Culture and Leisure

Art village sprouts in factory zone

Qiu Zhijie, Zheng Duanxiang and Jiang Zhi, who are photographers from the mainland, exhibited a series of pictures taken at night, many of which required hours of exposure and could be ruined by slight miscalculations at the critical shooting moment.

There were also 18 local and international artists who, through Para/Site Art Space, a non-profit art organisation, presented their collaborated work of a maze-like space with big banners on the theme of “STABLE—the balance of power”.

“We want to reach a wider audience,” said Christina Li, organiser of the Para/Site Art Space studio in Fo Tan. Li said visitors in her organisation’s permanent site in Sheung Wan were mostly from the art circle, but in Fo Tan people from all walks of life could be reached.

This mix of international and local, visual, behavioural and conceptual artists in Fo Tan was not seen when the event organisers first moved into the industrial area in 2001. Artists at that time were largely students and professors from the fine arts department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Back then, eight fine arts students decided to move into the industrial buildings in Fo Tan because of the limited space in their university’s studio. Later they became the organisers of the Fotanian open studios.
“All we needed was space,” said Lam Tung-pang, a mixed media artist and one of the organisers, as he recalled the origin of the Fotanian studios.

He said the high ceiling and large cargo lifts of industrial buildings made production and transportation of large artworks easier. The relocation of local factories to the mainland in the late 1990s has vacated many industrial buildings and provided spacious and cheap places for artists to work.

The size of most of the lofts occupied by artists is about 1,000 square feet which rents at HK$4,800 to HK$6,000 a month, much cheaper than the ground-floor commercial units of the same size in Central, a hot spot for commercial galleries, which can be HK$100,000 to HK$300,000 a month.

Over the years the artistic hub in Fo Tan has nurtured some well-known artists, such as mixed media and conceptual artist Tozer Pak Sheung-chuen, whose works have been exhibited in Hong Kong and overseas.
Pak, who also writes the column “Odd One In” in the Chinese-language Ming Pao Daily News, has been awarded a scholarship by the Asian Cultural Council and will be leaving for the United States to further his creative studies for a year.

Pak, a fine arts graduate from the Chinese University, shares a studio, Mr 221, with four other artists who all have become the forerunners of the open studio events.

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