From the collection of former Swiss ambassador Uli Sigg to Conrad Shawcross’s dancing robot, find out what’s going on beyond the fair
When the sprawling aisles of Art Basel in Hong Kong become too much, there’s plenty more art to see around the city. Here’s our guide to the must-see exhibitions.
M+ Sigg Collection: Four Decades of Chinese Contemporary Art, ArtisTree, until 4 April
This exhibition features around 80 paintings, sculptures, installations and videos by artists from the Chinese mainland, assembled by the renowned art collector Uli Sigg. The works represent a small sample of the 1,510 pieces acquired from Sigg by M+, the museum of 20th- and 21st-century visual culture that will open its Herzog & de Meuron-designed building in Hong Kong towards the end of 2019. In 2012, Sigg donated 1,463 works to M+ and sold 47 other pieces to the museum for HK$177 million ($23m). The exhibition arranges the works chronologically, tracing the evolution of contemporary art in China from 1974. This is the first show in Hong Kong of works from the collection; further pieces are also now on view in Switzerland, at the Kunstmuseum Bern and Zentrum Paul Klee (until 19 June).
Brian Gothong Tan, Imelda Goes to Singapore (2006). Courtesy of Para Site
Afterwork, Para Site, 19 March-29 May
More than 330,000 migrant domestic workers, mostly women from Indonesia and the Philippines, make up 4% of the population of Hong Kong—its largest minority group. Their Sunday picnics on blankets and flattened cardboard have become a traditional sight in the Central business district. But domestic helpers, who must live with their employers and leave Hong Kong within two weeks of the end of their contracts, often remain invisible in other ways. As part of a long-term project to engage the community and encourage workers to tell their stories, Para Site is staging Afterwork, an exhibition exploring themes of labour and discrimination and featuring almost 30 artists, including Harun Farocki, Alfredo Jaar and Santiago Sierra. Para Site is also due to publish an anthology of texts about and by migrant domestic workers in Chinese, English, Indonesian and Tagalog.
The New Zealand-born artist Simon Denny sprinted through 30 artists’ studios in Beijing before Hack Space made its Hong Kong debut. Photo: © Getty, 2015
Hack Space, K11 Foundation pop-up, Cosco Tower, 21 March-24 April
Shanzhai, once a pejorative term for a copy but increasingly considered an innovative form of creativity, is finding its way into the art world. One of the latest examples is Hack Space, a pop-up show jointly presented by the K11 Foundation and Serpentine Galleries in London. Hack Space features sculptures by the New Zealand-born artist Simon Denny, alongside 11 Chinese artists whose works address themes of technology, hacking and shanzhai. The exhibition is an expanded version of Products for Organising, Denny’s solo show at the Serpentine Gallery, which focused on the history of hacking and the ways in which corporations and organisations such as the online retailer Zappos and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have adapted aspects of hacker culture. For Hans Ulrich Obrist, the co-director of the London gallery, who is organising Hack Space with the institution’s exhibitions curator Amira Gad, it was important to “listen to and learn from the local context in Hong Kong” and not just “ship the exhibition to the next city”.
The ADA Project’s light fantastic
The ADA Project, The Peninsula Hotel, 22 March-6 April
The British artist Conrad Shawcross brings his dancing robot to the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel. The ADA Project, which incorporates an industrial-strength robotic arm, will be “conducting” music by Mira Calix this week. Performances are due to take place at 3pm and 5pm on 23 March and during the evening of 24 March. At other times, the work will function in “salon mode”. Shawcross, who is in Hong Kong this week, says he is looking forward to people’s reactions when “they will be expecting to sit down for a cup of English tea”. Inspired by the pioneering 19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace, who was the daughter of Lord Byron, The ADA Project’s Hong Kong debut is the second in a three-year partnership between London’s Royal Academy of Arts and the Peninsula. Last year’s surprise for the hotel’s guests was a vintage coach that balanced on the seventh floor of the façade, installed by Shawcross’s fellow Academician Richard Wilson.
