Wording Art

Art Central 2015

April 7, 2015

The packed month of March has just passed and I’m getting a little breather myself during this long holiday! I’m finally getting round to talking about Art Central, the newest art fair that debuted in Hong Kong.

It was a 3-day affair from 14-16 March and I went on the second day. I didn’t know this earlier but Sundays are crazily packed days for art fairs (Art Basel sold out their online tickets for Sunday!). It was held in a giant tent on the Central Harbourfront Event Space, a newly built space with a gorgeous park around it, with gray carpeted floors and wooden planks beneath. I’m not sure if anyone else noticed, but if you stepped a little too hard and a little too near to an art piece on one of those display blocks, the art piece would wobble just slightly!!

Art Central was split into two sections: Central and Rise. Central features established galleries from Asia and beyond, while Rise features up-and-coming galleries representing emerging artists. Overall, there was a strong focus on Asian galleries with works mostly being made within these few years. Many pictures ahead and my full review of Art Central below!

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Ng Lung Wai: 1960s Big Era

March 20, 2015

/ Review

Hong Kong Art Week has just passed and it’s time to recap on all the events! First up, there was Hong Kong artist Ng Lung Wai’s week-long exhibition at Comix Home Base. Big Era – 1960s World Celebrity Portrait Exhibition showed a small number of works, but they were all fun and memorable.

I’ve always loved artworks that are put together with many details, so when you zoom in, you see all the different pieces that make up the artwork. Ng does just that by using his very well-stocked collection of pins, badges, stamps and other collectibles to create large portraits of iconic figures in the 1960s. Quotes by each figure add a nice touch to the artworks.

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Hong Kong Museum of Art | Part II

March 10, 2015

/ Review

A quick writeup of the other four exhibitions ongoing at the Hong Kong Museum of Art! They provide a good contemporary art counterpart to the older works in the The Four Gentlemen exhibition. Here are my favorites and highlights!

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The Four Gentlemen

February 25, 2015

/ Review

Just the other weekend, I went to see The Four Gentlemen exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of Art. I was really excited to see some Chinese paintings after having learnt some of them and it turns out that this is an exhibition of paintings from the museum’s collection, which I didn’t manage to check out earlier!

As a side note, the Museum is preparing for a renovation starting this year till 2018, and now only have five ongoing exhibitions including The Four Gentlemen while their permanent collection galleries are said to be “temporarily closed.” I would love it if I could explore their collection before they close it for the next 3 years!

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The Case for Studying Art History

February 8, 2015

/ Academia, Words

Update (30th July 2020): This post was previously titled ‘The Case for Studying Fine Arts‘ as I was studying at the University of Hong Kong, and their Department of Art History was named the Department of Fine Arts at the time. Now that HKU’s Department of Art History has updated its name, it’s also time for a change here! My reasons for studying art history hasn’t changed though, so read on to see why art history is worth the study. :)

This illustration was the first image I saw in my first Fine Arts class. Western art history – made simple! Back then, my professor said we would know all about the various artists and their smiley face representations by the end of the class. I hadn’t even heard of almost all of the artists stated here, but I’m happy to say that I’m familiar with most of the artists now, except Rembrandt. My bad.

A lot of my friends, when they find out what I’m studying, like to ask, “So what do you do exactly?” or they exclaim, “Really?! I did art in high school, and I did so badly!” I never have a good response to the first question, I just don’t know what to say, and when I hear the second statement, I always think I wished I had the option to take art in high school, since I wasn’t enjoying math and science much anyway…

So it got me thinking about why I like what I do, or why should people study art history? Everyone has their own reasons, and I wanted to share about mine.