Recent art reviews & articles on Hong Kong exhibitions by AICAHK members will be posted here by the 7th of each month. Reviews will be published in the original English or Chinese, but unfortunately translations will not be provided; your blogged comments however can be made in either language.
Feigned Innocence: We All Look
by John Batten
at 3:18pm on 30th June 2009
Christopher Cheung, Nicole lightbox |
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presents the ideas of four trainee art curators - Hoi Sin Lam, Iris Lo, Nana Eun-A Seo and Evangelo Costadimas - who have just completed an eight-month art curatorial training programme run by Para/Site Art Space and partly funded with Hong Kong Jockey Club support.
Each trainee curator presents a sub-themed exhibition using four separate spaces in the large Osage Kwun Tong galleries to present 20 artists using ‘the gaze’ as a curatorial starting point. This theme has been chosen as it is a “recurrent topic of discussion in visual culture and has been the subject of a significant number of writings in art history, psychoanalysis and critical theory” and covers the “very fine lines between curiosity and spying…between desiring and lusting.”
This theme however induces each of the curatorial displays to hover around cliché with the audience offered aspects of nudity, surveillance and voyeurism; perennial topics for artists. The tightness of theme and the close physical proximity of each of the curator’s displays cause an unfortunate homogeneity between each of the four rooms – exacerbated by the decision not to provide any wall text, curatorial distinctions become apparent only if the separately provided documentary material is read.
Individual artists that offered thoughtful work include Norman Ford’s tableaux photograph; Christian Niccoli’s ‘Escalating Perception’ video; Christopher Cheung’s large ‘Nicole’ lightbox (see the image); Almond Chu’s photographs and the odd completely graphite-covered book of Samuel Adam Swope.
Teachers of trainee curators should know that an art curator has the role of exhibition organiser, provocateur, informer, as well as being an interpreter of art, artists, history and culture. Of utmost importance is the intellectual articulation about the art on display to an audience. If an audience is ignored, then exhibitions become questionable exercises in academic entertainment.
Exhibition: 《Feigned Innocence: We all Look - Para/Site Art Space: Hong Kong Jockey Club Curatorial Training Programme》
Date: 30.5. – 28.6.2009
Venue: Osage Kwun Tong
Enquiries: 852 2793 4817
Website: http://www.osagegallery.com/
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