The 14th Asia Contemporary Art Show (Hong Kong)
Christopher KL Lau
7/4/2019
For art and culture lovers in Hong Kong, March has traditionally offered a wide choice of in terms of events to attend and enjoy. The city becomes energized and buzzes with eager anticipation as some of the world's greatest creative talents descend on Hong Kong. One such show is the Asia Contemporary Art Show which has gone from strength to strength!
Highlighting a collection of over 2,000 works of art, the Asia Contemporary Art Show is gaining in popularity in Hong Kong and across the Asia-Pacific for its unique style of displaying art; namely using individual hotel rooms for different artists to display their paintings, drawings, abstract work and sculptures.
Each room becomes a gallery and sometimes, even toilets, baths and sinks are utilized as display spaces! Visitors can then stroll through the floors and go from room to room and take in the different styles and visuals.
The art show has now become established as the longest-running and largest hotel art fair in the Asia-Pacific region and is renown for its relaxed style. This time more than 14,400 collectors and art enthusiasts visited the Conrad Hotel and strolled around the four to five different floors soaking up the great atmosphere and enjoying 80+ galleries with artists and their representatives from all around the world in attendance.
Chinese artists were greatly represented and one of the highlights was V'Art space which featured the atmospheric landscapes created by Song Yong Hui. His landscapes are both detailed and dreamlike and have a strong sense of time and space.
Other galleries from the Asia Pacific include some from Japan such as the Gallery Suiha which showcased their diverse art in the form of paintings, water colours, drawings and prints.
Other representatives from Japan included the Smart Ship Gallery which in turn laid out work from masters such as Shinya Nagashima, and Chiyoko Takaki.
Gallery Seek had whimsical and beautiful art from Takehiro Kato whose work, "Peony" and "White Chrysanthemum" focus on the details of flowers while Mitsuru Koga's "Space Building Ruins" presented a dreamlike landscape of Tokyo.
Representing South Korea were galleries such as CK Art Space who seek to bring the best contemporary artists to a wider audience around the world. This includes artists such as Bongsoo Kim, Eunkyeong Jang, Bonghwa Kim and many more. Other South Korean galleries at the event included Gallery M and the Khalifa gallery.
The Australian artist, Elizabeth Langreiter, was a first time visitor to Hong Kong and she discussed how, literally being hit in the head by a tennis ball, changed the course of her life as her artistic side was unleashed.
"It all began 11 years ago and before that I had no interest in art whatsoever. Zero! If someone had asked me to go to an art gallery then I would have said no way and then one day, I was playing competitive tennis and I got hit in the back of the head by my doubles partner.
I was reserving for her and she does not know what had happened to me as we did not see each other again. The hit on the head caused a swelling which did not go away so I had to get a CAT scan done but everything was ok.
However, I got the sudden urge to start painting but I didn't know why. I looked at a painting one day that I saw in a magazine and I thought I could do the same so I raced out and brought a huge canvas and a starter kit of paints and I did it over three days and gave it to my husband for his birthday and he was pretty amazed.
My husband said to me what are you going to do with all these paintings as they were piling up and I said: 'Well, maybe I will sell them.'
There was an art fair so I said I would join and I took all the pieces that I had completed that year. I sold nine of them and got four commissions on that day!
So I joined an art class, if you can call that training for a year. But I did not enjoy painting bottles and nudes and I came up with my own style and the teacher was very encouraging.
This style has evolved but it was always colourful and always whimsical and about three years ago, I was very inspired by aerial photography and I decided that I wanted to paint it, but also make it interesting. I did one painting of an ocean swim and I placed it up on Facebook and within one hour, I had two people who wanted it and that had never happened before. One of them brought it and I have decided to keep going.
I just kept looking ay Hong Kong and what inspired me and I always saw the city as very colourful and vibrant. I had done Sydney Harbour in a very vibrant way and I thought I would do Hong Kong Harbour in the same way."
The 15th Asia Contemporary Art Show is set for later this year from October 3rd - October 6th, 2019.
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