2015 spring programme
Asia Art Archive
233 Hollywood Road
Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
Asia Art Archive presents its 2015 spring programme:
11 March–30 May
Excessive Enthusiasm: Ha Bik Chuen and the Archive as Practice is an exhibition in the AAA library stemming from our ongoing research into the archive of Ha Bik Chuen (1925–2009). A Hong Kong-based artist primarily known as a sculptor and printmaker, he also had parallel practices: from photographing exhibitions he attended, to collecting materials such as illustrated magazines and artist portraits, and using these to construct book collages. A selection of materials, self-organised, using an idiosyncratic system dating back to the 1960s through to the late 2000s will be featured in the exhibition.
13–17 March
Open Platform, Asia Art Archive’s annual programme held in association with Art Basel in Hong Kongis an integral part of AAA’s endeavour to enable new thinking and critical dialogue around recent art in Asia. Cultural practitioners from all disciplines selected from proposals through an open call for submissions participate in a series of “meetings without walls” hosted at our booth. By leveraging AAA’s network, Open Platform supports researchers, curators, writers, artists, students, academics, and art organisations to further ongoing projects, catalyse new ones, or simply make connections. The programme will be complemented by live events.
15 March, 11am–12pm
Pablo Helguera, a New York-based artist, academic, educator, and writer, as well as a sometime cartoonist, composer, and opera singer, delves into his recent and past participatory projects to consider the “library as form” in his artist talk, The Open Book. Helguera, whose work spans history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, and anthropology through lectures, museum displays, performances, and written fiction, has exhibited and performed internationally.
30 April & 16 May, Hong Kong
18–20 September, co-presented withTaipei Contemporary Art Center (TCAC)
Marysia Lewandowska, AAA’s resident artist for 2015, initiates Property, Protest, Commons, and the Alternative Economies of Art, a series of public workshops with participants Antony Hudek, Brandon LaBelle, Michael Leung, Maria Lind, Esther Lu, Phoebe Wong, Sampson Wong, Wen Yau, among others, and leading towards Made in Public, a collectively generated project and publication. Contributors draw upon practices that interrogate the relationship between art, property, protest, and the commons in the context of recent cultural and political events in Asia.
May 2015
C&G,comprising of Hong Kong artist collaborators and 2014 AAA residents Clara Cheung and Cheng Yee Man (Gum), launch their artist book Not as Trivial as You Think: Hong Kong Art Quiz. The publication includes drawings stemming from their 2014 performance held during Art Basel in Hong Kong, where four teams of artists, art professionals, and students competed in a general knowledge quiz on Hong Kong contemporary art and politics.
Asia Art Archive thanks the following for their support:
Excessive Enthusiasm: Spring Workshop
Open Platform: Elaine & Anto Marden; Wendy & Stephen Lee; Lavina & William Lim; Art Basel; Studio Christian Wassmann & Francesca Grassi, New York; Sky Yutaka Ltd., Hong Kong; Walk in Hong Kong
Marysia Lewandowska: Foundation for Arts Initiatives (FfAI)
C&G: Burger Collection; Lavina & William Lim; Yana & Stephen Peel
Asia Art Archive is an independent non-profit organisation initiated in 2000 in response to the urgent need to document and make accessible the multiple recent histories of art in the region. With an international Board of Directors, an Advisory Board made up of noted scholars and curators, and an in-house research team, AAA has collated one of the most valuable collections of material on contemporary art in the region—open to the public free of charge and increasingly accessible from its website. More than a static repository waiting to be discovered, AAA instigates critical thinking and dialogue for a wide range of audiences via public, research, residential and educational programmes.
