"The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Fragrance of Time – In Search of Chinese Art of Scent" exhibition, was unveiled today (June 27) at the Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA), featuring a selection of artefacts from the Shanghai Museum collection that are classified as national graded treasures, with over half of them not having been exhibited outside Mainland China before. The exhibition is jointly presented by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) and the Shanghai Museum; jointly organised by the HKMoA and the Shanghai Museum, and solely sponsored by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust.
The 109 sets of exhibits from the Shanghai Museum collection and 51 sets from the HKMoA collection include ceramics, bamboo carvings, paintings and bronze objects that span the Neolithic period to the 20th century, taking audiences on a visual and olfactory journey across thousands of years. Highlight exhibits include the Grade-1 national treasures, a Buddha statue from the Southern Liang dynasty and a painting by Chen Hongshou, a renowned painter of the Ming dynasty.
Addressing the opening ceremony, the Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism, Mr Kevin Yeung, said that the exhibition focuses on a Chinese fragrance culture that had a profound and extensive history in the daily lives of people in ancient China. Hong Kong was also an important trading hub for fragrance materials in the past. This exhibition features a selection of 160 precious items from the HKMoA and the Shanghai Museum, displaying the significance of Chinese fragrance culture in different periods.
Mr Yeung added that this year, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region established the Chinese Culture Promotion Office, and organised the inaugural Chinese Culture Festival (CCF), showcasing the broad and profound Chinese culture, enhancing cultural confidence and national identity among the people of Hong Kong through diverse cultural programmes and activities. Each year, the festival will designate a focal city, with Shanghai being the focus in this first edition. Besides this exhibition, the LCSD will also bring to the public performances from the Shanghai Jingju Theatre Company and the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra.
Other officiating guests included the Deputy Director of the Shanghai Museum, Mr Chen Jie; the Head of Charities (Culture, Sports and Community Engagement) of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, Ms Winnie Yip; the Chairman of the Legislative Council Panel on Home Affairs, Culture and Sports, Mr Ma Fung-kwok; the Chairman of the Museum Advisory Committee, Professor Douglas So; the Director of Leisure and Cultural Services, Mr Vincent Liu; and the Museum Director of the HKMoA, Dr Maria Mok.
The Chinese culture of fragrance has a long and rich history. The use and appreciation of fragrances are closely intertwined with the aesthetics of ancient life and artistic creations. The exhibition is divided into four sections, namely Botanical Aroma, Intimate Scents, Heavenly Fragrances and Worldly Perfumes, exploring Chinese fragrance culture from different perspectives. The HKMoA has also set up a corresponding scent corner for each section, offering a suspended aromatic installation that allows visitors to experience the delights of scent appreciation in ancient China.
Highlight exhibits from the Shanghai Museum include two Grade-1 national treasures on display in Hong Kong for the first time, namely "Lady reclining on a cage over a censer" by Chen Hongshou from the Ming dynasty; and a gold-painted stone Sakyamuni Buddha dedicated by Shi Huiying from the Southern Liang dynasty, as well as 13 sets of Grade-2 national treasures. The Grade-2 national treasure, "The eighteen scholars" from the Ming dynasty originally consisted of four monumental paintings on zither, chess, calligraphy and painting. This exhibition shows two of them, "Playing zither and dancing with cranes" and "Viewing and writing calligraphy" in particular. In both paintings, the scholars have lit a censer for the occasion of playing zither or appreciating calligraphy, creating an elegant ambience with a shroud of scented smoke. The scenes reflect the Ming literati’s admiration for the culture of fragrance.
The oldest exhibit on display in the exhibition is a grey pottery censer with a bamboo joint design of the Liangzhu culture during the Neolithic period, which was unearthed from the Fuquan Shan tomb site in Qingpu District, Shanghai, in 1983. The biggest and heaviest exhibit is a censer with a lion-form knob designed in a round tripod form with a lid adorned by a squatting lion stepping on a rolling ball. It was used in royal temples during the Ming dynasty. Other important exhibits include a spectacular carved red lacquer incense box in the form of an imperial palace that exudes a regal aura; a five-piece altar set in fencai enamels on rouge-red ground, and Jingdezhen ware consisting of ritual vessels produced by imperial kilns during the Qianlong reign in the Qing dynasty. To allow visitors to view from both sides of a round fan inlaid with exquisitely carved agarwood in lingzhi and orchid design from the Qing dynasty, the curatorial team designed a special mount to display the exhibit.
The highlights from the HKMoA collections include a hanging censer carved with an openwork floral design and six loop handles from the Qing dynasty. This censer was carved out of jadeite with extraordinary skill, creating a single piece of jadeite carved into a chain of interlocking rings, each being able to move independently, exemplifying the exquisite jade-carving style. Another highlight exhibit is a pair of kidney-shaped purses with seed stitching and couched gold embroidery of antiquity motifs from the Qing dynasty, displaying patterns with auspicious significance. Purses like this could be used as a love token in ancient times.
Tsim Sha Tsui, where the HKMoA is located, was said to be originally known as "Heung Po Tau" (a port for exporting incense), reflecting the close relationship of the place being used as transit point of fragrance materials in the past. The museum has invited three local artists to reinterpret Chinese fragrance culture for the exhibition through different media such as traditional "gongbi" painting and scent installations. Cheng Chi-kin's "A Story of Time Through Scents" has collected and displayed nearly 50 common types of fragrant herbs and materials, and has used them to create scents of dawn, noon and dusk. These fragrances are dispersed through wave-shaped diffusion devices. Cheuk Ka-wai's gigantic floral handscroll painting "Gathering of Ten Fragrances", features 10 local fragrant plants that are related to the daily life, culture and literary works pertaining to Hong Kong. The audience is invited to rediscover the relationship between these local fragrant plants and Hong Kong culture, while reawakening their own memories of fragrances. So Wing-po's "Scent of Raindrop", drawing inspiration from both the philosophies of Chinese medicine and methodologies of modern chemistry, reconstructs the various scents emitted by rainwater with a laboratory setup and various natural and artificial substances in order to unveil the intricate and complex flow of fragrance within the natural world.
The exhibition will run from tomorrow (June 28) to October 16 at the Special Gallery on the second floor of the HKMoA (10 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon). At the same time, the HKMoA will organise a series of special events and activities, including public lectures by experts and artists to enhance public understanding of the Chinese art of scent, and multiple fragrance workshops and meditation experience sessions to allow audiences to engage with Chinese fragrance culture through various senses. For details of the exhibition and activities, please visit the website at hk.art.museum/en/web/ma/exhibitions-and-events/fragrance-of-time.html.
This exhibition is one of the programmes of "City in Focus: Shanghai" of the inaugural CCF and Shanghai Culture Week. Another two spectacular events showcasing the cultural charm of Shanghai styles to be presented in August are the classic play "The House of Wulong" of the Qi School and the full-length serial opera "Seven Heroes and Five Gallants" by the Shanghai Jingju Theatre Company as well as the "New Oriental Chinese Music Scene" concert by the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra. Shanghai Culture Week is co-presented by the LCSD, Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism and the Center for China Shanghai International Arts Festival with an opening reception and ceremony at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on August 2.
The CCF, presented by the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau and organised by the LCSD's Chinese Culture Promotion Office, aims to enhance the public's appreciation of Chinese culture and cultivate citizens' national identity and cultural confidence. The inaugural CCF will be held from June to September. Through different performing arts programmes in various forms and related extension activities, including selected programmes of the Chinese Opera Festival, exemplary local arts projects recognised by the China National Arts Fund, performing arts programmes from arts and cultural organisations, film screenings, exhibitions, talks and more, the festival allows members of the public and visitors to experience the broad and profound Chinese culture with a view to promoting Chinese culture and patriotic education as well as enhancing national identity amongst the people of Hong Kong, making contributions to the steadfast and successful implementation of "one country, two systems". For details, please visit the CCF website www.ccf.gov.hk.
The LCSD has long been promoting Chinese history and culture through organising an array of programmes and activities to enable the public to learn more about the broad and profound Chinese culture. For more information, please visit www.lcsd.gov.hk/en/ccpo/index.html.
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