June 9–August 15, 2018
10 Hollywood Road, Central
Hong Kong
Nadim Abbas, Erkka Nissinen, Magdalen Wong, Big Tail Elephant, Chen Shaoxiong, Luke Ching Chin Wai, Tiffany Chung, Claire Fontaine, Kwan Sheung Chi, Wong Wai Yin, Bing Lee, Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong, Liang Juhui, Lin Yilin, Roman Ondak, LH02 (Pak Sheung Chuen, Jaffe.T, Cathy Tsang, Grace Gut, Siumou Chow), PolyLester, Jhafis Quintero, Superflex and Jens Haaning, Koki Tanaka, Ulay / Marina Abramović, Bik Van der Pol, Yvonne Dröge Wendel, Xijing Men, Xu Tan
Spring Workshop is delighted to present Dismantling the Scaffold, curated by Christina Li. In the works for over two years, this partnership between Spring Workshop and Tai Kwun Contemporary was intended as Spring’s final gesture before it began a planned hiatus earlier this year, and traces a picture of what blooms from years of dialogue, exchange and communal effort.
As the inaugural exhibition at Tai Kwun Contemporary, the show brings together works from local and international artists and collectives, a constellation of artworks which engage with the social and civil structures we collectively inhabit.
The artistic positions in the exhibition aim to open up insights as well as questions that reimagine and examine the established conventions that condition how we give shape to our everyday lives. The two major keystones in the exhibition concept are the site’s history and the practice of collaboration: the unique background of the site of the Central Police Station compound—as a police station, magistracy, and prison in the past—as well as the collaboration of two contemporary art organizations at a convergence in their timelines—the beginning of Tai Kwun Contemporary and the hibernation of Spring Workshop after its five-year operation.
The scaffold—the main motif for the exhibition—is commonly understood as a temporary support deployed while a building is being constructed or repaired. In its lesser-known usage, a scaffold can also refer to a structure used in the past to stage public punishments. Dismantling the Scaffold interweaves these two ideas to draw attention to the site’s prior historical function, while looking forward to its new role as a permanent cultural institution and heritage site in Hong Kong.
Organised under this central metaphor of the scaffold, artworks in the exhibition explore art’s potential to illuminate our relationship with society at large. They offer poignant reflections of the invisible and visible structures that organise our daily existence among our surroundings. Working across fictional and historical narratives, these artistic manifestations originate from daily encounters with the inner logic around built infrastructure, institutions of administration and order, and related issues around collaboration, historical amnesia, identity politics, and individual autonomy. Dismantling the Scaffold proffers interpretations of the everyday structures that underpin our reality as human beings in contemporary civil society.
Leung Chi Wo and Sara Wong
The Spectacle of Space Consumption 2008, choreographed performances (every Friday at 7pm; Saturday/Sunday at 3pm)
Tiffany Chung
Two-part program History and the Way Forward
Part 1: Art in Times of Crisis panel discussion (June 15, 7-8:30pm)
Part 2: Refugee Experience and Asylum Policy – The Way Forward panel discussion (June 17, 10am-12pm)
Pak Sheung Chuen and LH02
11 workshops inspired by collective artwork Killing 3000
Bing Lee
Iconographic narrative events (programme TBA)
Ulay
Screening of documentary Project Cancer on the life and work of the artist
(More programs TBA)
Opening hours and tickets at www.taikwun.hk
About Spring Workshop
Founded in 2011 as a five-year project, Spring Workshop is a cultural initiative that experiments with the way we relate to art. With an international cross-disciplinary program of artist and curatorial residencies, exhibitions, music, film and talks, Spring has served as a laboratory for exchange between artists, organisations and audiences in Hong Kong and abroad. In December 2017, Spring ceased its usual activities to begin a planned season of rest and transformation, which will begin following the close of the long-planned exhibition Dismantling the Scaffold.
