Celebrity Life

Due to the spread of COVID-19, museums across the world are offering virtual tours of historical timepieces, from the comfort of your couch, or desk chair, or whoever else you are safely staying and social distancing. Besides necessitates during quarantine – i.e., food in your fridge, toilet paper, and other household supplies – entertainment is […]

The post 10 Virtual Museums Tours We Can Enjoy During Self-Quarantine appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.

Art, in all its forms, has brought beauty and intrigue into the world since the beginning of time. Paul Day, a British sculptor, adds to that beauty with his gorgeous high-relief and free-standing sculptures. He creates stunning, lifelike 3D scenes and sculptures in bronze, terracotta, resin, and stainless steel. His high-relief sculptures capture moments in […]

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Following last year’s announcement of its global representation of Tu Hongtao, lovers of Chinese modern art will be pleased to know that Lévy Gorvy will present a solo exhibition of his key paintings from the past decade and a half.

Occupying the entire space of Lévy Gorvy’s Hong Kong gallery on the ground floor of St. George’s Building, the exhibition will showcase the development of Tu’s practice ranging from his early cityscapes to his recent works which synthesise Chinese and Western painting traditions. Boasting a selection of paintings loaned by museums as well as by important private collections from China and Hong Kong, the exhibition includes his earlier urban landscapes and the expressive abstractions that make up his current works.

With his academic background specialising in oil paintings from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Tu began his career during an era of rapid transformation in his country – one that saw the end of its collective economy and the rise of the market economy and globalisation.  Observing the social and environmental changes in his hometown of Chengdu, he began to compose sardonic cityscapes featuring piles of human bodies and dolls that reflect contemporary feelings of confusion, tension, and desire. In addition to manifesting the anxieties of Tu’s generation, these early canvases established his ongoing engagement with cross-cultural histories of landscape painting, using the density of these landscapes as, in his own words, “both an abstract background and a real space".

[caption id="attachment_206889" align="alignnone" width="1847"] A Horse of All Things, 2014-18. Oil on canvas, 82 11/16 x 126 inches (210 x 320 cm). © Tu Hongtao.[/caption]

A highlight of the exhibition, -- A Horse of All Things -- takes its title from Daoist philosopher Zhuang Tzu's aphorism that "everything passes like a galloping horse," and demonstrates how Tu presents the concept of time in Chinese literature onto his canvas in a purely abstract expression. In fact, Tu has described his relationship with painting as “finding philosophical insights from traditional poetry". Inspired by the landscape poems of ancient Chinese literati, these paintings constitute a unique view of the Chinese landscape, capturing poetic qualities and allowing time to be traced back within his works.

In addition to oil paintings, several works on paper will also be exhibited to outline Tu’s conceptual process as well as guide viewers to better understand of his aesthetic. The exhibition also features a short film directed by Taiwanese actor and film producer Wang Yu which provides insight into Tu’s creative process, personal background, and striking works of art. The exhibition is currently on view until June 30.

The post Lévy Gorvy Presents A Survey of Paintings by Artist Tu HongTao appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

When the reform-minded government of Gough Whitlam came to power in Australia in 1972 after 23 years of conservative rule, it embarked on an agenda of polices that ranged from the high-minded ­­– recognising the People’s Republic of China, returning indigenous lands, abolishing the death penalty and axing university fees ­– to more prosaic but urgent matters like connecting the sprawling outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne to a modern sewerage system. Cultural investment was also given prominence, with Queen Elizabeth opening Sydney’s iconic Opera House in October 1973 following two decades of construction – a rancorous project that saw Danish architect Jørn Utzen head home to Denmark, never to return, while cost overruns hit tens of millions of dollars. That fateful year also saw the start of the Gulf State oil embargo and the mid-70s recession. So when it emerged that the also new National Gallery of Australia in Canberra had paid AU$1.3m (HK$6.5m) for a painting by an American artist, Jackson Pollock’s 1952 work Blue Poles, which looked someone had laid the canvas on the floor and poured, dribbled and flecked house paint all over it, the public and popular media reacted as if they’d just learned that someone had strangled the Queen’s corgies. (After forking out for Blue Poles, the NGA acquired another work, Woman V, by the Dutch-born US painter Willem de Kooning, for a more modest US$650,000. Both painters were colleagues from the so-called New York School of Abstract Expressionism that formed after the second world war).
Fast forward to the present, where times, and attitudes, have of course changed. In a short video at the NGA’s website, Christine Dixon, senior curator of international painting and sculpture, describes why the painting today is the gallery’s most popular exhibit, starting with its sheer size: “People forget that when they see reproductions of works of art, everything looks flat. But when you come to this beautiful work, you’ll see that it’s nearly two metres high and more than five metres long.”

[caption id="attachment_206825" align="alignnone" width="1762"] Blue Poles Jackson Pollock[/caption]

And, yes, Pollock did paint on the floor – his paintings were just too damn big to lean on the wall ­­– where he “used any implement he liked to pour and dribble and fling paint to the canvas”. And yet, Dixon adds, “he could draw so subtly with such intricate ideas about the lattice work and three dimensionality of the painting. The more closely you look at the work, the more deep it becomes. If you move away it becomes a surface again.”
And therein lies one of the most intriguing features of Blue Poles (and Pollock’s other works from that period): that, according to some mathematicians, the painting is composed almost entirely ­of fractals, something Pollock was probably not even vaguely aware of. Fractals are patterns formed by congregations of exactly, or very similar, patterns. For example, imagine an equilateral triangle that itself is comprised of four smaller triangles with exactly the same pattern. Or take the original one and stack three more the same size to get a new triangle that is four times that size. Fractal patterns are ubiquitous in nature in shapes as diverse as snowflakes or biological structures ­­­– indeed they are the patterns of life. Look closely at a snail shell or the veining of leaves. They are also found in art, especially in East Asian imagery of water and clouds: think Hokusai’s famous woodblock print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, and notice how the shapes of the giant waves and the breaking foam at their tops are fractals of each other.

Meanwhile, it’s been nearly five decades since the NGA paid what was then a world record for a work by an American painter. Was it taken for a ride, or did they get a bargain? In September 2016, the Australian Financial Review reported that the painting had an insurance valuation of about US$350 million (HK$2.71 billion), some 300 times the 1973 price tag ­– a frenzy of fractals at a fraction of the price.

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Fancy a once-in-a-lifetime getaway with a grand tour of the galaxy, or something niche at the mighty auroras of Jupiter? Our next world is closer than you think.

There’s nothing like a global pandemic to make humanity stop and pause to think about our medium-term future on planet Earth, especially in the face of rising global warming and accelerated depletion of resources. But certain groups of people spend their lives considering exactly this future every day. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, USA would be one of them.
While were still confined to social distancing and the many ramifications of more domesticated living this seemed the perfect moment to share NASA’s Visions of the Future project, a series of 14 space-tourism travel posters created by artists working with scientists at JPL. The results are mind-boggling and otherworldly, yet so tangible and captivating.

[gallery ids="206567,206568,206569,206570,206571,206572,206575,206574"]

Among the many highlights, see Visit the Historic Sites of Mars, a poster that imagines a future day when we’ve achieved Elon Musk’s – and our – vision of human explorations of Mars and takes a nostalgic look back at the great imagined milestones of planetary exploration that will somebody become celebrated as “historic sites”. NASA’s Mars Exploration Programme seeks to understand whether Mars was, is, or can be a habitable world. Missions such as the Mars Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Science Laboratory and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, among others, have provided information that provides answers.
If you want an otherworldly experience that makes the Northern Lights look like early silent pictures in Hollywood, the Jovian cloudscape on Jupiter boasts the most spectacular lightshow in the solar system, with northern and southern lights dazzling even the most jaded space traveller. Jupiter’s auroras are hundreds of times more powerful than Earth's and they form a flowing ring around each pole that’s bigger than our home planet. Revolving outside this surreal oval are the glowing, electric “footprints” of Jupiter’s three largest moons. NASA’s Juno mission continues to study Jupiter’s auroras from above the polar regions, studying them in a way never before possible. It began in 2016 and will finish by July 2021.
Or discover life under the ice, with 360 ocean views. Perhaps most tantalising of any solar entity, is the astonishing geology and the potential to host conditions for simple life that exist on Jupiter’s moon Europa, a must-explore destination. Beneath its icy surface, Europa is believed to conceal a global ocean of salty liquid water twice the volume of Earth’s oceans. And the tug of Jupiter’s gravity generates enough heat to keep the ocean from freezing. On Earth, whenever we find water, we find life. What will NASA's Europa mission find when it heads for this intriguing moon in the 2020s?
The race is on for discovering life with the tiny Saturnian moon Enceladus. The discovery of its icy jets and their role in creating Saturn’s E-ring is one of the top findings to the Cassini mission. Further Cassini mission discoveries revealed strong evidence of a global ocean and the first signs of potential hydrothermal activity beyond Earth -- Enceladus has more than 100 geysers.
But for bragging rights on intergalactic level, NASA’s Voyager mission took advantage of a once-every-175-year alignment of the outer planets for a grand tour of the solar system. The twin spacecraft revealed stunning details about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – using each planet’s gravity to send them on to the next destination. Voyager set the stage for such ambitious orbiter missions as Galileo to Jupiter and Cassini to Saturn. Today both Voyager spacecraft continue to return valuable science from the far reaches of our solar system.
And right now space tourism is the next-paradigm go-to. Aman Europa or Four Seasons Enceladus anyone? Wish you were here.

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In response to the current climate, Sotheby’s has launched “Contemporary Showcase,” its new digital initiative comprised of a new series of boutique online auctions.

Modeled after a dynamic “pop-up shop” concept, the online auction adopts a fast-paced auction format with varied thematic presentations. Recently, it has unveiled its latest exhibition under this initiative – manga. The selling exhibition offers  an exciting collection of unique illustrations and original Animation Celluloid Pictures (cel-ga). Featuring some of the most beloved characters from popular animation series such as Pokémon, Dragon Ball, Astro Boy and Anpanman, these unique drawings and cel-gas are from some of the most prestigious animation houses such as Studio Ghibli and Toei Animation. Given that manga is a worldwide cultural phenomenon spanning comic books, anime and gaming, it seems like a fitting theme for Sotheby’s online auction. With its influence seen in different fields ranging from fashion, film to contemporary art, manga seems to be a new trend in collectible art.

"During this unprecedented time, Asian collectors have enthusiastically participated in our online sales programme, driving record results that demonstrate the resilience of the Contemporary Art market. Our new ‘Contemporary Showcase’ series responds to this success, and we are confident that the new initiative will bring new and exciting opportunities for our audiences, both in Asia and worldwide." - Yuki Terase, Head of Contemporary Art, Asia of Sotheby's

[caption id="attachment_206551" align="alignnone" width="2261"] Jungle Emperor Leo by Mushi Production, Leo Animation Cel[/caption]

According to Sotheby’s, “with swift turnaround between consignment and sale, the series meets the needs of both sellers and buyers in the rapidly evolving market, while allowing [us] to continue to bring exciting and ahead-of-the-curve offerings to clientele.” As a response, 60 unique drawings and Animation Celluloid Pictures will be offered for auction online while an additional 95 pieces will be presented in a selling exhibition at Sotheby’s Hong Kong Gallery (by appointment only). For people still reluctant to leave their homes, Sotheby's is offering an interactive virtual tour so viewers can browse through the exceptional collection inside the gallery. This exciting 360-degree experience will be available on Sotheby's website for any manga fans and art lovers to browse at their leisure.

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Contemporary artist and photographer Gina Soden tells us about finding beauty in the haunting decay of once-glorious architecture

See huge sweeping arches, rich Rococo detailing, domed canopies and cracked windows, all heavy with dust and the weight of history. Ornate frescoed villas, palaces and theatres, their colours once bright, now faded, and interiors dilapidated over years. Each is lit with gentle sunlight breaking through, shadows cast over the stories and dramas lived under grand chandeliers and heavy curtains in spaces once filled with life.

“I want to evoke a sense of narrative and the life of the building, and try to avoid a documentary look,” says the award-winning British photographer and artist Gina Soden. “I love bright colours, patterns and that ‘wow’ effect. I also love a bit of mystery, so try not to give too much away. I want to leave the viewer with more questions than answers.”

For the young British artist, it’s all hinged on emotive images of beautiful buildings and interiors in states of decay, with nature sometimes invading abandoned human construction. She’s staked her claim in the art world with this niche, recently taking commissions from The Hoxton hotels (for its new Paris property) and Soho House (to produce new works for the Barcelona, New York, London and Amsterdam houses and its London hotel The Ned).

[caption id="attachment_206447" align="alignnone" width="1450"] Portrait of Gina Soden by Mike Deere[/caption]

Her work packs a powerful punch, in 2018 winning her UK Artist of the Year and Photographer of the Year at the Rise Art Prize (the biggest open art competition in the UK) with Klinik, a photograph of an abandoned sanitorium.

These forgotten buildings are given regal presentation with Soden’s stunning knack for photographic composition, symmetry and Renaissance-esque perspective. Viewers are usually soothed when looking at the works, but some reactions have been more extreme. “Someone cried once at an art fair, as they were so moved,” Soden recalls. “That was surprising!” Perhaps it’s due to the elegant classicism, beauty in the midst of desolation and collapse, or how colours sometimes drench a piece, overwhelming the gaze with emeralds, turquoises, dusty pinks, powder blues and sunlight hues ranging from soft amber to hot terracotta. Or maybe it’s the poignant reminder of time, death and decay.

“A few of my pieces really illustrate the passing of time,” explains the artist, distinguished by her ever-changing, rainbow-ranged locks, as she shows me her spacious new studio in Reading, South East England, via Facetime, “Thermale is an abandoned spa complex and looks so ancient and grand. Ivy is from an abandoned asylum and the ivy creeping along the floor was just beautiful. And Tree in Room – this was photographed in a summer camp and on the second floor a tree was growing through the floor, and during my second visit it had already grown massively! Some buildings seem to decay more than others ... it depends on the country and location though, and how well-known or well-guarded it is.”

[caption id="attachment_206441" align="alignnone" width="1349"] Church on Mirror | Gina Soden Photography[/caption]

Most recently, Soden exhibited at The Other Art Fair and Archaeologies, a 2019 group show at the Charlie Smith Gallery, curated by Zavier Ellis. Her work has shown at New York’s Pulse Art Fair, London’s Art15, The London Art Fair, The Photo Art Fair and Photo London, held at Somerset House. A Hong Kong connection comes from being exhibited early in her career at the now-closed Cat Street Gallery in Sheung Wan, before she picked up prizes like the 2014 The Naylor Award for the Finest Photograph, and The Secret Art Prize the same year with a piece called Les Histoires.

She blends different exposures together to capture all those details in a single image, creating that very painterly look. She’s deviated from realism with a kaleidoscopic series, an abstract departure that plays with geometries, and has developed a process of hand-printing her images on to found antique “mirrors, marble and metals, treated and corroded with industrial tools and materials, culminating in the Corrodium series – a current self-professed career highlight. The Ingresso series also holds a special place in her heart, but she tells me that the most meaningful would be Retrogression.

“It came from a huge week-long road trip in 2012 with three friends. I was shooting not knowing I’d be creating a series from it and so was fully relaxed about the outcome. After that, everything changed! This was my first step into the art world. The series was really successful, I got a huge amount of press and lots of things happened afterwards, for which I am very grateful.”

[caption id="attachment_206442" align="alignnone" width="1358"] Control Room | Gina Soden Photography[/caption]

Soden’s process is so much more than just taking the picture. It involves months of research, often through dense forests and meadows, abandoned complexes and locked-up buildings deemed unsafe for the public. She could be hiding or being chased by security guards around closed-down schools, asylums, villas or power plants.

The victory of finding something breathtaking and incredible is punctuated by occasions when “hours of research is down the toilet as the building was demolished a few months ago” – the whole affair can be a hugely emotional rollercoaster, she says. No doubt these rollercoaster pursuits have paid off handsomely, landing her in CNN Style and on the pages of the Financial Times, the Telegraph, Dazed & Confused magazine, the British Journal of Photography and Casa Vogue.

Her work has been focussed on Europe (Italy specifically) so far – not surprisingly, for the sheer wealth and density of grand old buildings: “Italy just had me hooked for the last few years and I simply can’t get enough of it. I’ve not even travelled further south than Naples, so there’s still so much more to do there.” From there come the Italian Renaissance references: seen in that sense of depth and her obsession “with single-point perspectives while creating a painterly aesthetic in post-production ... unconsciously, it perhaps all ties together to that look.”

[caption id="attachment_206446" align="alignnone" width="1353"] Thermale | Gina Soden Photography[/caption]

That being said, Soden is keen to explore Georgia, Japan, Cuba, Taiwan, Lebanon and Russia next. The USA is also high on her list, despite being put off by gun-toting security guards and police.

Unusually for modern photographers, Soden prefers to use natural light, occasionally – but rarely – adding a torch. Ideally, she visits locations first thing in the morning “with diffused light creating soft shadows and picking out the highlight details”, or else, she explains, “it’s golden hour for obvious reasons” if logistics allow.

Admittedly, I love her work – there’s already one piece hanging in my new London apartment, and I’ve just ordered three more. Her knack for enlivening these ruinous structures pushes the boundaries of beauty, decay, nostalgia and neglect. It’s perhaps all the more appreciated when thinking of Soden’s journeys to each location.

“The act of gaining unlicensed access is a full-body workout, soaked in anticipation, nerves, excitement and the paranoia of getting caught or disappointment when you can’t find a way into the building,” she says, laughing. “Then all the hours of hard work and long-distance travel ends in one of two ways: either the sheer dismay of all the work up until that point amounting to nothing, or utter elation of stepping into an amazing location and being completely undisturbed.”

[caption id="attachment_206443" align="alignnone" width="1533"] Krankenhaus | Gina Soden Photography[/caption]

Art in The Time of COVID-19

Cancelled shows, fairs and gallery events, people told to stay at home, public life gone — the creative economy (among others) is under threat because of Covid-19. So how are Gina Soden and her fellow young artists adapting to this?

“Oh it’s such a crazy difficult time for so many people,” she says. “I was meant to start work on a new series at my five-week art residency at Villa Lena in Tuscany, which will now be postponed until next April,” she says. “I was so gutted about it, but I think it’s reminded me what’s important — to have a roof over my head for my husband, family and friends all to be safe and well. What more can you ask for in these unprecedented times?”

Working alone in isolation is nothing new for most artists but selling in isolation is proving to be harder. Digital platforms, and apps such as Instagram have helped hugely. Soden has taken up a “genius” initiative by Matthew Burrows: artists selling artworks priced at a maximum of £200, and once each artist reaches £1,000-worth of sales, they pay it forward by purchasing another artist’s work. She’s received a flood of orders by eager fans over her Instagram account already. It’s proved a great way to support young creative talent and acquire accessible pieces that bring beauty into our homes, especially since we’re now spending so much time in them.

The post British Artist Gina Soden on The Romance Among The Ruins appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Dubbed the "gallery of the future", Hauser & Wirth’s newly launched research and innovation arm, ArtLab, has just announced that it will host its first ever virtual reality exhibition on 30 April. The group exhibition, titled Beside Itself, takes place in Hauser & Wirth’s future gallery space in Menorca, allowing visitors a first look at the art centre ahead of its opening in 2021.

ArtLab was birthed by Hauser & Wirth after intensive research in the summer of 2019 to create bespoke technology solutions for the most pressing issues in the art world, including greater accessibility and sustainability. The ArtLab team began exploring innovations that would allow audiences to fully experience exhibitions in different local contexts without traveling —a project that takes on greater meaning and urgency amid the coronavirus pandemic— while permitting artists, curators, and exhibition coordinators to better prepare shows using new technology. In addition, ArtLab will also host a digital residency program at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles for artists and their teams by invitation to enabling them to explore the full potential of this new technology. Using a bespoke technology-stack not found in any other industry and drawing from techniques applied in architecture, construction and video-game design, Artlab creates true-to-life scale and accuracy as well as the authentic look, feel and interactivity of Hauser & Wirth galleries. Building the virtual 3D space from the ground up at a pixel level rather than relying on combined photos, HWVR provides an unprecedented level of accuracy and flexibility.

[caption id="attachment_206409" align="alignnone" width="1454"] ArtLab, in software installation view of Ellen Gallagher’s ‘DeLuxe’, 2004-2005 and Mark Bradford’s ‘Chicago’, 2019 created in HWVR (Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth and the artists)[/caption]

Visitors will be able to experience the virtual reality exhibition through the gallery’s website. Taking its title from a wall piece by Lawrence Weiner, the exhibition brings together text-based works from the following artists: Louise Bourgeois, Mark Bradford, Charles Gaines, Ellen Gallagher, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Luchita Hurtado, Mike Kelley, Glenn Ligon, Damon McCarthy, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Lorna Simpson and Lawrence Weiner. Spanning a period from the 1970’s to the present day, these works explore the intersection of text and the visual image from Bourgeois’s etching ‘Le Coeur Est La’ to Mark Bradford’s bold printed words in ‘New York City’.

Iwan Wirth, one of the founders, made the following statement regarding this new venture:

[inline-quote author="Iwan Wirth"]"Our primary goal was to create technology that would help our artists visualise the spaces where their exhibitions would be presented. We were equally motivated by a desire to plan exhibitions for our locations around the globe in a way that would reduce the amount of travel and transportation. Given the current situation, we feel this new approach to virtual reality exhibitions is especially relevant, will engage as many people as possible and bring them together while we’re all apart."[/inline-quote]

‘Beside Itself’ will open on 30 April 2020 and can be accessed by a computer, smart phone or using a VR headset such as google cardboard.

Preview the Virtual Reality exhibition space here:

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Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, Hong Kong-based artist Peter Yuill has been making waves on the local scene this year with his solo exhibition Alignment at newly opened Gallery HZ on Hollywood Road. Following a star-studded attendance at his previews in Soho House Hong Kong, which saw politician John Tsang, singer/actress Joyce Cheng and Moiselle heiress Tiffany Chan among the crowd, art aficionados and artists alike concede that this will be a transformative year for him.

The art that Yuill produces is clean, minimal, Zen, extremely detailed and somewhat intimidating. Highly analytical and technical in appearance, his circular paradigm has become a trademark that’s inspired by the interconnectedness of the universe and the inevitable limitations of humans in their understanding of all the secrets of nature. In his show, Yuill turns the dichotomous relationship between the infinite and the limited into a powerful narrative of liberation through which he’s indeed achieved the alignment between his artistic and spiritual development.

Spirituality is a consistent theme in his exhibition, which is no surprise given his own strong spirituality and interest in the topic. Indeed, as he’s married to feng shui designer Thierry Chow, daughter of the famed feng shui master Chow Hon Ming, you could say that the theme dominates his life. In 2017, Yuill released an acclaimed series of works with static line, circular form and monochromatic shapes drawn and arranged by hands. The series represented his journey in finding the synthesis between two seemingly paradoxical realms – his logical mind and inner self.

[caption id="attachment_205689" align="alignnone" width="7192"] Limitless Path of the Intuitive Mind I, 2020[/caption]

Since then, he continues this journey by further reducing his pictorial vocabulary to a single shape – a circle – and finds his definitive language of expression that transcends all the dichotomies of the world and immerses viewers in the intricate yet harmonious dimension of the whole. According to Yuill, the circular iconography in his work “came from a long process of deconstruction that I undertook several years ago trying to get to the core essence of myself and my creative vision. I spent a long time being unhappy with the work I was making and really wanted to break everything down and discover what I was really all about. I continued to distil my work down more and more and more until I was eventually left with just a circle, and from there I began building back up again. To me the circle represents the marriage of mathematical and spiritual perfection.”

Yuill says this body of work has been incubating since last autumn, with hundreds of different sketches and concept drawings laid out to create the pieces he wanted to make. It wasn’t until December of last year that he began kicking it into high gear, which is highly impressive given that he then created the 14 original works and three limited-edition prints in a span of just three months. Whereas his previous works “were much more chaotic and aggressive, the pieces in Alignment are much more balanced and centred, reflecting that same feeling within me”, he says. Yuill says he always knew he’d be an artist in one form or another. “I’ve always been a fiercely independent and self-reliant person, and walk my own path. I never really fitted into normal society even from a very early age, and always knew that my own destiny was something that would cut against the grain. For a long time it was a very isolating feeling actually, until I realised that it was okay to think so radically differently from everyone around me.”

[caption id="attachment_205726" align="alignnone" width="859"] Peter Yuill working in his Chai Wan studio[/caption]

When asked to describe Hong Kong’s art scene, Yuill says that it’s a work in progress –  “Hong Kong is a very tough place to be an artist. There’s very little resources, very little establishment support and the rents are obscenely expensive. The city is run from a commerce mindset, not from a quality-of-life or appreciation-of-beauty mindset. This makes anyone doing anything that isn’t commerce-related always struggling and having to fight an uphill battle. "That being said, it’s not all bad either. As a younger city on the up and up, it can be easier to network and meet the kind of people that can help you develop, because everyone’s trying to do something, everyone’s a hustler. It also makes the creative community small, tight-knit and like a family. We’re all in this together and people help each other a lot.”

Yuill’s currently working with his good friend and fellow artist Simon Birch on his large project The 14th Factory, which also features several other Hong Kong, Chinese and international artists. Launched previously in Los Angeles, it’s now in the process of being moved to London – global circumstances permitting, of course.

Alignment is on view until May 9th at Gallery HZ.

The post Inside Peter Yuill’s Solo Show ‘Alignment’ appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

In response to the global pandemic, many brands and corporations have launched efforts to help support the fight against COVID-19. From stay-at-home concerts that fund research to fashion manufactories transforming into medical mask and gown providers, the response has been impressive to say the least. It goes without saying that coming together in this time of crisis is of the utmost importance and one such way to do that is through art.

The Wellbeing Project, a co-created initiative focused on cultivating social change culture, has partnered with design lab Amplifier to launch a global call for art and competition campaign centred on mental health and wellbeing  in challenging times. After all, as Amplifier beautifully puts it: "Your art has power. Art can heal, art can save lives, and art can bring us together even while we are apart."

The art competition calls for two kinds of work

1. Public health and safety messages to help flatten the outbreak curve through visuals of education
2. Illustrations and symbols to promote mental health, well-being, and social change work during these stressful times

While expressing and exploring public safety and mental health, the competition also aims to support its art community and will award 60 artists with a cash prize worth US$1,000 each. Winning works will be announced each week during the month of April and then distributed online and in the physical locations too. What's more, the art panel includes some of the world's top art curators including Curator of Guggenheim Nancy Spector, American contemporary street artist Shepard Fairy and fashion designer Vivienne Tam -- who is the only Hong Kong judge on the jury.

Click through the gallery below for some of our favourite works we've seen so far

[gallery size="full" ids="204955,204956,204958,204959"]

The global call for art ends on Thursday, 30 April 2020. To submit your art work, or find out more, click on the Amplifier website here.

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With several entertainment venues closed, and an alcohol ban that looks like it’s going to last for the unforeseeable future, exciting weekend plans are becoming more and more limited. Thankfully, there's  something a little more special for us all to look forward to. For 48 hours, you can now watch The Phantom of the Opera — also known as Broadway’s biggest, longest-running musical — online at zero cost. 

In face of Covid-19 closures, Andrew Lloyd Webber has launched a special YouTube channel, to keep theatre enthusiasts entertained during the pandemic. On the channel — called The Show Must Go On — audiences can expect to see some of his most beloved productions, available for free streaming for viewers all across the world. This weekend’s pick is a pretty big one, as Andrew Lloyd Webber will be releasing a special 25th anniversary version of The Phantom of the Opera, which was filmed at the Royal Albert Hall in 2011.

What’s the Plot?

For those of you who haven’t yet seen The Phantom of the Opera, or are perhaps taking this quarantine as a chance to venture into theatre, now makes a great chance to try something new. The musical tells the bittersweet story of a masked musical prodigy, who lives in hiding under a Parisian opera house, and falls in love with a beautiful opera singer. It features an iconically moving repertoire of songs, including 'All I Ask of You', 'Music of the Night', and 'The Phantom of the Opera'.

How to Watch it?

Tune into the official YouTube channel at The Show Must Go On. The Phantom of the Opera will be aired online from 1am onwards, Saturday April 18, 2020, and will be available to viewers for the next 48 hours. While streaming is completely free, audiences are encouraged to support the industry, by contributing donations to charities that support theatre, including Broadway Cares and the Actors Benevolent Fund.

What Else is There to See?

Asides from full-length videos, you can also stream clips that contain behind-the-scenes footage and more, including several songs that Andrew Lloyd Webber himself plays at his piano.

Stream it Here

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nINQjT7Zr9w[/embed]

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From the outside, Robert Chua’s home looks no different from any of the other large detached residences that line one of Kowloon’s most exclusive thoroughfares. On the inside, however, it’s packed so full of antiques that it’s almost as if a sizeable cohort of the emperor Qin Shi Huang’s terra cotta army had decamped from its pit on the outskirts of Xian and marched on Hong Kong to occupy most of Chua’s living room – not to mention the veteran TV producer’s conservatory, garage and even some of his bedrooms.

Evidence of the expatriate Singaporean’s near-legendary career in Hong Kong broadcasting, however, which included launching TVB’s live variety show Enjoy Yourself Tonight – a local institution that was first aired on November 20, 1967 and continued to screen every weekday evening for 28 years – is by comparison almost non-existent. In fact, Chua doesn’t even appear to own a TV set, though he later tells me that there is one upstairs in his bedroom.For those who are unfamiliar with the man, Chua first pitched up in Hong Kong in 1967 after he’d been hired as a senior production executive by the fledgling TVB. Aged just 21, he’d already gained experience in broadcasting both in Singapore and with a local TV station in Adelaide, Australia.

It was, says Chua, “a troubled time”. The then-British colony was still roiled by riots that had spilled over the border in the wake of China’s Cultural Revolution, so it might not at the time have seemed the ideal moment to be setting up a TV station. Moreover, considering his young age, his new employers were, to put it mildly, taking a risk.
“When we first started,” Chua admits, “nobody thought we’d succeed with a live show every night, but Enjoy Yourself Tonight [which first aired on TVB’s second day of broadcasting] turned out to be a runaway success. I don’t know how it happened, but I was blessed that Colin Bednall, an Australian who was the station general manager, gave me the opportunity. An Asian general manager would never have done that. Imagine, if I’d failed – he’d have lost his job immediately. He’d allowed a 21-year-old lad to run this thing, so I’m forever grateful to him.”
I suggest that Chua must have been extraordinarily self-confident to helm a live show when at the time most such programmes were pre-taped. “The very first time we did the show, I wasn’t worried or excited,” he replies. “Most people would be very nervous, but somehow I wasn’t nervous at all. Had I been, I’d have made a lot of mistakes, but I wasn’t. I don’t know why. We’d done some testing beforehand, so I suppose the self-confidence I had made it easier.”

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In the event, Enjoy Yourself Tonight would become one of the world’s longest-running live-TV variety shows. “It went out five nights a week, Monday to Friday, for 28 years,” says Chua. “And I don’t even read or write Chinese – I’m lucky that I understand Cantonese, so I was able to manage it because of that. At that time, Singaporeans in Hong Kong were [considered] just a little bit below Hongkongers – we were just like little brothers. So I was lucky I managed to get the confidence of the people I was working with. Some of the big movie stars at the time were almost my father’s age, but I’m very lucky that I was able to work well with them and they were never disrespectful to me.”
Chua left TVB in 1973 and set up his own production company the following year, and by the end of the ’70s he was among the first to explore advertising opportunities in the mainland when the latter began to open up, placing commercials for watches, cigarettes and alcohol with Guangdong Television and China Central Television in 1979. He and his wife Peggy, his former assistant at TVB whom he married in 1974, began travelling to China on business and it was during their trips to Beijing that their interest in Chinese antiques was piqued. They’d visited shops and museums in Hong Kong, but that was nothing compared to what they discovered in the Chinese capital.

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“We started collecting after I started going to China in 1979,” Chua explains. “Both my wife and I began buying antiques, but it’s hard to remember what the first thing was that I bought. Everything was so cheap. I had no idea we’d end up with such a huge collection.”
By that time the couple were living in Kowloon Tong, but it was after they moved to their current address during the 1990s that the size of their antiques hoard began to grow to its current proportions, which are now so vast that there’s barely space in their sizeable home to move, let alone do anything else. Chua points to the pair of large armoires in his living room that fit so tightly into the alcoves at each side of the fireplace – itself festooned with figurines – they might have been made to measure. One is packed full of mirror-matched vases, as well as shelves and shelves of tableware, the latter bought in the 1970s and 80s at a branch of Chinese Emporium for “tens of dollars” – nowadays, he says, they’d cost HK$4,000 a pair.
“For the very rich,” he says, gesturing towards a shelf groaning with cups and saucers, “this is nothing, but for me it’s simply about pleasure. I never buy antiques for their value; I never think of them as investments. I just love them.”
Of the many hundreds of figures of humans and animals, the Buddhas, the urns and vases, the intricate representations of courtyards and fishponds, and the chests and armoires that litter his home – a trove that encapsulates up to 10,000 years of Chinese history stretching back to the Stone Age and even earlier – are there any pieces that Chua values above all others? “If you ask a parent, ‘Which is your favourite kid?’ they couldn’t say,” he replies. “It’s the same with these. I love and I enjoy seeing them. It’s all about appreciation for the people who made them, who were shirtless and bare-footed, poor people, but the work they did was so beautiful.”

Now in his seventies, Chua isn’t slowing down, though these days he’s involved less with producing TV shows than opening restaurants. “I’m still interested in creating and producing programmes,” he says, “but unfortunately these days I don’t see enough passionate people in television. You need passion to manage and run it, because if it’s run by the money people then it’s only
about money. You need to be creative and have a lot of balance. It’s the content that important.”
So two days after my visit to his home he’s flying off to Singapore, where he’s about to open the first of his Joy Luck Teahouse kiosks, a franchise designed to introduce a genuine taste of Hong Kong – in the form of egg tarts as popularised by the tiny Hoover Cake Shop in Kowloon, along with pineapple buns, curried fish balls and milk tea – to the city of his birth. “The kiosk’s going to be very small,” Chua says, “so we want to maximise it by being good and simple. I want to have hundreds of kiosks, so to maintain the quality I have to make it as simple as possible. In a way I call it a social enterprise, because I’m going to give all senior citizens a 50 percent discount on my milk tea, and also because I’m going to offer franchises to young people as well as retirees.”
Even today, more than five decades after Enjoy Yourself Tonight first screened on Hong Kong TV, Chua still finds that the show opens doors for him. “When I meet people,” he says, “especially those in their sixties and seventies, they recall the show with fondness. It’s like the couple [who make the curried fishballs] in Kowloon City. We’ve become very good friends – and why? Because they were big fans of EYT and they know who I am – and now I’m getting their support for my latest venture and they’re giving me their recipe.”

Photographer: Tommy Ng; Art Direction: Sepfry Ng

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