Reality in Bytes
Feb 09, 2002 - Mar 01, 2002
@1a space
Reality in Bytes: mis-Reading / Norman Jackson Ford; Digging a Bucket of Gold / Agnes Ying Hoi Chen A Photographic Media Exhibition
Curator﹕ May Fung
Participating Artists﹕Agnes Ying Hoi Chen and Norman Jackson Ford
Two artists, Agnes Ying Hoi Chen and Norman Jackson Ford started out with black and white photography. Both found significance in it, though with different orientation - Agnes journalistic and humanitarian and Norman personal and poetic. Yet both found that photography could not quite ‘narrate’ all of their feelings and thoughts. Both are exploring their photographic imagery with other elements or media.
They turn their photographs into bytes. Such bytes offer a new possibility for the two artists to ‘narrate’ the reality around them, their feelings and thoughts towards such reality, hence ultimately their identity in such reality. The new possibility is that they are allowed a lot more afterthoughts and flexibility in the post-production of their images. Previously, they did the most out of the least and out of spontaneity. Now, they are doing the most out of the most and out of rethinking. Could the reality be different then?
Digging a Bucket of Gold is Agnes Ying Hoi Chen’s CDrom work. It started out as a photographic documentation in the first place, come with a fabric of sound and text through digitalization. It is about some illegal immigrants in London’s China Town. The images are in general translucent and exude a sense of vividness and brightness that are on the edge of subverting the plight of the subjects being photographed and interviewed. The melancholia conveyed by the Chinese poem, the Chinese music and the dialogues are there however to counter-act such a visual subversion. As a result, Agnes has related to us a representation of ambiguity that perhaps could symbolize the rather dim present and future of those Chinese illegal immigrants.
mis-Reading is Norman Jackson Ford’s series of digital/conventional photographs and video work. They are about a different kind of reality revealed through a process of setting up a private installation, photographing it, developing it into a print, scanning it into digital format and overlaying it with text and after-effects. This structural complexity highlights an individual’s effort in interpreting, re-interpreting and re-interpreting his relationship, or communicating perhaps, with a foreign city he has been living in for the past few years. Through the final representation that is usually full of different visual objects that are often not totally comprehensible, with a strong tone of starkness, without a particular focal point, forgoing traditional composition and with texts of different languages, we can see more an abyss of multi-layered unknown than an image of poetics that however is not non-existent in view of the special lighting and a unique ambience being captured.
Beyond Visualization Behind the eyeballs II
Mar 24, 2002 - Apr 12, 2002
@1a space
Curator﹕ Lam Hiu Tung
Participating Artists﹕ Tse Yin Mo, Lau Bik Yuk, Luke Ching, Nikis Chan and Eric Hui
This program is going todivided into six parts.
Part I Experience, Process
This part is for secondary and tertiary education students. Selected students will be the tour guide of the exhibition. Before the exhibition, artists will have a brief conversation with the students to share their idea and experience, to let the students know more about the development of their artwork. During the exhibition, students will act as a living medium between artworks and visitors. They will try to guide the audience how to appreciate every artwork in the exhibition.
Part II Beyond Visualization
Five invited local artists will rethink and workfor the topic of “visual” and “non-visual” – to have seen an artworks before exploring it or to explore an artwork before having seen it? Hoping audiences will try to explore this exhibition with the mind of “non-visual”, and then they will have a new insight to rethink and to make their definition for the term of “visual art” again.
Part III School Guided Tour
Those participants in the first part: Experience, Process will guide the public and the secondary school students how to read the artwork with their own viewpoints.
Part IV Workshop for teachers
It is a workshop for teachers. Artists will share their experience of how to turn an abstract concept into a concrete artwork. We hope that it can help teachers to grasp the modern art concept much better. Teachers involved in this part should prepare to hold a workshop (Part V) for their own schools.
Part V Workshop for School
Teachers involved in Part IV will come back to their school and hold a workshop for their students. Artists will give their advice and assistance to help each participated schools wherever in need to make a “non-visual” art piece. A sharing forum section will holdafterwards.
Curatorial Statement
Lam Hiu Tung
According to the reflection on the structural combination of living language, based on the two giant fundamental and influential modern philosophies: Constructionism and Deconstructionism, we should realize that how important to the accuracy as a determinant in communication of abstract thinking for a single word could be, and then we would not allow or acceptant those contentless and directionless to word to keep on in use or exist. One of some words in current use was capableless, or was even misleading in situations while it was first created, such as “Visual art”. The term “Visual Art” is now a very common word in Contemporary Art circle. We didn’t know when this common word was turned into a fit-for-all pronoun for use of describing all Art Media and Art phenomena. However, the participation of “audio” in daily-touchable Art Media, such as the one in film or in video, is convincing enough to destroy the authoritativeness of that word “Visual Art” completely, and makes it out-dated as well. As I have mentioned, this word is capbleless for its coverage linit of content at the very beginning. It is a face that it can used to describe nothing but the very plane and visible phenomenon of art pieces, It is only the “premiere perception” for the interchange in Art Language. It would be much terrifying than being jailed within such shallow discussion or losing the pursuit of depth, we would lose something unconsciously but which might be more significant in search for Art Language, just like: the sensibility for “poetic”, if we would be contented in such superficial communications. I shall not only continue the invaluable searching spirit of the remarkable and successful exhibition: “Behind the Eye Balls” which organized by 1aspace last year. I shall make use of this opportunity to go with all the invited artists and all participants in this exhibition or in its related art workshop to: 1) rethink once again the biggest possibility beyond the search of visual elementary or of visual-orientated during art creation; 2) declare the noun “Visual Art” is dead. What would be “Beyond the Object”? Is it possible to discuss? I expect to have not just an exhibition. Exhibition is just a form. It happens and repeats day after day in all around the world, or at least it is never difficult for you to find one in Hong Kong. Quantity says nothing at all for me to say. I expect the question / phenomena we have proposed could be developed and could be last afterwards. This exhibition is neither the beginning nor the end. I hope our local art culture will be no longer just a consumption guide; it can be brought back to a substantial discussion for its content. We sincerely invite you to join and give your precious comments.
How to See Art
Apr 19, 2002 - May 05, 2002
@1a space
Curator﹕ May Fung
Participating Artists﹕Dixon Tsang, Coe Lau, Tse Siu-wah, Franky Lung, Pang Yiu-kwan, Betha Chung, Angelina Kwan, Chan Oui-yee, Melody Chong, Yuen Kin-leung, Ho Pui-fan, Winnie Yue and Viola Lee
About the Workshop
The workshop contains 14 sessions lasting for three months from January to mid-April 2002. The workshop serves as a hint to encourage the participants to explore ways of seeing and ways of interpretation from development of art history, from cultural environment and from artists’ background, for example. It also aims to enhance their ability in art appreciation, as well as in art creation. Artists and professionals of different art media and areas of studies led the 14 sessions of workshop. The workshop covers general visual art appreciation, characteristics and development of each art medium, the dynamics of art space for development of art, and reading and writing art criticism. The workshop participants include art teachers, social workers involved in art education, undergraduate art students and art enthusiasts.
Lecturers
May Fund (Visual Art)
Phoebe Man (Installation Art)
Tsui Pui Wan (Painting)
Kwok Mang Ho (Happening Art)
Bobby Sham (Photography)
Siu King Chung (Art & Cultural Study)
Vivian Leong (Art Criticism)
Edward Lam (Theatre)
Ellen (Video & Multi-media)
Mathias Woo (Multi-media in Theatre)
Andrew Lam (Art & Cultural Study)
Andy Tam (Art & Cultural Study)
In the “meet the artists” session of the workshop, a few artists are invited to talk about their concept of creation and their practices. They include installation
artists Kum Chi-keung and Amy Cheung, and photographic artist Agnes Chen. It enables participants to “see” art through the eyes of artists.
From Workshop to Exhibition
This Exhibition is a about “voices” of opinions. Viewers are invited not only to watch the art pieces in show, but also to see from which what is perceived, reflected and interpreted. Workshop participants will use different perspectives and art media for their presentation as a summary of how they see art, what they think after a series of workshops. It is all about their experience of feeling and thinking.
From what you see, you what you think and interpret, to how you respond and react, it’s a whole process of how you perceive art.
Curatorial Statement
May Fung
At the beginning of planning and organizing thus series of workshop on how to appreciate “visual arts”, I was just wandering within the context of visual arts and thinking of ways for people to get more insights in appreciating “visual arts”. Then the paradigm I was engaged in confined to paints, photography, mixed media and installation arts. This is the conventional way to define “visual arts”. But then I came to re-visit the understanding of “visual”. It means something “to be seen”. From “to be seen”, it naturally leads to “to see” – the most significant element in appreciate of arts.
What is then “to see”? From here we can then go beyond the conventional parameter of “visual”. The whole business can then be seen from another perspective – from the viewer’s point of view and not just from the nature of the artwork. As such, arts that can be “seen” will not be confined to “visual arts” and it covers arts in general. From such an angle, the whole vision of the workshop has been re-formulated and expanded. Subsequently, it has allowed participants to go into the different spaces of performing arts, cinematic aesthetics and new media arts other than visual arts.
To make the “visual space” of workshop more expansive, other than letting the participants scrutinize arts in a microscopic manner, the workshop has also led participants to look into the cultural infrastructure to determine “how” it has facilitated us in “seeing” arts.
From “seeing” an artwork, we go behind the artwork and perceive its imagery and possibly hidden significance. From there, we stroll further into the cultural space and reflect on the relationship between this city and art and culture. Up to this moment, I have not yet seen all the art works created but some of the participants in response to what they have perceived during the different sessions. But I do believe that such a “seeing” process would let the participants have simulations from all directions cognitively and feeling-wise. We should be able to “see” some new insights through such an act of responding (re)creation. More importantly, I hope such an act from the participants could generate more discourses on arts appreciation that this city needs urgently.
Paintings-Figures-Paintings
May 16, 2002 - Jun 04, 2002
@1a space
Paintings-Figures-Paintings An exhibition featuring the works of six young French figurative painters
Curator﹕ Philippe Piguet
Participating Artists﹕Philippe Cognee, Didier Dessus, Valerie Favre, Jerome Francois, Francoise Petrovitch
At a time when painting on canvas is considered somewhat depasse in the art world, to the benefit of other media or art forms – particularly digital – a renowned contemporary art critic, Philippe Piguet, chooses to dedicate an exhibition to this more traditional form. Paintings Figures Paintings features a total of 80 works by young French artists, all painters, representative of the new pictorial current which testifies to the power, as alive as ever, of the representation of the human figure.
Provocation, perhaps; freedom of form and choice, definitely. An invigorating air blows through this exhibition, whose powerful, expressive works recall the contemporary figurative current of mainland China.
Showing at the Cattle Depot, a beautiful old building recently renovated and transformed into an alternative venue, Paintings Figures Paintings will unfold in a modernity which is also an homage to the simplicity of the great masters. Because, after all, in the words of Edouard Manet, “painting is nothing other than painting; it expresses nothing but itself”.
Philippe Piguet, art critic, writer, and commissioner of exhibitions, is well known in the international and French artistic scenes. He holds diplomas in Modern Letters, Art History, and Archaeology (University of Paris I), as well as in Museology (Ecole du Louvre).
He is the author of several works on impressionism and contemporary art: Monet et Venise (Monet and Venice), published by Editions Hersher, Paris, 1986; Le Louvre en Metamorphose (The Louvre in Metamorphosis), published by Editions Creaphis, Paris, 1994; Paysages de l’impressionnisme (Landscapes of Impressionism), published by Editions Plume, Paris, 1998; and Guide des lieux de l’art contemporain en France (Guide to Places of Contemporary Art), Adam Biro, Paris, 1998.
He has also created films on art and radio shows, and served on several exhibition, scholarship, and prize juries, as well as been the commissioner of several contemporary art exhibitions; most recently of Il etait une fois…La Figuration libre (Once Upon A Time…Free Figuration), Paris, Fondation Coffim, November 2001-February 2002.
Exhibiting Artists:
Philippe Cognee, born in 1957, lives and works in Nantes, France. He uses wax painting, an unusual technique today. His portraits, as taken in reverse angle, makes proof of a great finishing, but leaves us an impression of strangeness, between exhibitionism and voyeurism, modesty and immodesty.
Didier Dessus, born in 1962, lives and works in Burgundy (France). He inscribes painting in a global movement of experimentation. His favorite figures, cowboys, Indians, knights, soldiers, inscribe themselves on monochrome depths in an ever-renewing confrontation, as if, as the artist has written, “dance and war, accompanied by their representations, pursue the human history of flesh and pigments.”
Valerie Favre, born in 1959, lives and works in Berlin. Her work swarms with clashing references to classic painters (Watteau, Pisanello, Vermeer) and modern (Munch, Richter, Peter Christus). Simple yet disturbing, one is not sure how these compositions, peopled with feminine figures and human-animal hybrid forms, organize themselves.
Jerome Francois, born in 1964, lives and works in Mondeville, France. His work articulates itself between painting and cinema, the latter constituting a reservoir of images which he transposes pictorially. His art reveals a total liberty of style that manages to remain only at the service of painting.
Philippe Perrot, born in 1967, lives and works in Paris. He manipulates the stereotypes that carry advertising – like papas in striped shirts, or little girls in lacy dresses. The family is his theme of predilection; he describes it, treats it roughly, twists it up as if it was the archetype of representation.
Francoise Petrovitch, born in 1964, lives and works in Arcueil, France. She paints normal teenagers fixed as if they were posing for a camera. The t-shirt strikes an all-purpose motif; one could say that they compose a global stereotyped gallery, so much they are culturally undifferentiated. A reflection on today’s world, the work of Francoise Petrovitch is both very familiar and mysterious.
Objects of Demonstration
Jun 30, 2002 - Jul 28, 2002
@1a space
Curators﹕ Howard Chan, Go Ming Ning, Tse Pak Chai, Siu King Chung and Phoebe Wong
Political demonstrations are more than just an act of activism, but a cultural activity that outlines the landscape of power distribution in a society, mapping out the heterogeneity within a culture. It as well serves as an index to the degree of freedom of speech and the extent that people are empowered.
Objects of Demonstration attempts to study and review demonstrations in both socio-cultural and artistic approaches. By reviewing visual representations, visual languages, and discourses displayed in political demonstrations, the exhibition explores the creativity within the act – from the exhibits of the re-creation of demonstration objects, slogans and even the rally routes, to workshops instructing participants on how to demonstrate/de-policing…Objects of Demonstration is going to provide people with a new perspective to look at the ‘art of demonstration’
Triple Play
Sep 14, 2002 - Sep 29, 2002
@1a space
Participating Artists﹕Chester Chu, Elisa Pang and Lam Tung-pang
Triple Play is an exhibition present by three Artists. Chester Chu is an architect, Elisa Pang works in the media, Lam Tung-pang is a fresh graduate from art school now taking his time leisurely as a dreamer of ideas. Three episodes of the story are written using the Artists’ distinctive backgrounds as backbone and scene-it is a story about personal experiences depicted with acute sensibility in the value of art. The exhibition room of the hundred year-old masonry building is laid out to give the audience a sequence of experience and a wealth of view. In the same milieu and at the same time, the moving gaze of the viewer resembles that of a camera: it records at the moment of action. After editing, important images remain to linger and hence paving the way for a new discourse.
In a baseball game, Triple Play is a moment of excitement and drastic turn of game situation. Under the spot light, you can hear nothing but the heartbeats. Chester departs from architecture to revisit the language of color basics; Acrylic paint is now freely applied to form layers of ideas. After peeling-off the surface, his painting is unframed, outstretched and out of canvas. Elisa uses circle as her of expression. Taking nature as an endless, source of inspiration, she ‘re-interprets’ and ‘re-present’ the material of idea and challenges the philosophical and artistic premise that have usually passed unquestioned. Lam Tung-pang is obsessed with a person of expression. His paintings are both poetic and realistic; their livings and light, pastel colors and composed to present a, what he calls, profound frameworks of ideas.
1aspace is one of a few non-profit-making organizations in Hong Kong to provide exhibition spaces. Last year, after successful completion of Expectation-to-Expectation, young artists exhibition, 1aspace has been actively enlisting young artists as potential partners in the development of creative environment and to encourage artistic activities through varies programs and events. 1aspace proudly presents Triple Play as their September event.
Our Museum of Home
Oct 04, 2002 - Oct 10, 2002
@1a space
Participating Artists﹕ahko, Howard Chan, Chan Man-San, Tracy Chui, May Fung, Zoe Hong, Allie Lai, Lam Man-Sze, Tato Lam, Russell Law, Bobo Lee, Moe Leung, Fox Liu, Panky Liu, Edwin Lung, Ng Cheuk-Kwong, Ng Yan Yan, Hugo Poon, Joe Tsui, Tsui Man-Yee, Yeung Siu-Yau, Eddy Yip, Yuen Chuek-Wa, Jimy Yuen
One cannot avoid change of identity when moving house. And, the first thing for one to do in moving house is to have all the objects and materials categorized. Certain stuff is important and that cannot be doubted, such as documents. Some are simply practical, such as electrical appliances. Others are attached with sentiments such as out-of-print records, souvenirs bought during travelling, or souvenirs to remind someone or some events. On the other hand there are things expected to be thrown away. The reason is just the opposite of that for the former scenario; the stuffs are just no longer important, not practical anymore, no longer attached with (positive) sentiments. To put it simply, they just do not go well with the new environment and new identity.
During categorization, we review our past identity and renew our identity. Our Museum of Home started with reviewing the experiences with home. A group of young people joined five different workshops, each to explore the different elements of “home”. Some related rather directly with the environment of home, such as light, sound, objects and history. Some started with media, such as the expression of the body, comics and text. Through the workshops, the artist and the participants started with their personal experience and used different media, such as video, recording, photography and text, to uncover things and objects that they neglected in their homes. They tried to understand the meaning of “home” and its relationship with the self. Such a (re)discovering of experience with “home” has been turned into a public exhibition. All participants developed together the form and the content, even the design for the exhibition.
To re-disover home should be a long journey. This exhibition signifies only a milestone of a process. It serves as a cross-section of young people’s views about their home. There are objects, scenarios and stories coming from the participants’ expression of home. Though all started out as individuals, the participants’ collective identity has been formed through construction of fragments.
Categorization/ collection, exhibition/expression, interpretation – all are museum’s routine. Can we adopt the concept of “community museum” to construct our collective identity? In conventional museums, audience and curators pay much attention to epoch, aesthetics or geographically representativeness. Many tiny stories were lost along the way, being pushed to the margin of history and becoming banality.
The complexity of reality is constructed out of many fragmented and even conflicting stories and objects. “Community museums” can serve as a process of re-arrangement and interpretation. It can start with the microscopic aspects of every individual and does not need to be “representative”. For example, can we re-arrangement the history of shops in the Tokwawan area and set up a Tokwawan museum? These shops may not be that important from a macro perspective of Hong Kong’s history. But then, who decides what is important? Important to whom? Territorial and individual stories can gradually form into a whole picture. Just like this exhibition, individual discoveries or rediscoveries can be put together to form a collective interpretation of “home”. When the authority is investing enormous resources into big museums and galleries, there is perhaps an urge for all kinds of big and small community “museums” to let the small voices from the diversified and different communities be heard.
HK verison Chinese Lucky Estate 2002
Nov 02, 2002 - Nov 21, 2002
@1a space
Jung Yeondoo Evergreen Tower - HK verison Chinese Lucky Estate 2002 - Hong Kong
Participating Artist﹕Jung Yeondoo
“Evergreen Tower” is a work of a notable Korean artist, Jung Yeondoo, using the same name of an apartment in Gwangju of Korea, which comprises 34 families’ pictures. “Evergreen Tower” drew many focuses from many local media and arts groups and was invited by Gwangju Biennale and Fukuoka Triennale, and other European festivals. Comparing with his previous works, “Ballroom” and “IT People”, it keeps on concerning the relationship between societies and cultural environment. It presents the different living attitudes of different families, which all from the standardized housing pattern, but different living styles and social situations. You will see a flute from musician household, a courtyard shared by a big family, and a portrait of a family blessed with a newborn baby. Through conversations with the families whom have similar living experiences in their packed living space, to discuss about their statues, space and living situations. It all arouses the pursuit of their dreams from the paralyzed reality.
“Evergreen Tower-HK version”
Jung Yeondoo is the recommended overseas artist in Shanghai Biennale 2002. He is also the “artist in residence” of 1aspace and will stay in Hong Kong from 15 October to 15 November. He will tailor a new version of his previous work, “Evergreen Tower” to present his perception towards Hong Kong society; concurrently, 1a will co-create a new “Evergreen Tower-Hong Kong Version” with him. The work will be taken place in local style public estates and more than 50 families will be invited to take the 8”x10” family photos. The living culture of Hong Kong public estates will then be listed in world arts archives. Actually this program has already made some disturbance that so many people would like to join. Nowadays, family gathering is precious in Hong Kong; this program may be a very valuable chance to make all members group together to take a free family photos happily.
About Jung Yeondoo
Jung Yeondoo born in Korea in 1969. He graduated at Master of Fine Arts in Goldsmiths College, London, United Kingdom in 1997. He was invited to join Fukuoka Triennale, Japan (2002)°BGwangju Biennale, Korea(2002) and Camberwell arts week, London (1999)
Corner of Dialogue - What is Conceptual Art ?
Nov 16, 2002 - Nov 29, 2002
@1a space
Artistic Dialogue & Exhibition
Curator : May Fung
Participating Artists﹕ Kwok Mang-ho and Jeff Leung
Nov 16, 2002 - Nov 29, 2002
1a space, Hong Kong
COMPOUND EYES Contemporary Video Art from China
Nov 30, 2002 - Dec 15, 2002
@1a space
Curator : Binghui Huangfu
Participating Artists﹕ GLi Youngbin, Wang Gongxin, Wang Jianwei, Zhang Peili & Zhu Jia
COMPOUND EYES Contemporary Video Art from China was launched by Earl Lu Gallery, LASALLE-SIA College in conjunction with Singapore Arts Festival 2001. This exhibition was the largest exhibition of video/electronic art to have been seen in Singapore till 2001. And all the participated artists had exhibited worldwide and participated in international art biennials, triennials and festivals.
COMPOUND EYES Contemporary Video Art from China is now on the world tour. Before it exhibits in Hong Kong, it has already been exhibited in He Xiangning Art Gallery, Shenzhen, China and Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New Wales, Australia. Also, it is planning to exhibit in Norway, England, Sweden, Denmark and other countries in Europe.
COMPOUND EYES—the poly-narrative and the heterogeneity of the representation of the social, the political and the everyday
COMPOUND EYES presents the current concerns of Chinese artists on socio-political and aesthetic issues of contemporary artistic practice. The artists are Li Yongbi, Wang Jianwei, Zhang Peili and Zhu Jia. Compound eyes suggests that today, the faceted vision is the condition of our seeing. Our everyday reality is being reflected, refracted and deflected ceaselessly within the complexity of the ocular nerve system of a compound eye, which is a metaphor for lens-based image-making and the industrial production of images. It poses philosophical questions too, i.e. Is this faceted vision a representation of the real or is it the production of the real? Is the compound eye an extension of the human hand (our Bare eye) or is it merely prosthesis? Ommatidium cancels the question of focus and visual location, therefore cancels the question of perspective. How do we perceive a place if we do not possess a sense of perspective, a space without places perhaps? In a way, COMPOUND EYES signifies the poly-narrative and the heterogeneity of the representation of the social, the political and the everyday.
MOK-CUP - Retina and uncertainty Principle
23.08.2002 - 06.09.2002
@1a space
Participating artists:
Bophin 2002,Lau Ching Ping,Wong Chi Fai,LYF,EVERLONG,Ah Tong,Teresa Tsui
The life of Bubble-The Spinning of Strobe lighe -The Get- Set-Ready-and-Go of Thousand Flip Book-Ice Softer than Water.