Writing Machine Collective 2nd Edition
Jan 12, 2007 - Feb 08, 2007
@1a space
Curator: Linda Lai
Writing Machine Collective 2nd Edition [WMC_e2] aims at presenting accessible, and yet quality works with a strong research impulse to the public to illustrate one kind of possibility for new media art. This involves a new experience of writing via computer-programming-based machine capabilities.
In this edition, we particularly focused on a dialogue with Generative Art, a form of art that has been extensively explored in 20th-century fine arts and experimental literature, and more recently in media arts that involve code-based programming. In addition, we seek to ensure the works selected to shed light on our banal everyday life setting and popular cultural elements as much as possible.
All the exhibited works are interaction-based, and some highlight real-time performance. Compared with works in WMC_e1 (2004), next to the idea of machine, and the materiality of writing, we have placed a much stronger emphasis on interface design in order to strengthen the installation art quality of these works.
The interests and individual strength of the 11 artists (or teams) pertain to very different possibilities of the future development of the “Writing Machine,” and only a full assemblage of them helps to illustrate to the public the richness and diversity of this rather less attended aspect of new media arts. Along with the exhibition, a broad range of educational activities will be carried out to bring the project to fruition, including lectures, workshops, and an on-line virtual parallel exhibition, all of which will cover a six-month period.
From the perspective of research impulses, WMC_e2 is essential for further clarification of the theoretical issues and creative impulses involved in the play with technology. WMC_e2 embraces long-term multi-disciplinary enquiry, and therefore it should be more than just an exhibition of finished works.
Collision
Feb 24, 2007 - Feb 28, 2007
@1a space
Curator: Tse Lok Lun Laurence
We are crashed together, and bounce off.
"It" Brings us together, at the same time,
"It" tears us apart.
A Fear Is This
Mar 09, 2007 - Mar 19, 2007
@1a space
1a Space is pleased to announce “A Fear is This,” an exhibition of new works by Adrian Wong. The exhibition will run from March 9th to 19th, 2007. This will be Wong’s first solo show in Hong Kong.
What is Hong Kong afraid of? Though all cities possess their own local anxieties, perhaps none are as vivid and consuming as those of Hong Kong. From the fading superstitions of old to the latest urban legends, Adrian Wong reflects on Hong Kong’s landscape of fear in this series of new works.
Using sculpture, installation, painting and video, Wong deconstructs phobias about the supernatural, luck, public health and personal safety—with humor and horror always hand in hand. His irreverent, inside-out approach is clear even in the title of Tuhng Gwai Waan (Play With Ghosts), a mirrored installation where viewers are supplied with instructions and implements used to make ghosts appear. More minimally, an enormous white wooden “4” lays across the space at an unsettling angle, playing on the unlucky association of the words sei (4) and seih (death) in Cantonese. Even those who don’t believe in superstition may be uncomfortable watching the video Gung Hei Fat Choi, in which Wong observes the first day of the Lunar New Year by breaking every traditional rule for good luck (washing his hair, using a knife, etc.)
A baroque fountain made of chipped daaih paai dong dishes that pumps tea instead of water becomes a celebration of vernacular aesthetics and the intangible heritage of the “bowl-washing” ritual, at the same time it evokes anxieties about hygiene and public health. Self-portraits of Wong sharing a romantic moment with a live chicken and oversized, pop-art splatters of simulated bird-droppings invert these same headline concerns. Finally the video Haak Sei Wuih Tuhng Mau Jai reveals the “softer side” of the criminal underworld. In it, four tattooed gang members do balletic battle—over a kitten.
As one of the few Chinese-American artists living and working in Hong Kong, Wong is in a unique position of relearning what is already “known”, and constantly negotiating the ancestral, idealized Cantonese “past” with the breakneck Hong Kong present. He simultaneously re-examines his own Cantonese heritage and addresses local content from an outsider perspective, more interested in the frisson-filled gap between childhood “play” and the “work” of culture than any identity politics.
With his signature blend of mischief, elegant craftsmanship, and an odd-angle view of the world, Adrian Wong makes “A Fear is This” a truly exciting debut.
Strangers 2
Mar 09, 2007 - Mar 25, 2007
@1a space
Venue: Contemporary Art Factory, 1 - 15 - 3 Sumida - ku, TOKYO 131 - 0031, JAPAN
Participating Artists: Amy Cheung, Kwan Sheung-chi, Tam Wai Ping and Tozer Pak
Curator: Luke Ching Chin-wai
About the exchange program
When a person arrived in a foreign country, he/she will become a stranger to the place. And all residents from that place will also become strangers to him/her.
Because of Traveling, world is full of strangers
Base on this relationship, what interest me about the idea of artist-in-resident program is a kind of mechanism for making local residents and foreign residents (artists) to be "a stranger" in the very primary stage. It is the mirror relationship. And we may call it the meeting for strangers and strangers. In the very short period of first encounter, they are playing a same role to each other. They have a mission to exchange some valuable elements, such as gaze, suspicion, uncertainty, curiosity, misunderstanding, etc.
Stranger’s Mission
Communication from Error A stranger cannot stay too long in the foreign country because soon he/she will become "non-stranger" and lost their The proposed period for the resident program is about 3-6 weeks. I hope this period is not too long or too short for the stranger to gaze the city and then he/she leaves before fully understanding the city. At the end, they will have an exhibition. I am sure that there will be full of misreading about the cities, i.e. Hong Kong and Japan. But for the local resident, I expect they will more understand themselves from this kind of communication error.
About Hong Kong Artists
4 Strangers I invited 4 artists to take part in this project. They are all "strangers" in HK, too. Most of them cannot be easily described, but through their artwork we can more understand who we are. They are very different but all are trying to keep a distance from the reality of the city. Moreover, most of their works are practicing without certain art forms.
The Art of I Exhibition
Mar 13, 2007 - Mar 25, 2007
@1a space
This exhibition is co-presented by 1a space and IPSA. 1a space is a registered charity in Hong Kong supported by the HKADC, private corporations, individuals and art workers.
footnotes to oil street
Mar 23, 2007 - Mar 30, 2007
@1a space
This photo series of ‘oil street’ was taken from September 1999 to January 2001, and also a stage of trace of my creative photography.
Footnote means an illuminating note to which it was.
Besides the photographic content of this exhibition, it’s also add some creative manner and arranging display; these forms and visual languages might be made the photo works gets into a new definition and re-discovery.
Personally, the meaning, function…of art is to change our knowledge, and give the surprise, the new experience; even overturn (to the traditional idea and the behavior of view and admire of the photo works).
At the end of exhibition is my work named ‘disappearance’ (the buildings of oil street will be demolished) which I did it in last year; as the full stop of this exhibition.
till the end of the world
Apr 10, 2007 - Apr 29, 2007
@1a space
Curator: Tang Ying Chi
Assistant curator: Ivy Chan Ka Yi
Just some thoughts...
If we could predict when the world ends, it would be very easy for us to decide what to do right now. If art audiences were only a small group of elite, it would be very easy to write down all guidelines for cultural policies in Hong Kong. And if art forms and art statements were based on cost effectiveness, it would be more than enough for artists to get new ideas by reading some trendy magazines. So what keeps artists’ determination in art?
This exhibition is presented by MIA (Mere Independent Artists); a newly established art organization with members comprising of experienced visual artists and art administrators. By participating in different art areas, they have shown concerns in many art issues especially the autonomy of fine art. In the hope of creating more accommodations for thoughts and ideas, they feel the need to communicate with the public, discuss with people and conduct more research in art.
With over a year’s preparation, continuous discussions, development, communication, reviews, fine tuning, construction and reconstruction, the curator and the artists have found the platform to express themselves. Under the cloud of globalization, they still insist in their work and their art until the end of their worlds.
Beyond Miracles
May 04, 2007 - May 27, 2007
@1a space
In the universe created by Laurent Pernot, images swell and fade like those in dreams or visions or memories. The projection of the video or slides renders them visible, thus returning us into the fascinated witnesses of their appearance. But as soon as we have observed the effect of their presence, they disappear again and return to obscurity. As Pernot says, “They blink between life and death.”
Beyond Miracles will showcase 5 major video installation works of Laurent Pernot, each trying to represent the tragic and marvellous character of life. The encounter of various media in his works gives rise to a sensational space for people to plunge deep into liberty, sensuality, desires, contradictions, memories, ambiguities--- the enchanting dimensions of life. It is like a journey, between life and death. And to the end, it leads us into an essential question: what is life?
Works
The luminous images projected on to the bride’s dress in For Ever (2004) bring it alive, as one body after another inhabits it. Are we being transported to the fairytale world of The sleeping beauty or to the drama of a new Eurydice, dead straight after her wedding? The images swell and fade like those in dreams or visions or memories.
In Particles (2004), the glass beads capture the light, and their winking reveals the silhouette of a human body in a constant state of metamorphosis.
In Confusion (2004), where multiple faces replace the person, Laurent Pernot pursues the same line of thought: “Am I nothing more than the sum of the figures that other people have projected on to me?” Marie-Thérèse Champesme.
Still Alives calls a broad concept about the transmission of life, memory and disappearance. Thus, it tries to propose, by introducing a poetic universe, an arborescent and universal vision of the human being.
In the recent video Gravity, the soft and almost intangible picture of the angel contrasts with its impossibility to fly away, despite several attempts, as well as with an enchanting and dramatic sound atmosphere. The face of the angel symbolizes more generally the "dream to fly" than carried humanity, a reference from Icarus to our contemporary world…
“The universe created by Laurent Pernot (France, 1980) is peopled with intermittent presences, with bodies that we are unable to see because they are mere particles of light.”
Marie-Thérèse Champesme
“This impressive work is a meditation on the relation between time, light and memory.”
Alain Fleischer, Director of Le Fresnoy.
Talkover / Handover
Jul 01, 2007 - Jul 29, 2007
@1a space
Talkover/Handover takes as its starting point an AAA research project on Hong Kong contemporary art 1997 to present conducted to facilitate a platform for reviewing Hong Kong art during the Handover period. Interviews will be conducted between 23 Hong Kong art professionals, to include artists, critics, curators, some active during the handover and others active today. Independent curator Selina Ho, and wen yau, AAA researcher for Hong Kong, have invited the individuals to pair up and discuss issues surrounding the Handover. The artworks that will be presented the exhibition are the culmination of the dialogues, exploring the artists’ personal, social, political and aesthetic concerns in relation to the topic. The exhibition will showcase a range of media, including video, photography, and installation.
Talkover/Handover, opening on 30th June and running until 29th July, will be presented with supporting research materials and documentation on the development of contemporary art in Hong Kong over the last decade, contributed by AAA. Through the research and exhibition, Talkover/Handover brings together artists, curators and critics who are active members of the contemporary art scene in Hong Kong, to consider the current state of the art scene, 3,652 days after the Handover. Other members of the art community will share their thoughts on Hong Kong art and culture after 1997 in a roundtable discussion on 14th July.
Artists participating in the project include CHAN Yuk-keung Kurt, Ellen Pau, LEUNG Chi-wo and anothermountainman who has represented Hong Kong in the 49th and 50th Venice Biennale, KWOK Mang-ho/Frog King, LEUNG Mee-ping, TSANG Tak-ping Kith, MAN Ching-ying Phoebe, LEUNG Po-shan Anthony, WONG Chi-hang Sara, SO Hing-keung, KUM Chi-keung CHING Chin-wai Luke, LAM Wai Kit, LAU Kin Wah Jaspar, CHEN Shisen/San Mu, LAU Guk-zik, WU Wing-yee, LEUNG Chin-fung Jeff, TSE Yim-on, CHENG Yee-man Gum, YU May-ming and LEE Ho-wing Michelle. Ranging from veteran to established and emerging artists, curators and writers, they will approach the Handover from various perspectives and contribute to the vivid constellation of Hong Kong contemporary art scene.
LOCALE
Aug 11, 2007 - Sep 02, 2007
@1a space
The exhibition LOCALE features new and recent works by six artists based in the UK: Melanie Jackson, Kwong Lee, Paul Rooney, Becky Shaw, and collaborative partnership Emma Rushton and Derek Tyman. Evident in all their works is a concern with notions of place or location, inter-human encounters, narrative and how social, historical and global forces shape lived experience. The artists in LOCALEpresent work, which while often drawing upon, reflective of or presenting an aspect of the artists’ own ‘locale’ may also be read or understood as a response to the exhibition context of Hong Kong. The work of each of the artists invariably develops through a discursive process of research and dialogue and the exhibition also aims to be reflective of the turn in visual art practice where solitary time in the studio gives way to critical investigations.
Becky Shaw’s work Killing Time tells a narrative through text and slides made jointly with palliative care patients. Shaw’s work explores group experience, issues of ownership, authorship, states of change and loss. The work Killing Time centers on a narrative of a lidless Chinese pot marked ‘foreign’ left in the belongings of a woman who has recently died.
In developing the work Root Entry Melanie Jackson made three drawings from an image on the United Nations website of a woman planting a seed. The images came from a page detailing research carried out into the minimum amount of land required to sustain a human life. Jackson then made an open call on the Internet for companies across the world to take the drawings and animate them for a fee of two hundred pounds – Root Entry presents the results.
Kwong Lee’s Mr Francis, Mrs Lee and Me is a 2-channel video-work about migration between Hong Kong and the UK, as explored through the lives of two émigrés Mr Francis, based in Hong Kong and Mrs Lee based in Manchester, England. The work reveals lived experiences that negotiate personal and political histories, cultural adaptations, and sense of belonging and citizenship.
Emma Rushton and Derek Tyman will construct temporary entranceways for the front and back doors of 1a Space, their surfaces decorated with posters and information about recent exhibitions of art from China seen in the UK. Paying little heed to the architecture on which they are placed, the door surrounds refer to both temporary built structures and the grandly arched columns bedecking former social housing around Manchester and new-builds of the New Territories.
Dust (Room 302) by Paul Rooney is a sound work with a single shot video image - of the view out of a hotel window onto the River Mersey, Liverpool. The text of the partly sung, partly spoken musical sound work is a verbal summary, from the point of view of a hotel maid, of the Brecht-Weill song Pirate Jenny. The maid’s description of her song is imaginatively expanded to incorporate various historical moments involving ships that remain offshore and ships that do not, or are unable to berth.
The LOCALEexhibition was proposed by Rushton and Tyman, following a previous project at 1a Space - Turf: Garden in To Kwa Wan (April 2006) - which included a related publication, with a project by Kwong Lee.
i.e.llusion
Sep 07, 2007 - Sep 28, 2007
@1a space
i.e., a network of seven independent artists working internationally, explores the subject of possible paradise and magical truth. Revealed in their works is the measurement of illusion—an illusion in which they question the reality of society’s Utopist ideal by embracing performative, experimental, and improvisational components. Mediums such as performance, photography, video and sound are used to articulate personal and social histories to negotiate cultural mores. Though their works are interdisciplinary, they originate from a sculptural perspective. i.e. ethereal concepts distilled into physical manifestations. The work often takes forms as varied as drum playing wizards to waiting for nonexistent daughters at the American Girl Place; from sound compositions of packaging design to honest magic tricks. Through individual aesthetic and conceptual strategies, the reality of a place is whimsically transformed and reinterpreted. In the end, object and experience are inseparable.
Benjamin Bellas
Benjamin likes to think of illusion in his own work as something that takes place on a mental plain... a trick that his brain continues to play on him, some sort of battle between intellect and emotion... etc... that ultimately manifests itself into some sort of physical presence... like a Freudian obsessive attachment... or fixation.
Justin Cooper
In utilizing the mediums of performance, video and sculpture, Chicago based artist Justin Cooper creates provocative relationships that explore issues of balance, of the power dynamics that exist between people, the struggles of growth, and the simply absurd workings of the human psyche through work that is both highly personal and weirdly socially relevant.
Stuart Keeler
Stuart Keeler will work intuitively onsite in Hong Kong examining the context of globalism alongside the production of "place". Mentally walking the future city observing exposed systems / apparent structures of established histories within the practice of everyday life while questioning ideas of local and locale. Ongoing psychic examinations of the quiet interruption of urban patterns, frameworks and inventories are humorously transformed and questioned in the ongoing legacy of his practice.
Clinton King
Existing somewhere between intuition and logic, the new works of Clinton King question our connection to the subliminal world of wants and needs, while investigating the nature of attachment, worth, and self deception.
"Even beastliness and evil shine forth enticingly in the false glamour of aesthetic Beauty" - Carl Jung
Noelle Mason
Noelle Mason transforms found images, objects, and contexts to expose the advantages gained through the persuasive power of illusory visual experience.
Ross Moreno
Ross will examine spiritual magic in eastern tradition and its relationship to magic as entertainment and how that has shaped both spiritualism and entertainment in the west. He will create a series of inspired artworks related to the mystery of “The East” as well as present a final investigation which will take the form of interactive performance with sculptural objects.
Magdalen Wong
Magdalen will re-discover the geographical and dialectical relationships in hidden architectures of the mundane, roused by the curiosity of sacred places, hoping to define the unreachable and the incomprehensible space out there beyond our own universe, a space in flux.
October Contemporary - RESTORE
Oct 04, 2007 - Nov 04, 2007
@1a space
Every work of art captures a memory or is a trace of an action of the maker. The exhibition Restore explores the idea of re-telling, re-thinking, re-working, re-creating and the re-fabricating of authentic experiences. Presented are works taking action in creating and affirming the genuine.
1a space invites artists that have been working with and contributing to 1a space in the past ten years of the existence of the gallery. AGAIN looks back and into the future of the local art scene, and so does the exhibition restore at 1a space.
At the opening the audience is invited to experience Adrian Wong’s performance Bless All Ye Who Enter Here. A team of exorcists will perform a 2-hour-long rite of exorcism to cleanse a 3 meter by 3 meter square within the 1a space Gallery. Visitors will be invited to enter the space, as well, to be blessed. (The exorcism will be recorded -audio only- and rebroadcast for the remainder of the exhibition.)
During the period of the show one artists’ talk is planned. The artists will share their thoughts with the public and two guided tours that are open to the public are scheduled. A collaborative workshop “Re-newing Traditions” with elderly people from the neighbourhood will take place. The elderly people are invited to share forgotten rituals, original making of everyday objects or former traditions with the artists. In exchange they get an insight into contemporary art practice. A video documentary of the workshop’s outcome will be on display later on.
October Contemporary
8 leading art spaces and institutions unite under one topic AGAIN
1a space, Artist Commune, Asia Art Archive, Goethe-Institut Hongkong, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Osage Art Foundation, Para/Site Art Space and Videotage are joining forces to present October Contemporary, a month-long platform in October to promote and highlight contemporary art.
Trace and Transfer
Nov 17, 2007 - Dec 23, 2007
@1a space
Trace and Transfer deals with the concept of objective form and transference. Objective, meaning a selection of pre-existing forms and or structures to trace, transfer and expand upon them. Transference, meaning the act of translating or transferring the form into another medium. Both tracing and transferring are verbs that can be interchanged for words like observation and construction or impression and production.
This exhibition deals with the basic development of observation in a foreign country. The set up of the exhibition will show a transition from a traditional figurative background to a mixture between modern and postmodern sensibilities.
The latter work looks at very simple forms and structures that are observedeveryday. This exhibition evolved from these observations transforming them from their original state and context into wholly distinctive compositions.
There are perceptual and spatial boundaries that are negotiated between the viewer and the work; meaning, intimacy, personal introspection, publicness and universal recognition are intertwined so the viewer can appreciate the work on any level.
About Chris Rothermel
Professor Rothermel received his Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Oregon and his Bachelors in Fine Arts from the University of Georgia both with an emphasis in Sculpture. In between his degrees he received a full apprenticeship from the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture in the areas of metal casting and stone carving. He then worked as staff in the Stone Division with internationally renowned artists and operated highly advanced stone cutting machinery. He then went on to become the Artist in Residence in Denmark, Maine,USA where he showed his work and taught workshops to the public. Before teaching at Hong Kong Baptist University, he taught Sculpture and Design at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He has had three solo exhibitions in the United States and has shown in many group exhibitions in the USA and in Italy. He has also acquired gallery representation in New York City, New Jersey and Oregon. His work is privately collected throughout the United States.