Hong Kong’s exhibition culture has improved profoundly in recent years, but has arguably become ‘top-heavy’ and inaccessible to the early career and recently graduated artist. Artist-led exhibition spaces offer many possibilities outside of the established art elite for artists and audiences invested in experimental and non-commercial visual art. This forum will consider three different models of alternative, non-commercial and experimental artist-run spaces from Hong Kong, Dublin and London that have had deep impact both in their respective local visual art ecologies and internationally. The forum will conclude with a roundtable discussion on possible models for exhibition spaces that could best support experimental practice from emerging Hong Kong artists.
Speakers:
Mr. Robert Armstrong, founding member of Temple Bar Gallery and Studios
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (TBG+S) is an artists community in the heart of Dublin city centre, Ireland. Founded in 1983, the building houses thirty artists’ studios in which professional visual artists make their work. At the TBG+S gallery, temporary exhibitions are presented regularly and represent a cross-section of contemporary Irish and international visual arts practice.
Robert Armstrong will discuss the partnership model that enabled the founding of TBS+G, it’s early and continued impact for artists and on exhibition culture in Dublin.
Prof. Leung Mee Ping, founding member of Para Site
Founded in early 1996 as an artist-run space, Para Site was Hong Kong’s first exhibition-making institution of contemporary art and a crucial self-organised structure within the city’s civil society.
Leung Mee Ping will discuss the motivations for setting up this artist-led exhibition space in Hong Kong, it’s organisational structure and it’s activities and impact in the early years.
Prof. Louis Nixon, founder of Space Explorations, founder of Centre of Useless Splendour
Founded in 1990, the collective Space Explorations participated in large-scale interventions in response to specific sites with Louis Nixon as artist, director and curator. Louis Nixon will discuss the challenges to and changes in artist collectives in London since then.
Moderator: Tom O’Dea
*This seminar is an Art Basel HK featured event.