2024 Hong Kong-Macao Visual Art Biennale commences in Hangzhou with artworks blending old and new culture by Hong Kong artists (with photos)
The 2024 Hong Kong-Macao Visual Art Biennale has commenced its display at the Gongwang Art Museum in Fuyang, Hangzhou today (October 18). With the theme "HK Snapshots‧City Walks", the Hong Kong Heritage Museum curated the Hong Kong section of the biennale. Four groups of young local artists have created visual artworks inspired by Guangcai porcelain, Hong Kong cheongsams, traditional offset printing artistry and local flexible street stalls, demonstrating the city's culture which blends the East and West and the old and new. The exhibition in Hangzhou will run until November 15 with free admission.
Addressing the opening ceremony of the biennale in Hangzhou today, the Deputy Director of Leisure and Cultural Services (Culture), Miss Eve Tam, said that the Hong Kong-Macao Visual Art Biennale is a major arts and cultural exchange event jointly organised by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Macao Special Administrative Region and a number of Mainland cities. The Leisure and Cultural Services Department has participated in this event since its inception in 2008, presenting to Mainland audiences works created by Hong Kong artists. The National 14th Five-Year Plan has expressed clear support for Hong Kong to develop into an East-meets-West centre for international cultural exchange. The Hong Kong section of the biennale focuses on "Cultural Integration" in which budding artists from Hong Kong make use of their creativity to revitalise traditional crafts, reflecting the city's cultural characteristics of blending the old and new and telling good stories of Hong Kong.
Four groups of artworks are on display in the Hong Kong section. The fourth-generation Lingnan School artist Rebecca Lo has inherited and applied Guangcai ink painting to ceramics to create five porcelain plate sets depicting natural and urban Hong Kong landscapes. The Hong Kong Cheongsam Association, the protection organisation of the national intangible cultural heritage item, has formed a young designer team led by Association committee members Dr Haze Ng and Eunice Lee, the team has designed and sewed four innovative sets of men's and women's cheongsams. Each cheongsam portrays the city's unique architecture and memories through traditional cheongsam-making techniques and textile design. Printing studio ditto ditto, founded by sisters Donna and Nicole Chan, has utilised traditional offset printing artistry to produce four sets of printed works and postcards featuring Hong Kong attractions, scenic spots and cuisine. Lastly, exhibition designers from Key-Point Productions have drawn inspiration from flexible street stalls to create foldable installations for displaying the three groups of artworks mentioned above, offering visitors a unique "pop-up" exhibition experience.
This year's biennale begins in Hangzhou and Nanjing, the two cultural hubs of the Yangtze River Delta region, and will later move to Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, greatly enhancing cultural exchanges and integration between Hong Kong, Macao and the host cities.
