Wah Luen Industrial Centre Block A Visit
Overall feelings and comments
I have never been to any art gallery in industrial buildings. This is my first time and I think this is an eye-opening experience. ‘Art is hard to make a living’ people always mention this but I don’t think this is true although I could see that some artists are leading a hard life. Most of them combined their studios and their living areas together.
I understand that they may get
inspired anytime so that they can immediately transfer their ideas into
creation. Yet, inside the industrial buildings the environment was dirty and
dark. Unpleasant raw pork smell came into my nose time by time and the floor
was soaked with water in upper levels.
Interestingly, most of the artists did
sell their creation directly but I don’t agree that art is hard to make a
living at all. That’s because I saw few business cards were thrown inside the
cards collecting box in some studios. If the company is willing to drop the
business card, I think the artist is willing to cooperate with them. Some flats
were rented by non-artists. They sold homemade food or organic food and
visitors can enjoy the food in a small dinning room besides. Live cooking was
shown in front and this attracted people to squeeze in the studio continuously.
This was surely a wise way to earn profit.
Impressive Studio
The studio which impressed me most was ‘Out of Place’ ran by an artist
called Cath Brophy. It was located in Unit 3, 16/F, Block A, Wah Luen. All the
creations by Cath were large-scale collage drawings which were inspired by the
contrasting styles of modern housing blocks and traditional houses in Hong Kong .
The drawings were mainly painted with Charcoal, pastel and pencil only but they could still come out with
excellent effect. I found the way she collages several characteristics of different architecture together into one creation interesting. Although all of the creations were only in black and white, the effect of three-dimension was very strong. I extremely like grids and parallel stuffs so when the parts were bound together, which were the different parts of different architectures in different directions, I still thought that they were parallel.
Besides, when I looked into the parts separately, I could recognize which
type of buildings they are from. For instant in the work below, the window in
the left are definitely from traditional temples with small circles and a cross
lies on it. It
was enjoyable to look at the creation no matter you were seeing it in macro or
digesting it in detail. I also like the scale of the creations. They were all
huge like around 400x
Different parts of different buildings were
compressed into one creation yet there were enough spaces between each part. They
‘lived’ together very well and balanced each other.
This is similar to the
living environment in Hong Kong . It is crowd
to live in Hong Kong without a doubt. However,
each of us still has our own space, regardless of the size. We do not disturb
people living around us yet we meet sometimes. It is just like different parts
of different buildings overlap at some points but we can still trace the
patterns clearly and will not feel dizzy. Can’t
imagine a foreign artist can observe the buildings and living environment in Hong Kong that detailed. The creations match the real
situation well. I appreciate this series of work.
Feelings towards Hong Kong Artists
I don’t think that art is dying in Hong Kong
as I can see that many artists are still contributing tones of efforts to what
they fond of. They paint with passion and willing to share their creations and
foster the movement of art.
The work I saw that day was in large variety even
though I have just visited one of the fifteen industrial buildings! There must
be more and more to see! Most of them were fascinating in which some of types really strike against me. That’s because I have never seen a similar type of
work before. However,
I nearly dropped after I have visited Wah Luen Industrial Centre Block A. Hope I
can sleep more before the day I visit next time!
I am glad you enjoyed the studios regardless of the smell. You make an interesting point how don't think it's hard for an artist to make a living, if so why do you think we keep hearing this? What are the circumstances that make life hard and easy? Do you think the artists all would cooperate with the business cards that were dropped at their studio? It might be interesting to think about the economy of art and where the artist lie within it.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I saw business cards were dropped, there was just a few. I think it's not common for companies to find artists in these industrial buildings on their own as this is a waste of time to them. i think it's better for artists to join some gallery to ensure there are regular visits by different groups of people. Their works can reach more audience by doing so. I think the artists will cooperate with them...not sure:D
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