The Works：Artist Hsiao Chin, Photographer Jo Farrell bound feet women, Gao Weigang & in the studio

Artist Hsiao Chin is 80 years old this year, and to celebrate that milestone the de Sarthe Gallery is showcasing 18 of his works created between 1955 and 2004. Hsiao was born in Shanghai but moved to live with his uncle in Taiwan at 14. His mother and his father had both previously passed away. There, he eventually became part of the Ton Fan art group, a group commonly called “the Eight Bandits” or the “Eight Great Outlaws” due to their resistance to the authorities’ attempts to clamp down on any art that was avant-garde.
For a thousand years, the feet of many Chinese women, from prostitutes to others from or aspiring to, the upper classes, were bound; and the practice – even though some objected to it since the 19th century – was a long time dying. An ever decreasing number of the women who had their feet thus bound are still alive, and photographer Jo Farrell has spent the last eight years travelling in China to photograph and talk to them.
For his first solo Hong Kong exhibition “Struggler” at Galerie Perrotin, Gao Weigang has created paintings and sculptures that bring together oil paint, stainless steel, and even rocks. Among the works on show are some that, from a distance, look like constellations of stars. But then, you look a little closer.
Pianist Evelyn Chang and violinist Euna Kim may be very familiar to regular viewers of The Works, who may have seen them in our studio before. This time they’re here in the company of cellist Zhu Mu in Trio Morisot, named after the Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot. They’re talking to Ben Pelletier.