RogueArt Recommends: Asia Art Forum

Asia Art Forum is back ladies and gentlemen! And yes, we are helping our friends plug their gig this coming May. I was a part of last year’s series and can honestly tell you that it is an opportunity not to be missed, if you are the sort who is interested in the ins and outs of Asia’s dynamic art scene told from an insider’s viewpoint.

This year AAF will be focusing on themes and developments in artistic practice relating to the contemporary art of China, Korea and Hong Kong. The Forum will be complimented by a trip to Hong Kong’s Fotan art district, formerly an industrial area characterised by warehouses and now home to the studios of many of Hong Kong’s most prominent artists. AAF will also be devoting a day to the examination of the art market and will be looking at the role of the collector in Asia, where the audience will have the unique opportunity to listen to personal testimonies of prominent collectors building art collections in Asia today.

Fostering direct encounters with leading members of the Asian contemporary art community, the program offers privileged access to first-hand information and invaluable insights into these developing areas of Asian art history.

The exclusivity of the Forum enables and encourages the exchange of ideas between guest lectures and participants providing a singular opportunity for art professionals, collectors and enthusiasts with an interest in these burgeoning regions currently driving a major transformation of the international art world.

The seminar will take place in Hong Kong over a three day period, 21-23 May. Limited places are available.

For more information please email info@asiaartforum.com

Asia Art Forum is an educational initiative founded and produced by Pippa Dennis in association with Asia Art Radar. 15% of all profits will go to Arthub, a non-profit art and cultural organization which promotes contemporary art creation in China and the rest of Asia.

Asia Art Forum is supported by Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong

With special thanks to The Goethe Institute and Ben Brown Fine Arts for hosting the sessions.

Programme will include:

• Bang to Boom: Chinese Art in the 1990s
Curator Karen Smith will trace the events, ideas and theories that unfolded through the 1990s to produce the backbone of China’s new art. Cynical Realism, Political Pop, performance art, photography, video, installation, and extreme conceptual expression all have their roots in this decade of tumultuous advance and experimentation, strung between the socio-political events of 1989–that began with a bang when woman artist Xiao Lu fired a gun into her work in February 1989–and the economic boom that began in 2004. The 1990s was an extraordinary incubator for art reflecting the extraordinary times that characterise the era.

• Centre and Periphery: the Dynamics of Hong Kong Contemporary Art

Eclipsed by the overwhelming attention directed at mainland China, Hong Kong artists have been free from commercial pressure to quietly develop a unique aesthetic. Compounded by the fact that Hong Kong is a place where physical platforms for visual art are curiously limited, many artists have survived by carving out private spaces far from the centres of control. This tendency towards privacy and interiority has become part of the fundamental vocabulary in the expressive content of Hong Kong contemporary art. Against this background, critic and independent curator Valerie Doran examines the quietly vibrant dynamics of Hong Kong art, past, present and future.

• Big Art in China

Philip Tinari explores the mechanisms of artistic production in contemporary China, asking how China’s unique economies of labor affect how work is made. Looking specifically at locales and situations including the studio districts of Beijing, the ceramic workshops of Jingdezhen, and the “copy” painting village of Dafen in Shenzhen, it raises questions of artistic authorship and social relations against the wider background of China’s status as “the world’s factory.”

• Asian Art Market Now

Jeremy Wingfield, Phillips de Pury’s Contemporary Art Specialist, will offer essential background and up to date information on the dynamics of the Asian Art Market today. The shift in global wealth from West to East in 2009/2010 has given rise to a new focus by Western art institutions on Asian and particularly Mainland Chinese art collectors. His candid insights into the current situation will focus on the inside players driving the Asian market forward, with special focus on the fresh opportunities available to collectors, institutions and art professionals.

• A Collectors Journey – From Hobby to Museum

Dr Oei Hong Djien, Indonesia’s foremost private art collector, will be discussing his own journey from initial fascination with his nation’s artistic culture to being the first to systematically collect modern and contemporary Indonesian art. He founded The OHD Museum of Modern and Contemporary Indonesian Art to house this unparalleled collection of 1500 pieces. As well as providing useful tools and methodologies for budding collectors Dr Oei will be looking at the role of the private collector in Asia, analysing how fundamental this position is as a preserver and promoter a nation’s artistic practise and culture in a region where governments do not necessarily support such activity.

Course
21-23 May 2010
3 day course, daily, 10-12.30am and 2-5pm

Price
5,200 Hong Kong Dollars (due on registration)
15% of all profits donated to Arthub, a non profit art and cultural organisation that promotes contemporary art creation in China and Asia.

For more information please contact:

Pippa Dennis
M (UK) +44 7786 110 561

Kate Cary Evans
M (Hong Kong) + 852 6103 0470

info@asiaartforum.com

www.asiaartforum.com

http://artradarasia.wordpress.com

(AO)