Archive for September, 2009

Lu Di

Published by info on September 18, 2009 in First Step and General News.

18th September – 23th December 2009

lu-di-cash-machine
Lu Di’s current practice illustrates and amplifies problematic and insignificant events with the urban setting. Drawing attention to aspects of faulty objects or conflict, Lu Di uses either de-construction or re-construction as processing technique to refine objects, images and audio. The result usually appears obscure between the realistic and the serial.
For the First Step exhibition, Lu Di will construct an installation based on the three invisible triangles created within a musician’s body form while playing a Violin. Balancing between stability and flexibility, logic and passion, physical limitation and intellectual freedom, Lu Di’s installation will underline the mathematic elements that inhabit both musical performance and artistic practice.

Autumn Newsletter

Published by admin on September 10, 2009 in General News and Newsletters.

headers_email_autumn09

Autumn Newsletter

Save the Date
Our next preview of One Degree of Separation will be on 8 October, from 17:30-20:00.

Picnic in Time Square

The exhibition looks at the role that social connections and artistic interconnections play in the practice of a group of artists from Hong Kong. To find out more click here.

Breathe Artist-in-residence
Live artist Yingmei Duan has started her residency at the centre now. During her residency she will be investigating how art is experienced in the UK. The research will focus on the many facets of art education. If you would like to take part in her research please contact us. To find out more click here.

Guanghwa Books Book Fair
On Saturday 19 September Guanghwa Books will be organising a book fair here at Chinese Arts Centre. Come along and stock up on language, fiction, travel, arts, and martial arts books as well as children’s films.

Chinese Arts Centre recommends
The Utopia Group’s project (He Hai and Deng Dafei) at Deveron Arts.

susan pui san lok’s Faster, Higher at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, as part of the Great North Run Cultural Programme.

Visible Secrets: Hong Kong’s Women Filmmakers at the Cornerhouse. This is the first UK film season of films made by Hong Kong women filmmakers with a focus on Ann Hui.

Visiting Us
If you would like to bring a group to the centre or any specific access needs please contact us so that we can help make the most of your visit.

And Finally
Look out for our new bi-lingual brochure which will be available from the end of September.

Between now and the end of September Chinese Arts Centre is doing a survey of our audience. If you are able to spare 5mins please complete this questionnaire, it would be really appreciated.

Please note that we are using e-invites for our previews so if you would like to receive notification of our previews please join our mailing list.

One Degree of Separation

Published by info on September 4, 2009 in General News, Main Gallery and forthcoming.


Preview: 8 October 2009
Exhibition dates: 9 October 2009 – 9 January 2010
Artists: Kwan Sheung Chi, Lee Kit, Luke Ching, Pak Sheung Chuen, Wong Wai Yin

One Degree of Separation explores the role that social connections and artistic interconnections play in the practice of a group of artists from Hong Kong. The exhibition focuses not just on individual works of art but subtly draws attention to manifold interconnections between them, in a way that mirrors how the artists themselves relate to each other in their everyday lives, through shared concerns and working practices.

The art scene in Hong Kong is very small.  Most of the artists graduated from the Fine Art Department of the Chinese University, Hong Kong. With an intake of only 22 students per year there are no strangers within this circle. Since 2002 graduates have been renting empty factory units in Fotan, in the New Territories, Hong Kong. There are now over 100 artists’ studios in the area. With artists studying and making work in such a close-knit environment there is inevitably a great awareness and understanding of each other’s work but beyond this there are similar interests, collaborations, participation in and the referencing of each other’s work.

Luke Ching and Lee Kit collaborated on a picnic in front of the entrance of a huge shopping mall, Times Square, Hong Kong, to fight for the right to use public space.  The event was initiated by Luke Ching in response to the newly announced definition of ‘public space’ by a government official and the picnic was hosted by Lee Kit on his hand-painted cloth. Seven artists from Hong Kong joined the picnic. Pak Sheung Chuen and Luke Ching have both been regular columnists for a daily newspaper in Hong Kong, Ming Pao, using the paper as a platform for their ideas around social issues. Between 2006 and 2007, Kwan and Wong collaborated on creating a series of photographs that referenced the photographs of Jackson Pollack and Lee Krasner taken by Hans Namuth.

Curated by Ying Kwok, Chinese Arts Centre’s curator, who herself studied on the Fine Art programme at the Chinese University, Hong Kong, One Degree of Separation provides an insider’s point of view of the intimacy of the Hong Kong arts scene.

Special thanks go to the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, London for their support without which the exhibition would not have been possible.

Image Credits
Luke Ching (left image)
Picnic in Time Square
4th April 2008
Artist Luke Ching and Lee Kit initial a picnic in the front entrance of Time Square, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong to fight for the right to use public space.
Wong Wai Yin (right image)
To Kwan Sheung Chi
B&W Photos, Light Box, 40 x 50 cm, 2006-2007
Photo courtesy of Kwan Sheung Chi.