graffiti in tin hau. sorry about the time stamp.
since i'm back in hong kong i thought it would be appropriate to write a post i intended to write the last time i was here (christmas). we visited the hong kong heritage museum and it was quite an interesting experience to experience a museum from hong kong's point of view. most of the art galleries i've been to are private ones, clearly with a view to sell. this museum is a government-run one, and the building to me seems pretty similar to any other building which is open t the public in hong kong -- possibly even like a modest shopping centre or block of offices. it was quite difficult to navigate as a museum, and the permanent exhibition relating to hong kng and its history was in a style akin to that of the permanent exhibition akin to field museum in chicago (which i wrote about here).
there were a couple of temporary exhibitions (which in terms of the building was in a more prominent place than the permanent ones). one which was brush beyond space: works of tong yang-tze, which relates a little to the topics in a previous post about writing. painting quotes taken from literature, this female calligrapher (generally calligarphers tend to be male i think?) . the words are not particularly legible as chinese (unreadable writing!), which raises the question: how recognisable are the paintings as chinese? the visual characteristics are familliar to me but i can't really read chinese. do you need to know they are abstracted chinese characters to appreciate them? just some fleeting questions.
a suitable life
a swan goose
copper seas
perfect form
&
another was temporary exhibition there that i enjoyed was city flaneur: social documentary photography. of particular note were the following:
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the megafauna series by (to use the museum's format for names; capitals denotes surname) CHEN kwong yeun, dick. it was presented as in a light box style (ie backlit) but due to the size of the image they looked a bit like billboards, which i thought apt given the subject of the photography.
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from the city glow series byWAN chi chung, simon. layered images of billboards. the above photo is actually of a korean city, but the lit signage of hong kong is unique to it as a city, and i like the idea of multiple exposures laying them upon one another.
yesterday news of a street hawker (selling hong kong style egg waffles, and who is generally regarded affectionately by the general public) being arrested and the crowds who came to his defence has been in the hong kong papers. today there has already been official response (the health & food minister will try and arrange a permit so the streethawker is no longer arrested on for breach of food hygiene rules and many people have offered legal & financial support) due to the strong public reaction. i feel like there's a lot of interesting things to say about this, but i have yet to think upon it properly: the strict food hygiene laws is partly a result of avian flu and general hong kong hypochondria, street hawkers & street culture, the erosion of an 'old' style of living & the extent to which people are willing to protect it (or are selective in protecting it), the morality behind the story of a man who refuses to claim social benefits. there's a lot to consider. it's hard for me to articulate because a lot of my identity is tied up in hong kong, despite my relation being a complex and therefore confused one.
Hi Sarah, a bit off-topic, but I saw the title in your waiting list 'imperial soap?' and wondered if you were trying to remember the name of a book. If so, maybe it's Imperial Leather by Anne McClintock? Ignore me if that's not why you listed the title.
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to look at the Tong Yang-Tze pictures to work out if I could appreciate them without knowing they were references to Chinese characters, but now I know what they are it's hard to forget! Some of them definitely show their inspirations more clearly than others - but I wonder if that is just because I am viewing them as someone who can't read Chinese, and whether all of them would bear some relation to characters for a Chinese reader.
I think you can appreciate them as part of a placeless modernist aesthetic without knowing their significance, but this kind of universal approach means you wouldn't get the local variations in interpretation between people who do and don't speak Chinese. Also, the play between modernism and something archetypal of traditional China certainly adds something you don't get in the average Pollock, which is particularly relevant when exhibited in in place like Hong Kong. I'm not sure if these are totally banal observations though.
I love those ghostly billboards.