The Works：Barter Concert, Zhu Jinshi's installation "Boat", Kacey Wong’s Art of Protest – Resi

For the past three years, local musician Sonic Lee has been organising a concert he calls the Barter Concert. The idea is that people coming to the show will bring something that will later be given to those in need. In the first Barter Concert, people brought food, which was donated to a charity to help poor people. Last year, the audience brought old sheet music for a musical organisation that teaches underprivileged children to play. This year, what the audience was asked to bring was ginger root.
Xuan or rice paper, and we don’t mean the edible kind, originated in ancient China and has long been used for writing and painting. It’s known for its soft and fine textured. Since 1988 Chinese artist Zhu Jinshi has been using xuan paper to create large site-specific installations in places such as Berlin, Beijing, Vancouver, London and Miami. Until the end of the month, Pearl Lam Galleries and Hongkong Land are showing, at Exchange Square, an 18-metre long, 7-metre high installation, called “Boat”, made up of bamboo, cotton threads, and over 12,000 sheets of Xuan paper. Zhu Jinshi says the work addresses the concept of time, both subjective and in a cultural sense.
Everything is art. Everything is politics,” Ai Weiwei once said. It’s an idea that resonates with local artist Kacey Wong, who says Ai’s arrest in 2011 encouraged him to give even more emphasis to combining art with politics. You may have seen his work at many large scale political protests. At the Amelia Johnson Contemporary gallery, the exhibition “Kacey Wong’s Art of Protest – Resisting Against Absurdity” echoes Albert Camus’ observation that “at any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike a man in the face”.
Both Kacey and the gallery say that all proceeds from the exhibition “will be donated to relevant political parties and social media platforms for the better improvement of Hong Kong.”
Set up two years ago, the Romer String Quartet has already played concerts in China and across South East Asia and in festivals such as the Hong Kong Arts Festival and the New Vision Arts Festival. Today, they’re in our studio, talking to Ben Pelletier.