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Category Archives: Art

Eye and mind candy

08 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by Barneys Girl in Art

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While we don’t have the Art Institute in Hong Kong, we do have art exhibits every few months to feast the eyes and stimulate the mind. This month, we have Fine Art Asia. The mandate for the exhibit is quite wide, ranging from ancient bronze, antique furniture and jewelry to contemporary art and installations. They even have a few Rembrandts and Monet!

I thought the exhibit was rather refreshing (and I’ve been to many in the last years). Since it was much smaller in scale than Art HK (and had much less people), I was able to actually take the time and really appreciate the pieces on display, and find the ones that I connected with (Art HK kind of blows your mind with the sheer amount of art on display).
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In Jail!

26 Friday Nov 2010

Posted by Barneys Girl in Art, Hong Kong, Random Musings

≈ 16 Comments

If the economy in Hong Kong wasn’t so vibrant, the hippest restaurants in town wouldn’t have been fully booked on a Friday night, and I wouldn’t have ended up heading to a not-so-hip restaurant in Soho on a Friday night. If I hadn’t lost my hair tie earlier this week, I wouldn’t have chosen to go up to Soho via the ladder streets to pick up some hair ties on the way. If I hadn’t gone up ladder street and had to catch my breath at the top of the stairs, I wouldn’t have looked up and noticed the floating lantern of lights in the distance, at the usually closed gates of the long  deserted Victoria Prison. If I hadn’t been a curious party crasher, I wouldn’t have come across this most amazing display of balloon lights by Jiro Hirano.

Isn’t this one of the most amazingly romantic scene one can possibly randomly come across? It was right out of a cheesy romantic comedy! I imagine that these balloons would look beautiful surrounding a dance floor at my wedding……………….

If I hadn’t been so dazzled by this display of lights, I wouldn’t have wanted to check out every part of it and I wouldn’t have noticed the people upstairs in the building. If I hadn’t gone up the rather sketchy looking set of stairs, I would’ve missed this most intriguing display of paper structures built by first year HKU architect students inspired by body parts.

And that would’ve been a shame, because even though I didn’t quite get the body part reference, I did thoroughly enjoyed interpreting it on my own. I haven’t used my imagination in a while, and this was definitely good exercise! The first one that caught my eye was the top left one. I thought it looked like a Greek helmet with the feathers caught in the wind, flowing towards the left. But alas, the artist of the piece  told me that it was actually the arm of a music composer, and it was embodying his hand movement as he conducts music. I can kind of see that…. but I still see helmet more. As for the rest, I couldn’t quite  figure out what body part/movement it is supposed to embody, but going clockwise the following things popped into mind: wind chimes, star and a chair (or headphones!). Ah.. the joys of abstract art.

The next one that I loved, was the People’s Paint display next door. I thought it was an incredibly smart piece of interactive art (after the Bean in Chicago that is- that will always be my favourite piece of interactive art!). Viewers enter a room filled with canvas walls/objects, where an outline of a design has been drawn with pencil and the color codes for each space numbered. The viewer is then provided with paint in the correlating numbered colors (they also thoughtfully provided us HK-ers with aprons), and like a kid’s coloring book is invited to fill in the blanks on the canvases. The idea is that everyone gets to contribute a little to this piece.Being the sensible soul that I am, I chose to paint with white, cause I figured that it will do less damage to my clothes than say… orange.

You know what the seriously clever thing is? Inside the room is a TV screen with a digital camera, programmed to constantly take pictures of the room and monitor the progress of the piece. If you stare at the screen long enough, you will find yourself in it. And who doesn’t like to see themselves on screen (if only to make sure that they weren’t caught on camera doing something unseemly!)? This room can engage you for hours if you let it!

Going further into the prison, I found the Design Mart. It is like a regular bazaar (like the one in Soho last weekend), but the thing that stood out to me most were the little booths everyone had made of cardboard. Very clever and environmentally friendly! I also discovered this Hong Kong based designer selling bookmarks in the shape of her dress designs there, called Chailie Ho. She specializes in cocktail dresses, but also has a line sold in Central somewhere called Law Season (I think!), which specializes in OL wear. I’m definitely interested in checking that out! And I’ll check out her cocktail dresses too if I can ever motivate myself over to Kowloon Tong.

Did I mention that this was a prison ? I’ve lived in Hong Kong for most of my life, and I’ve never been in here before until last night. In fact, I don’t recall the last time I’ve been inside a prison (unless the catacombs in Paris counts)! It is an experience within itself.

The conditions inside make Prison Break’s cell (season 1 anyway) look like a hotel. Especially in the dark, it is quite creepy! I cannot begin imagine what it is like to live/work here when it was actually a prison.  Though I must say, combined with art, it is actually quite a novel and exciting experience. Stimulating enough to motivate me to stay up till almost 4am on a Friday night to write this up (and I haven’t done this in a LONG time)!

On my way out, I also stopped by the recycle fashion room, where you’re supposed to hang things you don’t want onto the wire dress. At the end of this exhibition, you are invited to come back and pick up something someone else has left behind that you DO want.  Another interactive piece of art. The idea is a good one, but I’m not sure about the participation rate. I’m unlikely to wear anything I don’t want on my person to begin with……….. let alone leave it there. Across from the dress, is a wall of shopping bags, which I think  would make an excellent wallpaper for my iPhone!

I am so glad I made this mini detour, as otherwise I would not have discovered DETOUR (the annual flagship programme of Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design, aimed at showcasing Hong Kong as a regional creative hub and featuring inspiring designs from Hong Kong’s young and emerging creative talent) at Victoria Prison, which happen to have opened TONIGHT! How coincidental can this night get? Opened from now until December 12, you simply MUST go check it out. It is a breath of fresh air to Hong Kong (better than the HK Art Fair!). I can’t wait for the next DETOUR event. I may even go again to this one, just to check out the prison in day time! Did I mention that it is free?

Ironically , the new hip restaurant I’d originally wanted to try (Tango) magically had an excellent table by the window for us once we were done with DETOUR, and we were able to enjoy a very satisfying and incredibly good valued Argentinian steak for dinner.

One warning though if you’re planning to go to Tango: when you get medium rare here, they really make it rare. Check out the inside of the rib eye we got. It is almost uncooked!

I’m an anal planner, but even I must admit that sometimes unplanned spontaneity often works out better then perfectly planned days! Can one plan spontaneity?

Art HK 10: Part III

04 Friday Jun 2010

Posted by Barneys Girl in Art, Hong Kong, Lifestyle

≈ 3 Comments

The final post on Art HK 10 features a series of paintings that are both cute and eerie, which is a surprisingly powerful combination. When I first passed them, I thought it was just another picture of a cute anime girl with a really big head. But then I did a double take as I noticed odd little things that I didn’t expect to be there. First it was pills as toppings on a sundae.

Then it was a girl knitting a dress for her doll from the wool of the dress of a lifeless unseen form hanging above her. How incredibly creepy is that? Innocent everyday scenes suddenly took on a new meaning!

There was even a fairy tale themed series that was interesting since it provided another perspective to the classics. A little bit like Gregory Maguire books which totally changed my perspective of Cinderella and the Wizard of Oz forever. There was Snow White and her poisoned apples. It seems to be suggesting that she poisoned herself. Notice the little can of spilled arsenal on the ground?

The same was going on for Sleeping Beauty and the poisonous needle point.

Then there was Cinderella, where she has trapped all the things that had helped set her free i.e. the mice and the glass slipper. It seems as if in each case they’re inflicting pain upon themselves instead of being victimized by others. I haven’t quite figured out what message the paintings are trying to convey yet, but it is all very ominous and thought provoking. It makes one just want to stare and wonder.

Ps. There’s nothing quite like procrastination to keep the blogs coming. Good luck to all CFA candidates this weekend!

Art HK 10: Part II

02 Wednesday Jun 2010

Posted by Barneys Girl in Art, Hong Kong, Lifestyle

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One of my favourite things about modern contemporary art is how it is open to interpretation.

Sometimes it may just look like a blob of paint, but if you look closer, it is actually something more. Can you tell what this painting is?

It is an lady sitting sideways on the left, facing a window! The blob on the upper left is her head (tied up in a bun), followed by her body. If you look closer, you can even see her hands with five fingers at the lower center of the canvas.

This painting is one of my absolute favourites! From this angle, you can see a nude lady standing up proud on the left and another clothed lady kneeling down on the right. It’s a bit faded in this photo, but she’s there inside the third arch on the right in the background.

From another angle, their status of clothing is exchanged and the lady on the left is clothed, while the kneeling lady on the right is nude. How cool is that? I believe the message here is that clothing does not define a woman. The woman herself and how she carries herself is what defines her. The positioning of the audience is also an interesting choice.

From a distant, it looked like a regular portrait of a girl with a black background. But if you step closer, it is actually a black canvas made out of lots and lots of tiny holes! Pretty neat!

A photo of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange from back in the days. There’s nothing very artistically intriguing about it besides the perfectly symmetrical diamond shape it creates. But the subject matter just warms my heart- probably because I grew up seeing this image everyday on TV and it brings back childhood memories!

It’s a fairly simple portrait, but clearly this is Karl Lagerfeld. It’s the suit with the skinny tie, the shades and the white hair. It’s always amazing to realize how iconic one man has become.

Drawings of a cute little Japanese girl with a message. Isn’t she adorable?

Hmm… I think I need another post to show you everything I loved about the HK Art Fair.

Art HK 10: Part I

31 Monday May 2010

Posted by Barneys Girl in Art, Hong Kong, Lifestyle

≈ 2 Comments

This weekend, I stopped by the Art HK 10 fair at the convention center. It is an annual 4 day event, showcasing pieces from modern and contemporary art galleries all over Asia. The pieces ranged from $1000USD to $10 million USD. Though I reckon most people were just there to absorb the cultural atmosphere, which is soarly lacking in Hong Kong.

One of my favourite things about Hong Kong is that no one is camera shy- even when there are “no photography” signs all over the place. So here are a few pieces that caught my eye:

This interactive piece is a glass platform that viewers are invited to stand upon. Taking a closer look, this platform is supported tonnes by identical little figurines with their hands raised above their heads. Maybe it is demonstrating the power of the many? It is pretty cool.

On a side note, I’ve still not managed to get the mark off my shoes, but from a distance it still looks pretty!

Sweet and simple. Though I’m not sure I’d want it in my apartment. Maybe a restaurant.

We couldn’t find the descriptions, but from the smell of it, it appears to be a car made of flour! I wonder how they got it here………

A plastic black dog at the entrance. See all those cameras in the background? It really wasn’t just me!

Can you see the owl? The stripes of color also reminds me Paul Smith!

A rather disturbing bronze sculpture of Mickey Mouse/Jesus Christ. The only thing that would make it even more disturbing is if  the water squirting out of the body was blood red. I wonder what the artist is trying to say…….. that Mickey is humanity’s new salvation? Or perhaps it is another message about society’s idolization of pop culture taking over good old Christian faith.
I just cant get over how smart and neat this armor/dress made of Chinese ceramics is! Can you see the bowls and plates? To top it off, this is a well made dress with a design too. There’s a defined bodice, a waist and little frills at the hem. Isn’t it absolutely awesome?
Stay tune for more on the exhibit later this week!

Tea with BG

A twenty something who loves having tea with scones and devonshire cream, while chatting with friends about fashion, love, life, finance and everything in between. And no, this is not a food blog.

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