Not-for-profit arts organisation HART is delighted to announce the first exhibition resulting from its arts programming - Household Gods. The group exhibition, curated by Ying Kwok, presents the work of four Hong Kong based artists; Nadim Abbas, Shane Aspegren, Tap Chan, and Wu Jiaru, who are each grant-based artists participating in the ongoing sixth session of the HART Social Studio Programme.
Showcasing specially commissioned works that encompass painting, sculpture, site specific installation and sound work, the exhibition originates from a desire to offer new insights into our complicated and currently uncertain world, addressing questions about the relationships between mankind in its most intimate setting, the household, and natural and supernatural phenomenon. Created and presented during a time of change, Household Gods rethinks how art and creativity empower each of us, both in content and form, and will be presented dually through virtual and digital mediums as well in person interaction with the exhibition.
A central part of HART’s programming is the Social Studio that runs from one of the collective’s core venues HART Haus, a 10,000 sqft modern ‘arthouse’ that has transformed a former factory floor in Kennedy Town into a flexible studio and salon space. The upcoming exhibition Household Gods showcases the experimental practices that artists and ‘Hausians’ Abbas, Aspegren, Chan, and Wu have explored during their participation in the Social Studio at HART Haus. Each work is an outcome of the dialogue and mutual understanding generated by the collaborative environment HART Haus fosters, and attempts to harness a visual language to know the unknown, if not rationally then spiritually.
Abbas is developing a series of set pieces that place a new logic on modular domestic furniture to expose the unpredictable nature of image, body and space, while Chan is working on a sculptural installation that questions the psychological and material nature of space as a concept, exploring the blurring of fiction and reality in modern daily life. Aspegren expands his ongoing investigation into the healing qualities of sonic frequencies on the body and brain through a sound piece presented in conjunction with a series of small sculptures created from found organic objects. Building from the concept of anxiety, Wu’s work experiments with social norms to create lasting sculptures constructed by preserved material evidence of her daily household existence.
非牟利藝術機構 HART 很高興宣佈其藝術項目匯舍（HART Social Studio）成就的聯展《駐家寧神》即將舉行。由郭瑛策劃，是次聯展讓公眾看到四位居港藝術家唐納天（Nadim Abbas）、Shane Aspegren 、陳沁昕（Tap Chan）和吳佳儒（Wu Jiaru）的最新作品。
四位藝術家均為HART匯舍第六季項目資助的參加者。展覽試圖為複雜多變且充滿不確定性的現今世界提出新的見解，透過畫作、雕塑、場域特定裝置及聲音裝置等不同媒介，探討人類與家庭、自然及超自然現象的微妙關係。在當前瞬息萬變的環境下，《駐家寧神》結合網上虛擬及實體展覽的互動形式，探究藝術和創意在內容及形式上能賦予大眾的正面影響。
HART匯舍是HART其中一個重點項目，於HART Haus空間內進行。位於堅尼地城一座工業大廈內，HART Haus是由工業廠房演變而成的共佔地10,000平方呎的藝術家工作室及沙龍空間。展覽《駐家寧神》呈現了四位藝術家在 HART Haus內的實驗創作。項目所鼓勵的合作環境與氛圍，促進了幾位藝術家之間的對話，讓作品逐步演變及至誕生，形造了獨特的視覺語言，推進從理性或精神層面理解和探討未知的事物。
唐納天以嶄新的方式組裝不同的傢俬配件，揭示影像、身體及空間不可預測的本質。陳沁昕藉其雕塑裝置，為心理與物理空間的概念提出質疑，探索虛擬與現實之間模糊的界線。Aspegren則以實驗音樂配合一系列利用天然物料製成的小型雕塑，延續其個人對頻率推動身體與心靈上自癒機制的研究。啟發自焦慮情感，吳佳儒的作品以實驗手法挑戰社會規範，利用從日常家居生活中保留下來的物品創作成雕塑，以物質依據反思自身的存在。
“It is often claimed that we live in a secular age. But our minds are still very much sensitive to supernatural thoughts and feelings. The insight Nadim Abbas, Shane Aspegren, Tap Chan, and Wu Jiaru have shown when exploring human habits, rituals and emotions offers fresh viewpoints of modern life, and the power of visual language on something more divine.”
About the Curator 展覽策展人
Ying Kwok 郭瑛 is an independent curator based in Hong Kong. She works with a diverse range of art and cultural institutions nationally and internationally, from artist’s initiatives, art festivals, to public museums and the commercial sector. Her research based curating often synthesizes different art forms in contemporary visual art, from site specific commissions, performances, to film and video. Kwok is the curator for Contagious Cities: Far Away, Too Close for Tai Kwun Contemporary and Wellcome Trust, the lead curator of LOOK International Photography Festival 2017, and curator at M+ for Samson Young: Songs for Disaster Relief as Hong Kong presentation at the 57th Venice Biennale. Before embarking on her independent career, Kwok was the curator at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester UK, between 2006 and 2012.
In 2014, Kwok was awarded the Asia Cultural Council Fellowship. She is an international fellow in the Clore Leadership Programme 2018/19. Apart from curating, Kwok also founded Art Appraisal Club with a group of local art professionals in 2014, in order to encourage critical thinking and initiating effective art discussions in Hong Kong. The group provides regular exhibition reviews and their articles are published in magazines, various cultural networks and their own bilingual journal, Art Review Hong Kong.
Participating Artists 參展藝術家
Naddam Abbas
Nadim Abbas examines the mercurial properties of images and their ambiguous relationship to reality. This has culminated in the construction of complex set pieces where objects disappear into their own image and bodies succumb to the seduction of space. Abbas was awarded with the Asian Cultural Council Altius Fellowship and the HK Arts Development Award (Young Artist / Visual Arts) in 2014.
Past exhibitions include: Participation Mystique (McaM, Shanghai), Phantom Plane (Tai Kwun, Hong Kong), Poor Toy (VITRINE, Basel), Proregress (12th Shanghai Biennale), Blue Noon (Last Tango, Zurich), Clouds⇄Forests (7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art), Camoufleur (VITRINE, London), Chimera (Antenna Space, Shanghai), The Last Vehicle (UCCA, Beijing), 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience (New Museum, New York), Unseen Existence (HK Arts Centre), Going, going, until I meet the tide (2014 Busan Biennale), The Part In The Story Where A Part Becomes A Part Of Something Else (Witte de With, Rotterdam), Tetraphilia (Third Floor Hermés, Singapore).
Shane Aspegren
Shane Aspegren’s work juxtaposes improvisational languages within carefully-crafted frameworks, frequently exploring a cross-discipline and non-dualistic perspective on such topics as consciousness, ritual, group dynamics, societal customs, and human response to natural phenomena.
Aspegren is largely known for his practices related to music and sound, which often play an integral part in his installations, images, videos, objects, and performances. Interested in the relational aesthetics of every form, he often uses interactive and collaborative methods of creation, as well as the practical application of those methods, such as his ongoing work with meditative practices — specifically the effects of sound waves and its effects on the human mind and physical matter of the body.
As a musician/ composer, he has performed hundreds of concerts worldwide, in addition to an extensive recorded discography. His artworks have been presented, commissioned, collected, and performed at institutions, museums, and galleries throughout Asia, Europe and North America.
Tap Chan
Tap Chan born in Hong Kong, currently lives and works in Hong Kong. She received her B.A fine art from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2011 and an M.A. in Visual Arts from the Hong Kong Baptist University in 2014. Her works mostly appear in the form of installations, videos and sculptures. She is interested in exploring the idea of liminality that is embedded in daily life, where the boundaries between fiction and reality are often blurred, like the undefined psychic and emotional ruptures experienced during bouts of insomnia. To construct a narrative of the subterranean mind that rumbles beneath the facade of modern existence.
She was funded by Hong Kong Arts Development Council cultural exchange project in 2017 for her solo exhibition "A Soft Note" in Singapore and has participated in Hong Kong Sculpture Biennial 2016, a solo intervention “444”, group show "Underline" in Netherlands and is currently showing in Tai Kwun Contemporary HK.
Wu Jiaru
Wu Jiaru is an artist who currently works and lives in Hong Kong. She obtained her BA in Fine Arts and English Language from Tsinghua University in 2014, and her MFA from the School of Creative Media in City University of Hong Kong in 2017.
She experiments with imagined spaces and social norms in forms of installation, moving images, printed edition, image synthesis, etc. Wu’s practice covers a wide range of topics, including cross-boundary facilities, literature, modern service industries, manufacturing industries and innovation and technology, romantic relationships, business environment, quality living, education and talent, regional cooperation plans, ecology, as well as mechanisms and arrangements. Wu has participated in many good group exhibitions and her art is in the collection of some important people and organisations.
Public Programmes 展覽活動
Created and presented during a time of change, Household Gods rethinks how art and creativity empower each of us. Through the exhibition itself, an accompanying printed thematic journal and an interactive digital journal, visitors are proactively encouraged to embrace and extend the artist’s own imaginations on the emotional impact of the environment around us. It is through these varying platforms, as well as videoed behind the scenes interviews available online, that the participating artists articulate their creative interpretations of key curatorial topics raised in the development of the exhibition; what is the texture of dreams, the smell of fear, the colour of Scared, the shape of eeriness? There are of course no absolute answers to these abstract and intangible subject matters, rather the exhibition seeks to capture very personal emotional expressions, generating connectivity and dialogue within the community.