, such as a room full of fish tanks with no fish
- Reflecting his experiences keeping pet fish and seeing a lot of fish in tanks at his father’s seafood restaurant, the show is built around the humble fish tank
The central work in Trevor Yeung’s exhibition “Courtyard of Attachments” is not exactly pleasing to the eye. Little Comfy Tornado (2024) is untidy, unsightly and may easily be mistaken for a clutter of maintenance equipment left in a dark corner of the building Hong Kong regularly uses for its Venice Biennale presentations.
The last room seems far more likely to be the centrepiece: a claustrophobic space bathed in the purple light emitted by fish-friendly LED lights and filled from floor to ceiling with row upon row of working aquariums.
Called Cave of Avoidance (Not Yours) (2024), it is a transfixing spectacle made doubly so by a wall of mirrors, which has the effect of making the viewers look as if they are the ones inside the fish tanks.
This is a piece of Hong Kong that Yeung has brought to Venice – it is what you would see in a typical tropical-fish shop in Hong Kong, the 36-year-old’s favourite hang-out since childhood.
Hong Kong does not qualify for a national pavilion in the so-called Olympics of the art world, held every other year since 1895, but it has been a collateral event since 2001.
Regularly occupying a prime spot just outside the main entrance to the Arsenale exhibition site, the “Hong Kong in Venice” biennale exhibition is where Hong Kong artists and curators present a highly visible project that should tell the international audience something about their city.