Artsy Afternoon

So, back to last Wednesday afternoon.

The planned activity was to wander down Hollywood Road from the Man Mo Temple, then cutting across on various other streets, end up at City Hall where a bus would come to collect us. On the way, we had a numbered series of art galleries to visit, which had been informed in advance of our possible descent upon them.

One of the conference organizers, surveying on Wednesday morning our casual state of dress, chided us in her halting English, that we were going to have lunch with some of the richest people in the city, and then go to art galleries--"And in Hong Kong only rich people go to art galleries," she explained. Those in jeans had been sent up to change before lunch.

The afternoon walk was actually an unsupervised activity, which was for the better. I didn't feel like walking with anyone, and struck out on my own, giving would-be companions the slip by visiting a public bathroom, circling around, skipping some of the early art galleries. The area around the Mon Mo Temple seemed to specialize in selling antiques and fake antiques--but all Chinese ones. It was an interesting change. It kind of looked all the slides from all my art and archeology classes tossed together, though of course the quality must have been lower. From a bus window, however, it's a little hard to tell. (At right are four statues just hanging out in an alley.)

Most of what was interesting to see along the way was not in the art galleries. I'm not a big fan of art galleries, I have to say. I did go in to most of them and give them a chance. Most of the artists seemed to have a single gimmick... One I did like a little was one who did everything in lacquer. One of his lacquer "paintings" was of a temple building and had some surfaces done in cracked white--it was egg-shell, pressed in during the process, painstakingly, by hand. That was pretty neat.

Another I liked was a row of boxes, on the front of each bearing a characters. From a distance looked like they were just on a colored background, but close up the background was quite detailed, with little pictures forming a sort of compositing, subtle. I got to show off my classical Chinese, which was particularly satisfying since the NY FB coordinator, JA, happened to be by. He and I don't have much use for each other, and it's rare in general that I get to shine among the FB crowd. They go in for, I dunno, saving people and the world and stuff, rather than sticking their noses into dusty dead-ish languages. But anyway, I deciphered the artist's message, which was a Buddhist saying about being without desires...

I took pictures of stuff that wasn't art, though. A city scene which looks almost surreal because of the hill and the tightness of the buildings:


Some kind of festive ornamental fruit--citrons? It didn't turn out so well, but I liked the colors and shapes:


A funny sign:


A man in black--he looks like a story, doesn't he? Or a painting?


The walk up to something called the Battery, lined with massive strangler figs. I might be tempted to say that strangler figs are a figure of colonialism, but actually colonialism in HK did not exactly strangle and kill its host. Indeed, HK is every bit as vibrant as (and perhaps more so than) London! HK did okay.


There were a lot of foreigners in the city. No one stared at me--white people and mixed people are clearly a complete commonplace. Many of my fellow FB women were seen ducking into hair salons and shoe stores. I wasn't the only thing who didn't think contemporary art the biggest draw of the town.

Taken from an overpass; note the colored light display on the sides of the buildings:


A couple shots of the harbor, a houseboat(?):


A tourist boat:


A view.


Here was a flowering tree I caught against the background of a skyscraper. A flowering tree! In February! I thought it was marvelous.


The bus came then and took us to a sort of HK Soho, a warehouse where artists had their studios because the space was cheap. I should note that the socioeconomic course that Wednesday followed was probably not an accident. The billionaires. The galleries where the billionaires might buy their art. Then finally the struggling artists who wish they could be exhibited in the galleries and bought by the billionaires.

It was odd going through their studios. Intimate somehow in an uncomfortable way. They were hovering anxiously. Some things were on display, others were just works in progress.


This guy reminded me of my bro, in that his art was build from technological stuff--in his case, mirrors, kaleidoscopes, a giant hamster wheel, projectors. I wonder if he will ever get a chance? He struck me as really a creative and interesting thinker about art, which is why I was brave enough to ask for his picture. His name (I rarely put full names on this blog, but this guy could use all the publicity he can get) was Anthony Lam. If you are a billionaire or even a millionaire or just a promoter of art reading this, I just want to say this guy is worth a shot. He just needs a patron.



A graffiti-type artist. Graffiti is kind of shallow, but it makes good photos.



It was interesting walking around, but we were all totally exhausted. It was hard eating the buffet dinner sitting on tiny plastic stools in the corridors of the warehouse building. Ever-clumsy when tired, I dropped my plate! Fortunately, I was off in a corner somewhere and only a few people saw me.

Later, I got talking to a nutty lady. She had a perfect talent for saying the exact wrong things. I was sympathetic, though, having something of that talent myself. I made the mistake of mentioning my "fiance" (in truth there's nothing official but I just say "fiance" to people who seem conservative so they won't get the wrong idea about "boyfriend"). Usually it's not a big issue, but this lady seized on the topic with a vengeance, asking innumerable questions such as "SO--when did he POP THE QUESTION?" and "When is the wedding?" and "So when you get back from China you'll be LIVING WITH THE BOYFRIEND??" I am totally saying "partner" from now on, just so people will wonder if I might be a lesbian and be too embarrassed to ask further. What a debacle.

Still, funny in retrospect.

I was so tired after this long long day, I was ready to drop. The studio/warehouse started to take on the air of a prison, since we couldn't leave until the buses did, and the buses would not arrive until 9:15. It felt like forever! What a day.