Beyond Art Basel: 6 art events around Hong Kong to check out, from a pop-up bar hosted by Art Week Tokyo to a cultural tour of Sham Shui Po and street art festival HKWalls
You don’t have to jostle the crowds at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) to enjoy this year’s Art Basel.
Instead, Asia’s biggest art fair meets you where you are, with more than 170 in-house and endorsed citywide events. Many of these talks, exhibitions and tours kick off well in advance of Art Basel’s official dates of March 28 to 30, while some shows will remain in place until long after the art dealers and dilettantes have gone.
The schedule is varied and edgy. In fact, whether you fancy hearing Bach in a ping-pong parlour turned gin bar, touring NoHo street art, or having a vegan lunch at a Sham Shui Po cafe, theatre, and woodblock printing and porcelain studio that bills itself as a “rehab centre for casualties of capitalism”, you might find that Art Basel is a lot more fun when you go off site.
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Here’s a round-up of a few imaginative events happening simultaneously that piqued our interest.
1. Francesco Tristano, solo piano recital, March 28
Yes, barroom pianists are a dime a dozen – but it’s not every day that somebody the calibre of Francesco Tristano tinkles the ivories at your local watering hole.
Come to think of it, Ping Pong 129 isn’t just any old bar, either. Imagine a Spanish gintoneria, housed in a former table tennis parlour, and styled according to some old Hollywood director’s idea of Chinatown. This is the delicious setting for a recital by Tristano, a keyboard prodigy from Luxembourg, who is equally adept at classical music and electronica, and has set himself the ambitious goal of recording Bach’s entire piano corpus. He’s already done with Bach’s Goldberg Variations, English Suites and first Partita, along with work by Ravel, Prokofiev and Cage. Expect renditions of Tristano’s original compositions from his albums On Early Music and Tokyo Stories, as well as Bach selections. March 28
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2. AWT pop-up bar
Like your art in a tall glass with ice? Then this pop-up bar hosted by Art Week Tokyo at Ronin – a 14-seat Central izakaya – is for you.
As you sip on cocktails inspired by the work of photographer Rinko Kawauchi, painter Masato Kobayashi and installation creators Yuichiro Tamura and Shinji Ohmaki, you can peruse works for sale by British-Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara, “photogram” maker Saori Miyake, and others.
There’s a special menu to graze on and if the music in the bar seems quirkier than usual, that’s because one of the playlists was curated by Yuko Mohri, an audio artist who will represent Japan at this year’s Venice Biennale with an installation featuring electrodes attached to rotting fruit to produce sound. Through March 29
3. Afield tour of Sham Shui Po
There’s more to Sham Shui Po than cheap tech and overpriced coffee. One of the best ways to experience the ongoing trendification is through this tour led by Chantal Wong of the Hong Kong chapter of Afield – a Paris-based organisation that disburses grants to artists who initiate projects “catalysing change and empowering their communities.”
During a two-hour free-admission ramble through gritty streets, you’ll be popping your head into “audiovisual laboratory” Thy Lab, the ramshackle Half Cup Squat – part bookstore, part tea shop, part “community hub” – and art gallery Parallel Space. You can also take a light vegan lunch at Black Window – a cafe and craft studio serving everyone from its “art friends” to its “homeless friends” to the elderly. March 29
4. HKWalls Festival
If the weather is good, why sequester yourself in the windowless confines of the HKCEC when you can take a stroll through Central and Western and check out some of the vibrant murals that seem to be thrown up with increasing frequency these days?
While they’re not hard to find – locally, almost everybody knows Alex Croft’s mural of shophouses on Graham Street or Shingo Katori’s stylised dragon beneath the Central-Mid Levels Escalator – it might make sense to join a walking tour. That way, you’ll be sure of not missing anything.
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Alexandra Unrein of Wanderlust Walks – a Berlin native who has lived in Hong Kong for 14 years – is leading a free 90-minute introduction to some of the most notable city centre murals. Expect to see work by international and local daubers, including Belgian stencil artist Jaune, French graffiti artist Maye and Hong Kong’s own Lousy. Through March 31
5. “Both Sides Now 9: Generations”
What’s an art fair without screenings of experimental videos on the grounds of a former abattoir?
This show, co-organised by Hong Kong non-profit Videotage and UK agency Videoclub, brings together local and international videomakers. Look out for music videos by up-and-coming American director Paul Trillo, excerpts from Hong Kong-born Doreen Chan’s HalfDream video project, Swedish artist Jonas Lund’s AI satire The Future of Something, and more. In fact, AI is the theme that binds the work together in a show that delves, the curators claim, into “a new era of automation”. It’s also a great excuse to drag yourself to East Kowloon and check out the Cattle Depot Artist Village – a refurbished 116-year-old slaughterhouse, now home to around 20 artists and art groups. Through April 10
- While Art Basel Hong Kong has plenty to keep the fine art-minded enthralled, simultaneous off-site events also showcase creative curiosities, writes Aidyn Fitzpatrick
- Francesco Tristano will perform Bach in hipster Sai Ying Pun gin bar Ping Pong 129, while ‘Both Sides Now 9: Generations’ presents screenings of experimental videos on the grounds of a – where else? – former abattoir