The Local Art and Culture Exhibition

I said earlier that my visit to the JCCAC in Shek Kip Mei was a minor cultural shock. Although many of the works I saw were not quite mature, they represented the struggles of our young artists to express themselves in their own way. Art is often a very lonely enterprise. It is rare that one's efforts get the kind of attention they deserve during one's lifetime. Part of the impact of my Shek Kip Mei shock came from the unexpected discovery of quite a number of very mature work by local artists.






The Access to Shuimo (  水墨之導) by Chan Shing Kau (陳成求), who graduated from the HK Grantham College of Education majoring in art and design, went on to study modern Chinese painting at HKCU and then got a degree in Chinese Language and Literature at Baptist College, has held various exhibitions in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the PRC since 1975. In this painting, he combines the straight geometric form and the semi-realistic way of painting clouds normally used in  western painting with the wavy lines of Chinese painting in doing the mountains and rocks.

Ran (亂) by Janson Sing Lai To( 杜成禮) a graduate of commercial design of the HK Polytechnic who went on to study apparel fashion production at Sydney's Institute of Technology, currently the art director of Graphic Plus and a professor in art of various local design institutes and who loves  2D and 3D art . In this painting, we see how the form of a woman is connected ( or dissociated?) to the Chinese cheong-sam with hints of Chinese ink painting and how the artist seeks to go beyond the traditional boundary of the four sides of the picture frame, something very Taoist because of the need to express the infinity of the external Tao, and to jump across the space between what is within the picture frame and the ground below.

Life is a circle by Anthony Yau (丘子乎), a photographer, digital media designer specializing in photo, video and web productions, an independent film maker and has held various photography exhibitions in Hong Kong and PRC and also a visiting lecturer at the HK Polytech U. In this artwork, he tries to show how circles impact modern life in various forms including Tao through interaction between otherwise separate windows of the digital screen of the iphone. This is a canvas of pictures taken by an -iphone.
 

Flowers' Lover (蝶戀花) is a work by acrylic and crystal done by Jolans Fung, graduate of Ecole National Superieure des Beaux Arts, Paris in 1990, HK Art Council's artist-in-residence in Bundamon Art Centre in Australia, in 2000 and got the American Freeman Foundation's Vermont Studio Centre fellowship in 2005 and has held numerous exhibitions either in Hong Kong or elsewhere. This work is inspired by Song Dynastic poet 歐陽修's verse which caused him to reflect on the huge difference in the life of the rich and poor in Hong Kong, presumably represented by the two butterflies in contrasting colors and each having different concerns.

This is a work called So Cloudy (  雲趣  ) by Chui Tze Hung (徐子雄), winner of the UC Biennial Fine Art Awards in painting in 1978 and in calligraphy in 1988 and then got a fellowship by the US National Endowment of Arts and is now a part-time lecturer at the Academy of Visual Art of Baptist U and founder of the Touchstone Workshop of the JCCAC. It is a work of calligraphy on color paper inspired by the prayer flags fluttering in the rare mountain air of Tibet sending out message of the good news of Buddhist teaching along with each high altitude gust of unpolluted air. .

This is an art device placed on the ground done by the "Empowered Women Workers Families Art Flourishing Community" of the Industrial Relations Institute (勞資關係協進會 <女三開技散葉種藝團> called "原來神掌" ("The Making of Labor Palms") on which are written the various secrets of how the underprivileged women contribute to the welfare of Hong Kong.

A clay pot I found in one of the corridors.

Some wooden blocks I found on another part of a corridor

This is an artificial flower found outside the table of one of the studios of a corridor. The centre of the RMB coin has been cut into a square. What is  that  supposed to suggest?

What I like best, however during this visit, is the work by Choy Pui Man, Mabel, a graduate of the School of Design of the HK Polytechnic U and the Academy of Visual Arts of the HK Baptist U, an artist interested in traditional art and multimedia design and also typography, Chinese painting and printmaking, handicrafts and web design. She posted a number of her paintings on the wall of the corridor outside her studio, evoking memories of playing in the corridors of a public housing estate when she was a child. The paintings were done by a combination of handwriting and computer coloration to express the theme of "now and then, existence and disappearance".  It recalls something very dear to a huge number of Hong Kong's lower classes because almost half the population of Hong Kong reside in one of such public housing estates. It helps them to relive an experience they grew up with. I like the unalloyed joy manifested on the faces of the children. It's warm and intimate.

I like the simple joys she display in her drawing/painting.