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An exhibition entitled "Sparkle! Collector Club" will be held at Oi! from tomorrow (January 24) until April 21, with an aim of encouraging members of the public to look into the value of art and art collection. It is hoped that the exhibition will raise interest in art collection in the community.
An opening party for the exhibition was held today (January 23). Guests attending included the Chief Curator of the Art Promotion Office (APO), Dr Lesley Lau; the Curator (Community Art) of the APO, Ms Ivy Lin; the guest curator, Ms Kwok Ying; the participating artists; and the design partner, Mr Karr Yip.
"Sparkle! Collector Club" is the first exhibition of the "Sparkle!" exhibition series, which is organised by Oi! of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. The series comprises seven exhibitions, all conceived by young and outstanding local curators. Collaborating with their design partner, Mr Yip, the curators have been drawing up plans for exhibitions to be held in 2014 and 2015 that will all look into a possible merging of art and daily life and its promotion. The exhibitions will encourage creativity while making available an open and experimental art creation platform at Oi! for local art workers.
Ms Kwok is one of the local curators. She graduated from the Department of Fine Arts of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2000, and obtained a master's degree in 2004 from the Chelsea College of Arts and Design at the University of the Arts London in the United Kingdom. Ms Kwok served as a curator of the Chinese Arts Centre in the United Kingdom between 2006 and 2012 and has been working in collaboration and exchange with other art and cultural bodies in the United Kingdom and their Asian counterparts. She also founded the artist collective Association with other artists in 2009 to explore collaboration among artists.
Under the invitation by Ms Kwok, artists Liu Ding and Lam Tung-pang and an artist group named foreign investment, which comprises four local and four overseas art workers, will join the "Sparkle! Collector Club" exhibition and steer visitors to rethink the value of art. The watercolour work by foreign investment entitled "One Square Foot of Sky", depicting the sky above Oi!, will explore various issues concerning the value of art.
Borrowing the commodity market concept of "good sales indicate popularity", Liu questions the value of art under the market principles of supply and demand in his work "Take Home and Make Real the Priceless In Your Heart". Lam will meanwhile explore the contemporary relationship between an artist and the art market through a presentation of his career path.
For details of the exhibition, please visit the APO website at www.lcsd.gov.hk/apo, or contact the Community Art Team of the APO at 2512 3008 or 2512 3009.
Ends/Thursday, January 23, 2014
Issued at HKT 19:32
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