3-12-2013 The Works

Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto's images, begin in his mind, in his imagination. The concepts of real and fictional, time, memory and the transience of life are prominent. He uses a large format camera to make long exposures, sometimes the length of a movie in his "Theatres" series, or up to three hours for his "Seascapes". Sugimoto was in Hong Kong two weeks ago for an Art and Museum Summit organized by the Asia Society. While he was here, he spoke of the artist as a consumer of the museum, and why he is often at odds with architects.
It isn't so difficult to become popular in the cyber world. A single post can make you a reputation overnight. Tse Sai Pei, whose real name is Jasmine Tse, became popular in the social media earlier this year. In January, she posted an illustration of a school girl at a desk. The girl is hardly a model student. She is hiding her mobile phone under her sweater and listening to music in class. The image quickly gathered views and Facebook "likes". It also brought the artist many opportunities to publish the work in magazines and books. Now she is holding her first exhibition in Mingshi Gallery
At the Pearl Lam Gallery until 9th January is an exhibition by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare. Its title "Dreaming Rich" might seem very relevant to many of us in Hong Kong. But the exhibition, for which he has created all new works relating to Hong Kong, isn't just about our fantasies of being rich, but a comment on our obsession with wealth at all costs.
John Thomson was born in Edinburgh in 1837, and grew up to build a formidable reputation as a geographer, traveller, and photographer. In fact, he was one of the first Western photographers to travel to Asia. His camera equipment was heavy and unwieldy, but it also produced very high quality images. During his ten years in Asia Thomson travelled to a number of countries, including Hong Kong, and captured priceless and often very human images of the times. Currently 70 of his photographs of Hong Kong and China are on show at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.