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2020

Anchor 1

Anchor 2

Of Transience, Encounters and Endless Enigma
10.01.2020 – 09.02.2020

1a space proudly presents Of Transience, Encounters and Endless Enigma, a contemporary art exhibition featuring four selected Hong Kong emerging artists from 1a space’s Emerging Talents in Contemporary Art - Part 2: Young Artist Incubator Initiative (Hong Kong). It is an artist nurturing program while the selected artists joined regular meetings with professional art practitioners from 1a space’s board and curatorial panel for ideas and experiences exchange from September to December 2019. This exhibition sum up their learning experiences with 1a space.

Of Transience, Encounters and Endless Enigma is the world of city dwellers caught in between now and then, where they acquaint with strangeness and familiarity. In the immersive dream-like space, the audience linger in undefined psychic and emotional ruptures at the boundaries of the imagined, illusional and memories.
Intuon Chau and Ho Tze Chun Billy approach nature as a shared subject with their unique techniques and aesthetics. Chau's practice is a process of approaching materiality and spirituality. She works with text, sound and installation, to reflect her emotions and thoughts towards the ocean. Ho relieves the annoyance from busy life with the weightlessness in the materials, and his repetitive coloring process that turns paper into pieces of ocean with wave-like wrinkles.

Florence Lam and Elaine Wong shared a common interest in existential condition, yet reflect with different strategies. Through her opening performance and video installation, Lam works with wonder and magical thinking to fuse together current moral issues with child-like world views. Wong unwinds and entangles the manifolds of daily encounters and inner conditions. Her immersive audio-visual installations transduce the oscillations between body, material and space.

The exhibition includes paintings, sound, video installations and performances inside 1a Space and the outdoor area, to create a dynamic territory that evolves in time that uncovers the obscure realities of the past, present and the future beneath the facade of urban existence.

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Of Transience, Encounters and Endless Enigma

Opening Reception: 10 January 2020, 6:30pm
Exhibition Period: 11 January 2020 – 9 February 2020
Time: Tuesdays to Sundays 11 am – 7 pm (closed on Mondays)
Venue: 1a space
Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong

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Public program

1. Artist Performance : “Étude”
Date: 10 January 2020
Time: 7pm-7:30pm

Starting location: Outside of Cattle Depot Artist Village main entrance
Ending location: Cattle Depot Artist Village outdoor space

2. Artists Guided Tour
Date: 12 January 2020
Time: 2pm-2:45pm

3. Artists Performance : “Line Drawing Practice”
Date: 19 January 2020
Time: 3:30pm-5pm

“Line Drawing Practice” is an improvisation representing the present expression by drawing and sound. On the white salt field, using the found object of palm leaf to draw with the consciousness in the present. Through the action to feel and understand the movement of body and the flow of inner emotions.

4. Artists Talk
Date: 9 February 2020
Time: 2pm-4pm
Artist Speakers：Florence Lam，Ho Tze Chun Billy，Intuon Chau，Elaine Wong

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About The Emerging Talents in Contemporary Art
1a space aims to provide young and emerging curator and artists a platform and resources for implementing conceptual and experimental art project. The Emerging Talents in Contemporary Art encourages local and international talents with curatorial guidance, training and advice to help actualize their artistic project. To enhance reginal and international idea exchange and dialogues, the project will be divided into two parts to engage with talents from different part of the world. Projects that take innovative curatorial approaches and experimental formats will be encouraged.

With the aim of encouraging curatorial research in tandem with exhibition planning, the program provides deserving curatorial talent or curatorial team/ artist or artist group a platform and necessary resources to realize an innovative and experimental project to fill the gap between larger public institutions and commercial ventures. The aim of this curatorial residency programme is to promote arts in Hong Kong with international collaborations and to enhance international curatorial research in Hong Kong. Part 2: Young Artist Incubator Initiative (Hong Kong) is an artist nurturing program while the selected artists joined regular meetings with professional art practitioners from 1a space’s board and curatorial panel for ideas and experiences exchange from September to December 2019. This exhibition sums up their learning experiences with 1a space.

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Participating 1a space’s members (in alphabetical order)
Chang Ping Hung Wallace
Choi Yan Chi
Chung Wai Ian
Debe Sham
Ho Kin Chung Louis
Ng Ka Chun

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About the Artist (in alphabetical order)

Florence Lam
Florence Lam, born in 1992 in Vancouver, Canada and grew up in Hong Kong, is currently based between Hong Kong and Düsseldorf, Germany. Lam works with wonder and magical thinking to fuse together current moral issues with child-like world views through performance art, poetry, video and sound. She obtained her MA Fine Art from Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2017 and her BA Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2014.

Lam has performed around Europe and Asia, including Nanhai Gallery (Taipei, Taiwan 2019); Chiba Prefectural Museum of Art (Japan 2019), MACRO Testattio Mattatoio Art Museum (Rome, Italy 2018), Kling & Bang (Reykjavík, Iceland 2018), Manifesta 11 (Zürich, Switzerland 2016) etc. Art festivals include A! Performance Festival (Akureyri, Iceland 2019), YUP Festival (Osnabrück, Germany 2019), ZABIH Performance Festival (Lviv, Ukraine 2019), Reykjavík Arts Festival (Rey-kjavík, Iceland 2019), Performance Platform Lublin (Lublin, Poland 2017), Sequences Art Festival (Reykjavík, Iceland 2017), Performance Art Bergen Open (Bergen, Norway, 2017) etc.

Ho Tze Chun Billy
Ho Tze Chun Billy is an artist and an art teacher. He established his own studio "Seika Studio" in 2017 and he is one of the co-founder. Ho earned his Bachelor's degree in 2016 through the Hong Kong Baptist University, majoring in Visual Art. He obtained an Education Diploma in Visual Arts through the Hong Kong Baptist Uni-versity the same year. The theme of his painting is mainly about fragments of everyday life, such as fragrance of lilies, grasses along the side of the road and moments gazing at the sea next to piers. Through observ-ing these ordinary pieces, He try to discover the relationship between him and the meaning of their existence and by such, he hope he could raise the audience's reflection for things that are long been accustomed, and bring out the contrast of something "so close and yet so far". Recently, he keeps looking for new materials for his creations. He has a special bonding with ma-terials that are light and thin. In his opinion, he believes a light artwork is able to isolate himself from the pressure among society, and so he can stay away from the hustle and bustle. During soaking and drying light and thin materials mentioned above, he needs to pay all his attention to his creations, and by such he can gain a recess for his mind to calm himself down.

Intuon Chau
Having received a BFA in fine art from RMIT University, and studied fine art at Hong Kong Art School. Intuon’s art practice is experiencing perceptions on the sense of seeing and listening, with paintings and sound compositions. The practice is a process of approaching materiality and spirituality through considering the subject of identity, nature, emotion and material. She mostly uses painting, text, sound, and found-object into her works, by expressing specific contents and perspectives to reflect on emotions and thoughts. She began exploring the possibilities of listen-ing since 2017. In 2018, Intuon was invited to participant in “Sound Forms 2018”, a festival of multichannel sound which was co-presented by the Hong Kong Arts Centre and Contemporary Musiking’s (CMHK). After she graduated, in September 2019, she collaborated with two per-formers producing an improvisation with contemporary dance, traditional Chinese instrument, Nanyin, and sound. In the same year, she was selected to participate in the “Young Artist Incuba-tor Initiative” art programme organised by 1a Space. And she was invited to join the exhibitions and programs related to art, visual, and sound.

Elaine Wong
Wong lives and based in Hong Kong. She received her Master of Fine Art (Creative Media) from School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong in 2019 and holds a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) degree from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University. With a background in painting, she explores and unveils the manifolds of daily encounters and inner conditions. She regards her practice as an investigation of the potentials of art beyond representation, its rela-tion to sensation, documentation and experience. Her interest in the experiential quality of works leads her to engage in experiments with videography, sound and installations.

Her works have been shown in Hong Kong and international art spaces; including the Hong Kong Heritage Museum (2018), Hong Kong Education Museum (2018), Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre (2018), Oi! Street Art Space (2017), EXIS Korea (2017), and Poland Szczecin European Film Festi-val (2017). She was one of the selected artists for the Art- Uni-On (AUO) Artist Mentoring Pro-gram (2017) in Korea, and was awarded a scholarship from Hong Kong Art Centre to attend the Culture, Graphic Design and Fine Arts program in New York School of Visual Arts (2013).

Elaine is also the founder of Altermodernists, an independent art group that is devoted to the documentation of artists’ creative processes and promote visual arts in Hong Kong.

Acknowledgment
Man Wong, Kendra Koh, Tim Löhde

Anchor 3

Participatory Public Lab: To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room Project Exhibition
08.05.2020 – 31.05.2020

1a space proudly presents Participatory Public Lab: To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room, an exhibition traces the interactive journey of the To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room and its neighbourhood in the past 3 years. Ranging from Observation on the community's needs, Intervention and Spatial imagination, Sharing the possibility of a co-living style to the Constructing design ideas, the project aims to empower the local neighbourhood by providing resources to support participants to design their own public space. Like an untamed and thriving river, the exhibition will showcase streams of thought by different shareholders in the project including local community members, architects and district council members, etc. With the means of hosting multiple activities, workshops, focus groups by local communities and more, while conflicts and mediations occur and digest regularly, the project aims to create a methodology of community and urban planning while everyone in the community can participate cohesively.

About the exhibition

To Kwa Wan is an old district full of surprises. Regardless of the aged monuments and historic legacy, the most valuable part hides in the streets and alleys while you can feel the hospitality and warm-hearted atmosphere in the neighborhood. Pakistani neighbors having meals and chitchatting at the doorstep of a tuck shop, an old grandpa taking a stroll under the eaves, a newlywed couple enjoying a family afternoon on a park bench with their daughter in a baby cart, domestic helpers gathering at the open space near the tarred road on the weekend, just to name a few, are enriched with the spirit of the district's historical past and the deep connections between the public space and the people of To Kwa Wan.

Could these public spaces serve as an effective venue for interaction between different communities? Does the existing facilities and hardware sufficient enough to support the needs for all? Could people with diverse backgrounds of ethnicities, class, age, gender and more raise a voice on the urban planning together? How to create and facilitate more possibilities of community participation in public space?

This exhibition showcases the experimental result of the To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room in the past three years – Handmade furniture made by the neighborhood, commissioned shutter artworks at local stores inspired by community tales and traditions, constructing design proposal by collaboration with architects and district councilor, etc. Meanwhile, the exhibition invited four local artists to interpret the process and imagination of social-involvement design. Carmen Ng creates a community map to showcase the interactive journey of the project with the community and local neighborhood; Tse Chun Sing’s sound installation demonstrates the needs and thoughts of the local community; Jimmy Lee reproduces the interaction between the neighborhood and their creation through photography; Fiona Lee uses oyster shell in her sound installation to present the breaking-in period between different voices and conversations in the design process and how it sparks and nurtures further improvements. The exhibition will also reconstruct a game of ‘virtual space’ allowing the audiences to explore the logical path as a community designer and to understand the crucial process of community participation.

Participatory Public Lab: To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room Project Exhibition
Exhibition: 8 May to 31 May 2020
Time: Tuesdays to Sundays 11 am – 7 pm; closed on Mondays
Address: 1a space
Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road,
To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Participating Artists

Carmen Ng
Carmen Ng, graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University, a Hong-Kong based contemporary watercolorist and ink painter who renders her complex, city-inspired dreams in vivid and delightful detail on paper. She was awarded the distinguished print award in the 29th Hong Kong Print Award in 2017 for her book project ‘Illustrated Map of Hong Kong 18 Districts’.

Fiona Lee
Born in Hong Kong, Fiona Lee's works of art are derived from the intersection between installation and improvisation performance. Listening creates an important connection between Fiona and the world; this is when she feels the movement of every single moment. She believes her art creations represent the progress she is making in exploring and accepting her own and others' possibilities. Her performance integrated with built-up electronics and DIY sound objects, in order to create a new experience in the space with musicians & audience.
Lee’s installations and performance have featured at a number of art festivals, including Playfreely festival (Singapore,2019),Intersection In MidAir(Hong Kong ,2019), ART CAMP TANGO 2017(Japan), ifva Carnival 2016(Hong Kong),Around Sound Art Festival 2014 (Kyoto, Japan), Transi(en)t Manila Project Glocal 2014 (Manila,Philippines) Asian Meeting Festival 2016(Japan), Kill the Silence festival(Hong Kong).

Jimmy Lee
Jimmy Lee is a University part-time lecturer, art space officer, visual art practitioner and documentary photographer Lee's practice comes across documentary and experimental narrative. He started his photographic practice in a Hong Kong-based newspaper as a photographer during his time in higher education, after that he pursued the MFA in the UK. He sets out to discover the possibility of documentary photography, to expand its horizons and to work with projects that convey his personal concerns. He currently serves 1a space in the title of Program Officer.

Tse Chun Sing
Tse Chun Sing’s art explores possibilities in the often unnoticed daily objects or events, and presents the intriguing relationships through installations. With a passion for sounds, he explores various sounds and presents his imaginations and discoveries in his artworks. He obtained a bachelor degree from The Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University in 2017. He recently held a solo, Out of Focus, at PMQ, Hong Kong in 2020. Also, he shortlisted for 23th and 24th ifva Awards Media Art Category in 2018 and 2019, and residency at Centre A, Vancouver in 2018.

Curatorial Team

Working team from To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room
George Yuen, Him Lui & Hans Chan
To Kwa Wan Dining Room Project is led by a social worker, an ordinary housewife and a word-lover, who are interested in exploring the relationship between resident and public space. Regardless of inexperience in curation, they strive to organize different kinds of activities to encourage residents' involvement in community development so as to raise their sense of belonging in the community.

Chung Wai Ian
Hong Kong based artist. Chung Wai-Ian received her BA from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2009. She works with sculpture and installation. She concerns space and habit in human living situation and explores the contradiction in daily culture. Her works have been invited to be presented in exhibitions including “Both Sides Now - Somewhere between Hong Kong and the UK” in Osage (HK, 2014), “Macau city Festival -Parade in Inner Harbour” (Macau, 2011), “Walking to Canton X Canton Canton” in Fei Gallery (Guangzhou, China, 2010). In 2013, she has invited to participate in a residence program “ [en]counters 2013: powerPLAY” organized by ArtOxygen, India.

About St. James' Settlement
Founded in 1949, St. James' Settlement is a non-governmental charitable organization in Hong Kong with more than 70 years of history. It provides high quality and comprehensive services to meet the diverse needs of our society, including rehabilitation, youth, family and counselling, continuing care and supports community development. With more than 60 service units across Hong Kong, SJS supports individuals to help themselves and to help others by enabling them to discover their potential and values. With the support of the government and sponsors, SJS’s carries out its mission by leading innovative projects such as "Viva Blue House" Conservation & Revitalization of Blue House Cluster Scheme and To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room.

About To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room
Supported by the Urban Renewal Fund, To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room started to serve in the district from 2017. It aims to raise the sense of belonging of people in the community through a range of activities and workshops. While observing the quality and needs of public spaces, groups are formed by residents and architects to reinvent these spaces in the community. All stakeholders join hands to improve facilities in the district, while more residents are drawn to participate in various community activities.

About Curatorial Partner 1a space
1a space, founded in 1998, is an independent, non-profit making contemporary visual art organization and art venue founded by a collective of Hong Kong artworkers. It aims to promote the critical dissemination of contemporary visual arts practices and affiliated artforms through 1a space programme drawn from Hong Kong and international arena. The operation funding of 1a space has been supported by grants and donations. 1a space's administration cost is partially supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

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Co-presented by
St. James' Settlement
To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room

Supported by
Urban Renewal Fund

Curatorial Partner
1a space

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Acknowledgement:
The Working Group of To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room Collaboration Platform
The Resident Group of To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room
DOMAT Limited
Making On Loft
Wheel thing Makers
Notre Dame College
Pooi To Middle School
CCC Kei To Secondary School
SKH Tsoi Kung Po Secondary
St. Teresa Secondary School
Shun Tak Fraternal Association Seaward Woo College
The YWCA Hioe Tjo Yoeng College
Carmen Ng
Chung Wai Ian
Elly Fay
Fiona Lee
Jillian Ma
Katrina_sketch
Ng Ka Chun
Or Wai Wai
Sadie Lau
Tse Chun Sing
Wayne Lai
Wong Wing Tong

REDUX
A group exhibition by the Hong Kong Art School/RMIT University Master of Fine Art 2020 Graduates Exhibition
10.06.2020 – 30.07.2020

1a space proudly presents REDUX- A group exhibition by the Hong Kong Art School/RMIT University Master of Fine Art 2020 Graduates Exhibition.
Lockdown. 2020 is a year of lockdown. Travel is suspended. Face-to-face interaction is suspended. Daily activity is suspended. Humankinds are suspended in a particular vacuum of space and time. Artistic activity, however, is not and could not be so. We are suspended in our own concepts of space and time and, through that, to contemplate our own existence. Solitude, solidarity and contemplation. Artists often manifest these concepts through their works. In the time of lockdown and solitude, we bring together five very different artistic souls to 1a space at the Cattle Depot Artist Village. Redux. To bring together, to bring back, to revive and activate the souls, the space and the seeing. These keywords connect the curatorial concept and the exhibits and help us witnessing what this particular time means to these artists through their works.

REDUX presents five emerging visual artists from various cultural backgrounds across different geographical destinations; whereas Hong Kong is the melting pot for these artists to congregate and co-create new sets of languages of objecthood, imagery, sound and space for our viewers to contemplate. The works presented in the exhibition deal with a multitude of concepts and ideas including performative self and identity, entropic disorder and alchemy, traveling through image and sound, home and dislocation, and woman-made nature. These concepts and ideas seem disperse and distant and yet they all bring together a transformative process and/or outcome in the work, to the artist, and for the audience.

The exhibition begins with a staged and digitally manipulated photography work by Gwan Tung Dorothy Lau (Australia, Hong Kong) that accentuates a sense of surrealism through performance and exposure. The work boldly questions the idea of a singular and stable ‘self’ through repetition and reinterpretation. Walking into the gallery we encounter a set of ceramics work by Karen Wong (Hong Kong) that explores the alchemy of organic and inorganic substance from the kiln. The coral-like and flamboyant ceramics objects quietly await our attention to dispel the artistic-scientific treatment of clay and everyday life and household products that reaches an entropic disorder existence. Brian Smeets (USA) employs photographic image and sound to narrate travelogues of purely experiential nature. The works interestingly escape what tourists would be stimulated – the seeing, the hearing and the encounters; and through the lens and the microphone an abstracted way of traveling is presented. The cyanotype fabric tent that Louise Folliott (UK, South Africa) presented is a visual diary of her lockdown life in Southwest London. Employing an almost primitive photographic printing technique, the Sun Print, does not forbid us seeing the melancholy of days and weeks of constraint daily activity. The monotonous ticking sound created by a metronome expands the spatial and aural dimensions of the work and personal experience. The exhibition is concluded by a woman-made nature by Cordelia Tam (Hong Kong). Composed by paper pulp and Chinese ink, the work obscures the boundaries of spatial dimension and material; a three-dimensional ink wash landscape ‘painting’/installation is found.

Exhibition

Exhibition Opening: 10th July 2020, 6pm
Exhibition: 10th – 30th July 2020
Time: Tuesdays to Sundays 11 am – 7 pm; closed on Mondays
Address: 1a space
Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road,
To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Public Programmes

1. Artists-led Guided Tour
18th July 2020 3pm
Language: English and Cantonese

2. Artist Talk
18th July 2020 6pm
Language: English and Cantonese

- All public programmes are free admission. Walk-ins are welcomed! -
Exhibition poster and Image of artworks: https://bit.ly/2BL638B

Participating Artists (in alphabetical order)

Louise Folliott
Louise Folliott was born in South Africa, 1979. Completed a BA (FA) Hons in 2001. 2003 saw her first solo exhibition ‘Love and Fear’ in Cape Town. In 2004 Louise moved to London and in 2008 was featured in the Getty Images gallery after being selected as a finalist in a photography competition. In 2010 she completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at Byam Shaw, Central Saint Martin’s. Whilst raising a young family Louise was chosen to exhibit in the Threadneedle Prize at the Mall Galleries, London in 2010 and 2013. In 2013 she was selected for an AIR Residency in London and in 2019 Tropical Lab 13 Residency at Lasalle, Singapore. She moved to Hong Kong in 2017 and completed a Master of Fine Art from RMIT in 2019.
https://www.louisefolliott.com/

Gwan Tung Dorothy Lau
Gwan Tung Dorothy Lau is a contemporary artist working with digitally manipulated media and installation. She explores the natural compulsion for social acceptance and personal excellence with reference to Psychoanalysis theories. Adopting an autobiographical approach, she stages an internal dialogue to convey the perplexity of her social identity - an amalgam of her Hong Kong upbringing and Australian education.
Lau completed her MFA with distinction at RMIT and Hong Kong Art School after receiving her BFA (Visual Arts) at QUT. Her works were selected in the HATCHED: National Graduate Show in Australia. In addition to being featured in international publications including Vice Creator and RealTime, Lau has participated in the Tropical Lab international artist residency, Creative Mornings breakfast lecture, and the BrisAsia Festival in Brisbane. Lau has exhibited internationally in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and the UK, notably at ICA Singapore, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and Metro Arts. Lau also provides art direction and consultation for Hong Kong music videos and commercials.
https://www.dorothylau.com/

Brian Smeets
Brian Smeets was born in New York in 1984. After completing degrees in sculpture and environmental studies from Washington University in Saint Louis, he pursued a career in commercial photography in San Francisco, California. His award-winning fine-art images have been shown globally; since moving to Hong Kong completed a Master of Fine Arts with RMIT University. Recently Brian formed a sound art practice in addition to showing photography and multimedia works. He continues to develop pop-up art shows as well as showing his work in the increasingly global art space of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.
Brian Smeets's project investigates travel destination and their experiential qualities, intending to remove the spectacle of tourism. An alternative view of liminal spaces and travel sites is presented through large scale abstract photography and collections of selected sounds and images.
http://www.smeetsstudios.com/

Cordelia Tam
Cordelia Tam was born in Hong Kong and has studied and worked in Canada. She received her Professional Diploma in Fine Art from Hong Kong Art School in 2017 and completed her Master of Fine Art program of Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in 2019. Cordelia explores the linkage between human and nature in her works, using everyday material combined with themes of conformity to inspire towards harmony in urban life. Her works are multidisciplinary and include video, installation, photography and other media. In recent years Cordelia’s works have been exhibited in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia, and during her residency in Taiwan in 2018 she co-created an art installation work which was awarded the 2018 Austronesian International Arts Award-Grand Prize.
www.cordeliatam.com

Karen Wong
Karen Wong graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) majoring in Ceramics and Master of Fine Art from the RMIT in 2017 and 2019 respectively. Karen was selected as an artist of the IV. International Ceramics Triennial UNICUM 2018 in The National Museum of Slovenia. In 2019 Karen has been awarded by the Hong Kong Art Centre for a month Artist-in-Residency at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
www.karenwongceramics.com

Curator

Wing Ki Kalen Lee
Kalen is an artist-researcher based in Hong Kong. His artistic practice lies between documentary photography, artistic and archival research, and a contemporary take to analogue photographic practice. His research interest includes photographic practices in the East-Asian context, critical digital humanities and media archaeology. His photography projects were exhibited in Austria, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Latvia, Taiwan and the UK. He read history of art at the University of Hong Kong and receive a MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, supported by a British Chevening Scholarship. He is currently an Assistant Professor in photography at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University and a curatorial member of 1a space, an independent art space in Hong Kong.
https://leewingki.com/

Presented by 1a space
1a space, founded in 1998, is an independent, non-profit making contemporary visual art organization and art venue founded by a collective of Hong Kong artworkers. It aims to promote the critical dissemination of contemporary visual arts practices and affiliated artforms through 1a space programme drawn from Hong Kong and international arena. The operation funding of 1a space has been supported by grants and donations. 1a space's administration cost is partially supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

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The public programs of REDUX are supported by the Home Affairs Department
Redux is a recommended activity of ‘Cultural July: Joyful Summer Reading’ presented by HKTDC

Acknowledgement:
Hong Kong Arts School
RMIT University

Anchor 5

Beyond Matter

06.09.2020 - 25.10.2020

1a space proudly presents Beyond Matter, a solo exhibition by Louis Nixon.
Beyond Matter, an exhibition of recent work by Hong Kong based British artist Louis Nixon. New paintings and films question the physicality and nature of rocks in an installation that explores cosmic time and the origins of the universe, through rocks that float, fall and move.

Beyond Matter

Exhibition period: 6th September - 25th October 2020
Time: Tuesdays to Sundays 11 am – 7 pm (closed on Mondays)
Venue: 1a space, Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong

▣ Private View (By Invitation only)
5th September 2020 (Saturday) 11am

▣ Opening reception
5th September 2020 (Saturday) 6:30pm
Live on Facebook

▣ Artist Talk
9th September 2020 (Wednesday) 6:30pm
Live on Zoom

Artist Louis Nixon will be in conversation with Professor Harald Kraemer, a current Visiting Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media of the City University of Hong Kong. The speakers will discuss in detail the making of Nixon’s latest works and the exhibition “Beyond Matter”.

▣ Artist-led Guided tour
19th September 2020 (Saturday) 6pm
*Physically held at 1a space

Artist’s statement
Nixon has been working with rocks since 2010, exploring their unique qualities through painting, film, photography, sound and kinetic sculpture. Building upon previous work on mountains and minerals, Nixon has become increasingly fascinated by rocks, their shape, size, texture, colour, the sounds they make and how they appear and behave in the world. Beyond Matter is an exhibition and installation of new work in film and painting, which explores the physicality and nature of rocks from three perspectives and through three separate but inter-related works. Falling (2020) is a looped digital film of a falling rock captured from a car dashcam. Moving (2016-20) is a digital video work of a large hand made kinetic rock which moves on its own accord. Floating (2018-20) is a series of paintings from a collection of rocks and materials extracted from the landscape.

Biography
Louis Nixon (b.1965) is a British artist living and working in Hong Kong. Nixon studied painting at Chelsea School of Art and postgraduate sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Before joining HKBU as the Director of the Academy of Visual Arts in 2018 he was Head of the School of Fine Art and the Associate Dean for Research at Kingston School of Art, London. His practice encompasses painting, sculpture, installation and experimental film, often presented as multi-media installations in galleries and public spaces.
Nixon founded the collective Space Explorations in 1990 and as artist, director and curator, participated in large-scale interventions in response to specific sites. Nixon’s work is underpinned by an ongoing engagement with an expanded sculptural practice including kinetic sculptures, sound works, films and paintings, which combine a manipulation of technology with the creation of new modes of presentation. His work has been exhibited internationally in Armenia, Australia, Chile, China, Italy, Poland, Serbia, and the United Kingdom.
www.louisnixon.art

Museum of Half Truths
08.08.2020 - 30.08.2020

1a space proudly presents the Museum of Half Truths, group exhibition curated by UK-based curators Rachael Burns and Polly Palmerini, featuring New York and Hong Kong based artist Lau Wai, Singapore-based artist Moses Tan, Hong Kong-based artists Andrew Luk, Stacey Chan Lok Heng and Ip Wai Lung. Museum of Half Truths is the selected project of 1a space’s "The Emerging Talents in Contemporary Art": Open Call for Artist/Curator (International).

Museums and libraries are the repositories of history but they remain flawed and biased in their representation. How can we disrupt the pre-existing structures that surround us? How can we represent fairly our many co-existing and conflicting memories and histories?

The Museum of Half Truths will aim to answer these questions by exploiting the conventions of these institutions to present a playful take on a museum that is transparent about its subjectivity.

Our compulsion to collect, archive and document history is inherently human. These artists draw from personal and historical archives and cultural tropes to investigate the relationship between fact, fiction and memory.
The artists featured question our recording of cultural memory; investigating rituals and traditions; the whitewashing of popular culture; and by memorializing and advocating for underrepresented communities.

Exhibition

Opening Reception: 7th August 2020, 6:30pm (Held online over Facebook live)
Exhibition Period: 8th -30th August 2020
Time: Tuesdays to Sundays 11 am – 7 pm (closed on Mondays)
Venue: 1a space
Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road,To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Public Programmes

1. Artists-led Guided Tour
Friday 7th August 2020, 7 pm
Language: English and Cantonese
Held online over Facebook live

The exhibition launches with an artist-led tour of the gallery, and an introduction to the project from the curators of Museum of Half Truths, the exhibiting artists Andrew Luk, Ip Wai Lung, Stacey Chan, Moses Tan and Lau Wai and 1a space. The show launches in a digital format and still aiming for it the audience to be able to investigate the space and engage with the works at show.

2. Making a Museum - Curator-led workshop
Saturday 8th August, 4-7 pm
Held online over Instagram live

Making a Museum is a series of creative exercises, artist talks and provocations looking at building better museums and engaging with archives. We will start with an introduction from the curators, Polly Palmerini and Rachael Burns, to talk about the origins of the project. The artists and provocations will be led by Audrey Albert, ZINE COOP, Wan Chee Michelle Chan and Shireen Marican.

Audrey Albert will start the creative exercises with a Cyanotype workshop rooted in memory. Her project Matter out of Place researches her Chagossian heritage through the personal archives and oral histories of Manchester’s Chagossian community.

Beatrix and Forrest of ZINECOOP HKwill follow with a workshop that asks visitors to engage with their thoughts and feelings when experiencing artworks; connecting their emotions to the work and creating a zine to document that process.

We will then be joined by Wan Chee Michelle Chan to show us around her Hong Kong studio and talk us through the process of working with her Uncle’s personal collections of imagery to create the project Kaufu.
Shireen Marican, a Singapore based researcher and writer, will deliver a provocation on museums as spaces for discourse and education for audiences, artists and staff.

3. Screening
Saturday 8th August, 7-8 pm
Held online over Facebook live

This screening will present three of the video works featured in the exhibition; I am invincible...on the screen/ False motion tracking, Lau Wai; Karma Cycle, Ip Wai Lung; and Slow Steps, Moses Tan. The works will be introduced by each artist, and the curators will talk through the selection. We will also present the work of some young UK based artists, Emma Crabtree, Hannah Lim, Charles Turner, Victoria Dhal and Freya Pigott. Their works span multiple artforms and mediums, all engaging with the project themes of fact, fiction, memory and myth.

4. Artist Panel Discussion
Friday 14th August, 7-8 pm
Held online over Zoom

The curators and artists Andrew Luk, Ip Wai Lung, Lau Wai, Moses Tan and Stacey Chan, will be in discussion about their practices and the Museum of Half Truths project. The discussion will use the work of the artists as a catalyst to question representation, the documentation of cultural memory and the guardians and gatekeepers of our histories.

5. Care/ ing/ ful/ less- Reading Group
Sunday 16th August, 6-8 pm
Held online over Zoom

This will be a group discussion of a range of texts on the theme of ‘care’, selected by moderator Yang Yeung. The writings touch on perspectives from care-givers and receivers of care; curators and archivists investigating caring within an institution; love, loneliness, homelessness and the ethics of listening. As a group we will use these works as a starting point to consider the role of care in the cultural sector and the wider world.

The readings respond to the idea of “care” proposed by the curators of Museum of Half Truths. The readings are chosen not so that there will be a comprehensive philosophical or theoretical argument on care, but more that they are first, hinges into the sensibility of our times, and second, keys to our power of learning from each other.
All readings touch upon some form of restraint – psychological, social, political... All touch upon justice and freedom in some ways. All point to the possibilities of effecting change for good. Perhaps the readings could be regarded as the beginning of a book list that we can collectively shape in the long run, caring for the evolution of care in our lives and others’ together.” - Yang Yeung

All are welcome to listen along and contribute their thoughts and questions. If you would be interested as a participant to join the panel and interact with the speakers, get in touch: info@museumofhalftruths.co.uk
Download Reading List:https://museumofhalftruths.co.uk/Care-ing-ful-less

The public programs are free of charge, all are welcome.

About the Curators

Rachael Burns
Rachael Burns (b. 1994, UK) is a curator, arts organiser and educator based in Manchester. She graduated from BA Photography at Manchester School of Art in 2016 and has since worked with artists from around the UK, for young people programs, and in exhibition production. She is a founding member of FORM; a collective of artists who work together through a series of experiments in collaboration. FORM have exhibited across the UK and in 2019 held the inaugural Derby Photo Fringe to coincide with Format International Photography Festival. Rachael is currently working as Events Coordinator for Redeye, the Photography Network and with Photovoice, a charity working with photography ethically to promote positive social change alongside other freelance projects.
https://rachael-burns.co.uk/

Polly Palmerini
Polly Palmerini (b. 1995, Italy) is curator, educator and artist based in Manchester UK.
Currently a Teaching Assistant on the BA (Hons) Photography at Manchester School of Art and Club Tutor for National Saturday Club in Art and Design. Her practice concentrates on materiality, malleability and the performative quality of everyday objects, which an interest in objects found in her surroundings. Since graduating, she has been working as an art workshop lead for young people round Greater Manchester, which encourage widening participation and engagement in art. Polly has worked on the production and curation of several shows in Manchester, UK through a series of exhibition involving current undergraduate students and also through open calls.
Pollypalmerini.com

Participating Artists (In no particular order)

Andrew Luk
Born in 1988 in the USA, Andrew Luk was raised in Hong Kong.
His work has been exhibited internationally including in Next Act, Asia Society, Hong Kong, China (2020) ; Very Natural Actions, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, China (2019) ; Serious Games, HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2019) ; Appropriate Responses for Featherless Bipeds with Broad Flat Nails, chi K11 art museum, Shanghai, China (2018) ; A Tree Fell in the Forest, and No One’s There, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China (2018) ; Practice, de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong, China (2017) ; and At Wits’ End, Kula Bazaar ACC, Gwangju, Korea (2016). His work is included in public collections worldwide, including: Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, IL, USA; Frank. F. Yang Art and Education Foundation, Shenyang, China; University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, Chicago, IL, USA; and K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong, China.
He is the recipient of the 2016 Project Grant from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and the 2014 Emerging Artist Grant from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Andrew Luk graduated from the New England School of Art and Design (NESAD) in Boston, Massachusetts with a BFA in 2010. In the same year, he also graduated from Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts with a BA in European History.
Andrew Luk lives and works in Hong Kong.
https://www.andrewluk.com/

Stacey CHAN Lok Heng
Born in 1995 in Australia, Stacey CHAN Lok Heng lives and works in Hong Kong. She receives her BA from the Academy of Visual Arts in Hong Kong Baptist University who is the recipient of the Vitamin D Award and AVA Award at AVA BA GradShow 2017 by her work “Normalised”. By removing the usual form of everyday objects, Chan’s works bring viewers to a redefinition of matter through our own practical experience and relationship with objects. Her visual form of nothingness maximizes audience’s thinking and imagination on artworks, which allows objects to speak for itself in creating a psychological dialogue with viewers. Chan has participated in exhibitions in Austrian Museum of Contemporary Art (MAK) and galleries in Hong Kong, Berlin, Croatia and Switzerland. Her works are in Uli Sigg’s collection and Hong Kong private collection.
www.staceychan.com/untitled-white　

Lau Wai
Born in Hong Kong, Wai currently lives and works in New York and Hong Kong. Her work utilizes photography, video, drawing and installation exploring the multilateral constructions of identity in relation to race, gender and the notion of belonging. She attempts to investigate how history, fiction, personal memory and virtuality collided in the process of identity formation through personal and historical archives, cinematic imagery, popular culture and digital media.
www.wai-lau.com

Moses Tan
Moses Tan (b. 1986, Singapore) is a Singapore-based artist whose work explores histories that intersect with queer theory and politics while looking at melancholia and shame as points of departure. Working with drawing, video and installation, his interest lies in the use of subtlety and codes in the articulation of narratives. He graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts with a BA(Hons) in Fine Arts and a BA(Hons) in Chemistry and Biological Chemistry from Nanyang Technological University.
www.mosestanqy.com/memorial-for-boogie-street

Ip Wai Lung
Ip Wai Lung is a meditation enthusiast who embraces impermanence, as conventional religious believes are static, yet the world is constantly in flux. He intervenes with life by mediation in an attempt to process all the impermanence, queerness, and ambiguity the world throws at him. Through art Ip stages meditation, he detaches and engages with the consciousness and unconscious. This constantly shifting of roles, modes, and discipline is the backbone of his artworks. His works might be plain and dry at first glance, yet there is a never-ending restlessness bursting from the seams.
Artworks of Ip Wai Lung, an entrepreneur-turned-self-taught-artist, have been exhibited at galleries and art shows in New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai and across South East Asia, collected by private collector. His latest business venture is The ScreenGuru, a large-scale, data-driven intelligent outdoor display network for video art in Hong Kong and beyond.
www.ipwailung.com/KARMA-CYCLE

Anchor 6

Hiddenfromview

23.10.2020 - 18.11.2020

The etymological origin for the Chinese word “fo2 bun6” (伙伴), or “partner”, traces back to the ancient military system. While “fo2” ( 火 ) refers to a unit of ten militants, it also doubles to mean “fire”. Indeed, the military was organised by the fire – the leader of a unit, “fo2 zoeng2” ( 火長 , literally meaning “ chief of the fire”), was in charge of cooking all meals which the team would share together. Therefore, those within one “fo2” were called “fo2 bun6” ( 火伴 ), or “partners of fire". This word was later adapted to generally mean "partners" ( 同伴 ) and was developed to be written as "伙伴” (fo2 bun6). Now, it refers to people who collaborate as part of the same organisation or activity, sharing the same practices and experiences.

Starting from 15th August 2019, Tsung Tsin Christian Academy and 1a space have joined to launch a one-year programme "Arts-in-School Partnership Scheme" initiated by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. 1a space commissioned two artists, Kevin Ling and Debe Sham, to collaborate and explore how art knowledge can intervene secondary school students and the community through different workshops. “Hiddenfromview” – Arts-in-School Partnership Scheme Exhibition will anchor on the concept of outlining and recording space, and will allow glimpses into the interaction and transformation which the participating artists and students have undergone in the past year.

Hiddenfromview

Exhibition period: 23th October - 18th November 2020
Time: Tuesdays to Sundays 11 am – 7 pm (closed on Mondays)
Venue: 122 To Kwa Wan Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong

About the Participating Artists

Debe Sham
Debe Sham (born in Hong Kong) is a sculptor, researcher and educator. She received her B.A. and M.V.A. at The Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. She has been studied at M. A. Program in Philosophy of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is currently a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees student. Sham has joined The AVA, HKBU and The Fine Art Department, CUHK as a part-time lecturer since 2016 and 2018 respectively. Before joining the Curatorial Panel of 1a space, she was a visiting artist and research fellow at Lingnan University and Yale University. Her research interest covers a wide range of topics such as interactivity as a means of generating dialogue between art and its audience; the ambiguity of interpersonal communication in different social situations; and the history and culture of toys, games and playgrounds. Sham's site-specific sculptures and installations have grown out of the artistic exploration of the role of public art.

Ling Chung-wan Kevin
Ling Chung-wan Kevin (b. Hong Kong 1994) graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University in 2017, he was awarded the Tuna Prize at the AVA BA Graduation Exhibition 2017, shortlisted Hong Kong Human Right Prize 2018. Through community-based research and material exploration to create the simplest resonance. Alternate perspective towards urban elements can be found in Ling's work. His works concern about the relationship and connection in the community and a sense of curiosity.

Participating Students：
Wong Yuk Yin
Chan Yuen San
On Ka Yam
Mo Pak Yin
Sze Yi Hin Crosley
Mok Siu Ling Yuki
Wong Tsz Lam
Chan Lok Yan
Loong Hin Cheuk

Post-Digital Materiality

07.11.2020 - 22.11.2020

1a space proudly presents Post-Digital Materiality, a joint exhibition by Do One Im, Keith Lam, O2 LAB, Otto Li, Seok-Jun Ha, Show Kawabata and Takuto Usami.

Curator’s statement
Throughout history, artists have explored different technologies that have provided them with new tools for expression. Whereas early computer-generated and digital art in the mid-late twentieth century focused on ‘making digital things real’ and ‘making real things digital’, artworks in the post-digital era appear to blur the conventional divide between digital/analogue, virtual/real, and human-made/machine-made.

Amongst the diverse kinds of digital technologies, digital fabrication methods, such as 3D printing, CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) machining, and 3D scanning, offer opportunities for artists to conceive of physical objects that could not be made by traditional means. This has resulted in the emergence of new aesthetics and raised the issue of how the digital becomes translated into the physical in a manner that goes beyond mere replication.

Post-Digital Materiality features the works of four individual artists and two artist teams that explore new aesthetic possibilities and concepts afforded by digital fabrication technologies in the post-digital era. The way in which these artists have used technologies in the presented works varies widely. However, all have in common the use of standard or improvised digital fabrication methods to turn ideas and stories into physical entities: the visualization of the unimaginable which would be impossible to construct without the new technologies, the re-interpretation of the old media through new media, the physical mapping of data, and the re-interpretation of relationship between human labour and technologies. Regardless of their versatile approaches, the artists provide socio-cultural commentaries on the use of technology and ask the viewer to reflect upon its impacts on our society at various levels.

Exhibition details
7th - 22nd November 2020
Time: Tuesday to Sunday 11 am – 7 pm (closed on Monday)
Venue: 1a space, Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Opening reception
6th November 2020 (Friday) 6:30pm

Artist Talk
14th November 2020 (Saturday) 3-5pm
* Will be held over zoom

Curator-led Guided tour
21st November 2020 (Saturday) 3-4pm
Venue: 1a space (Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong )

About Curator and Participating Artists

Curator

Min Jeong Song
Min Jeong Song is an assistant professor in the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts at the Education University of Hong Kong. Her current research interests include the convergence of craft and digital technology in art and design, STEAM education, and maker culture.

Participating Artists

Do One Im
Do One Im is a sculptor and media artist based in Seoul, Korea. He was an artist in residence in Space Can Beijing in 2014, and has participated in numerous group and solo shows, including the 2017 Seoul City Architecture Biennale. Im holds an MFA degree from Seoul National University.

Keith Lam
Keith Lam is a new media artist based in Hong Kong. He is a co-founder of an art team from Hong Kong and Taiwan, Dimension Plus, and he is a founder of composite space, Openground. Lam has won awards at PRIX Ars Electronica, Japan Media Art Festival, and the Young Artist Award. He has taught at the City University of Hong Kong, and he consults and guest-lectures at various institutes.

O2 LAB
Founded in 2018, O2 LAB is a collaborative project between a Taiwanese engineer and educator, Hank Ou, and a Japanese artist and designer Yuka Otani. Together they explore new perspectives on combining art and digital technology. O2 LAB’s recent exhibitions include Maker Faire Tokyo, Synthetic Media Art, and Nakanojo Biennale.

Otto Li
Tin Lun, Otto Li graduated from the Department of Fine Arts (BA and MFA) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. As an artist, he has worked with sculpture, virtual modeling, digital images and interactive installation. He owes his interest in exploring connections between virtuality and reality to his years of working as a concept artist in a CG animation company.

Seok-Jun Ha
After majoring in communication design at the Parsons School of Design in the United States and working as a member of the Strategic Marketing Team at Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Seok-Jun Ha obtained an MFA degree from the Korea National University of Arts as a media art major. He received the grand prize in the ‘New Hero’ competition organized by the monthly Public Art Magazine in 2015 and he showed new works at the Cheongju Craft Biennale 2017, and the Seoul Media City Biennale 2018 in Korea.

Show Kawabata and Takuto Usami
Show Kawabata and Takuto Usami are a duo of artists based in Tokyo, Japan. The ongoing focus of their work is that which is removed from and by people. In recent years, their works have been shown across the world at festivals and in galleries. The artists have received the Aesthetica Art Prize, UK, and the YouFab Global Creative Awards, Japan.

Supported by

Hong Kong Arts Development Council
The Education University of Hong Kong
Department of Cultural and Creative Arts

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We have received a professional review on Post-Digital Materiality. Laurence Wood, the Associate Head of the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts at the Education University of Hong Kong provided his insights.

"The artists in this exhibition strive to find new and unique expressive dimensions from exploring and celebrating the creative possibilities that the technologies within this post-digital age can provide. Many 'new tech' exhibitions focus on the technology and how it will enable, assist or guides us to do or to make, but here in this show the emphasis is on the artists and how they can enable, customize re-frame or subvert the technology itself to generate possibilities beyond standard use." - Laurence Wood

The full review is available here:

Anchor 8

Silent Voices

18.12.2020 - 31.12.2020

Silent Voices juxtaposes work from university students and established art practitioners to explore and highlight fragments of untold stories from underrepresented groups in Hong Kong.

This exhibition stems from a general education course offered this fall by the Department of History at Hong Kong Baptist University, entitled An Introduction to Gender, Class and Race. In a series of guest lectures on intersectionality and art making in Hong Kong, students were provided with the opportunity to learn about the work of art practitioners such as Chan Sai-lok, Ivy Ma, and Yuenjie Maru and how they transform an idea into a work of art. These sharing sessions engaged students in reflecting on individuals or groups in Hong Kong marginalized due to ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, occupation, disability, and/or indigenous heritage. In highlighting the interconnectedness of gender, class, race, and other categories, students also collected first-hand material and brought oral history elements into their interpretations.

【“Silent Voices” Exhibition】
Date: 18 December 2020 – 31 December 2020 (closed on Monday, 25-26 December)
Time: 1pm – 5pm
Venue: 122 To Kwa Wan Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong (Virtual Exhibition available)

Artist Performance
Artist: yuenjie MARU
Date & Time: 17 December 3-4pm

I try to determine who is dancing or if there is a moment in which someone is not dancing. When I observe people, I recognize breathing as an act of dancing. Looking at the sidewalk across the road through the window of the exhibition gallery, I sometimes see pedestrians, and they may, in turn, see the viewers here. The ban on social gatherings does not allow people to dance or perform; they can only breathe, walk, move, and live with masks. They may see viewers across the two lanes of traffic and observe how they are breathing, stopping, flowing, and living with their masks. Sometimes vehicles pass.

“You standing on the bridge are gazing at the scenery; someone watching the landscape aloft from the balcony is gazing at you. The glowing moon has your window adorned; you, adorn the dream of someone.” 一 “Fragments” Bian Zhilin (Translated by Roger Lee)

Pedestrian 1: Nancy Poon
Pedestrian 2: Maru
Pedestrian 3: Fifi Ng

Anchor 9

Infection Invader

10.12.2020 - 15.01.2021

1a space is proud to present infection invader, a group exhibition of three young Hong Kong artists Fung Wing Lam, Lam Siu Ying and Liv Tsim. The exhibition runs from 10 December 2020 to 15 January 2021.

infection invader is an immersive and participatory exhibition, which explores the close connection between humans and viruses. The artists created an interactive installation combining online and on-site devices to help visualise the infectious relationship between people. Audiences are encouraged to play the ‘Infectious Disease Training Course’ game from the exhibition’s online platform and observe how the sculptures in the gallery reflect the audiences’ performance in the game. Part of the exhibition showcase notes, photographs and videos documenting the scientific research and production stages of the artwork.

To the artists, infectious diseases are like microscopes which render visible connections between human beings. At the same time, diseases compel people to reflect on their coexistence with other organisms. Scientific research has shown that viruses have been evolving since the era of universal common ancestor and they will continue to be inextricably intertwined with human lives in the future. Nowadays when surgical masks became indispensable, breathing starts to acquire new meanings. Every ounce of oxygen is connected via the survival needs of different species, and the breath of individuals weaves an intimate network between ecological groups. Hence, the exhibition uses breath as a ‘medium’ to connect human and virus communities.

The intention of Infection Invader is to encourage discussions on the mutually restrained and reliant relationship between humans and viruses. Virology is not a personal issue; it affects the community structure and ecosystem. From the biological community point of view, it is difficult for us to overcome infectious diseases alone. Through an immersive experience, Infections Invader encourages the public to experience the subtle tie between community and ecosystem and to imagine how we can coexist with infectious disease in the future.

Artwork statement
For microorganisms, human bodies are cradles where both parties give and take what they need to reach a perfectly balanced symbiosis. Humans also facilitate the proliferation and transmission of microorganisms, spreading them among the ecological communities of different species. The American biologist Edward O. Wilson popularised the hypothesis of biophilia: the human instinct and desire to seek connection with the rest of life. Human cannot survive independently, our inborn focus on other life forms and innate affinity with nature drive us to form connections with the natural world. Infectious diseases are like a microscope, rendered visible the microscopic connection between human beings, at the same time makes people reflect on their coexistence with other organisms.

Today, surgical masks became indispensable for our lives. In our daily endeavours to prevent the spread of disease through respiratory transmission, we have sacrificed the comfort of breathing freely in public space. Breathing is a continuous process of inhalation and exhalation, a never-ceasing exchange of air flow between the body and the environment. It allows us to intake life-sustaining oxygen. Vegetations breathe through surface tissues covered with small opening called stomata, some animals also breathe through their skins, whereas other animals rely on their lungs, such as human beings. Along with each respiration viruses imperceptibly travel between species and entities, finding new suitable hosts. Every ounce of oxygen is connected by the survival needs of different species, and the breath of individuals weaves an intimate network between ecological groups. The exhibition Infection Invader uses breath as a medium to connect the human and virus communities. The purpose of the show is to encourage discussion on the mutual restrained and reliant relationship between human and virus.

Scientific research has shown that viruses have been evolving since the era of universal common ancestor. For example, smallpox disease plagued human for almost 3,000 years and was only eradicated in the 1980s. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, caused by the A/H1N1 influenza virus, infected about a quarter of the world’s population at the time, roughly 500 million people. The virues disappeared two years later in 1920 only to reappear in the form of swine flu pandemic in 2009. In the future, the virus will continue to be inextricably intertwined with the trajectory human lives. Humans and viruses are destined to coexist.

In response to this connection, we created an interactive installation which combines online and on-site devices to help visualise the infectious relationship between people. Audience are encouraged to play the ‘Infectious Disease Training Course’ game online and observe how the sculptures in the gallery collect and reflect their performance in the gamer. Virology is never just a personal issue; it affects the community structure and ecosystem. From the biological community point of view, it is difficult for us to overcome infectious disease alone. Through an immersive experience, Infections Invader encourage the public to experience the subtle tie between community and ecosystem and to imagine how we will coexist with infectious disease in the future.

About the Artists

Fung Wing Lam
Fung Wing Lam graduated from the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong, majoring in New Media (Bachelor of Arts and Science). Fung has shown her works at PMQ (2019), Hong Kong City Hall (2018), JCCAC (2018) and Hong Kong Arts Centre (2014).

Lam Siu Ying
Lam Siu Ying earned her BA from the Hong Kong Baptist University, majoring in Studio and Media Arts. Lam has shown her works at Hong Kong City Hall (2016), Kunstquartier Bethanien, Germany (2016), Koo Ming Kown Exhibition Gallery (2015) and Brisbane, Australia (2015).

Liv Tsim
Liv Tsim received her BA at the Academy of Visual Art from Hong Kong Baptist University. Her works were showcased in several international exhibitions, including Parallel Space (2020), Budapest Art quarter, Hungary (2018), Kunstquartier Bethanien, Germany (2016), Brisbane, Australia (2015) and Hong Kong – Shenzhen Design Biennale, China (2014).

Public programmes accompanying the exhibition include public talk and a series of artist and docent led tours. The artists are available for interviews on request.

Exhibition details
Date: 10 December 2020 – 15 January 2021
Venue:1a space Unit 14 Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon,

Public Programme
Artist Talk |My virus is blue; my friend is you
Speakers: Pei Ying Lin in conversation with Fung Wing Lam, Lam Siu Ying and Liv Tsim. Moderated by Juliana Chan (1a space)
Date & Time: 3 January 2021 3-4pm
Language: Mandarin Chinese
* Online held over zoom
* The program is free of charge. All are welcomed! *

On 3 January, the three artists from “infection invader”, Lam Siu Ying, Fung Wing Lam and Liv Tsim, will be joined by Eindhoven-based artist and designer Pei-Ying Lin on an intimate dialogue. They will each bring about their own questions, experiences and insights upon the common ground of creating new media and interactive projects in exploration of the intertwining microbes and human communities. The talk also hope to offer new perspectives in viewing the current project at 1a space, "infection invader", especially under the current context when our indivisible relationship with viruses has never been more visible.

About our guest speaker – Pei-Ying Lin
Pei-Ying Lin is an artist / designer from Taiwan and currently based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Her main focus is on the combination of science and human society through artistic methods, and she is particularly interested in building a common discussion ground for different cultural perspective regarding elements that constructs our individual perception of the world. Recently she has been focusing on manipulating the boundary of invisible/visible, living/non-living and finding ways to build tools and methods that facilitate such explorations. She has won the Honorary Mention of STARTS Prize 2020, Honorary Mention of Ars Electronica 2015, Core 77 Awards 2015, BioArt and Design Award 2016.
http://peiyinglin.net/

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