Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong
7 September - 8 October 2006
Opening: 6:30pm, 6 September 2006

Para/Site 藝術空間，香港
2006年9月7 至 10月8日
開幕: 2006年9月6日，下午6時半

Artists: Yun CHU (儲雲), Jianyu DUAN (段建宇), Bianca Lei (李少莊), Otto LI (李天倫), Tao ZHOU (周滔 b.1975)

Inspired by our home-grown genre of gambling films, Octomania (On drawing the number eight) takes a look at gambling and its role in contemporary Chinese society and issues around popular traditional forms of folk beliefs and myths and the extent they structure our lives. The show features artists from the Pearl River Delta region, including Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Macau, with works meditating on the nature of bookmaking and how the quest for good luck, a fundamental component of Chinese life, is related to the gambler's spiritual belief to be able to break through the established order of the game.

The very first accounts of gambling were recorded in China. With the Chinese as the biggest gambling population in the world, raking up an annual expenditure of 600 billion Yuan alone on online gambling last year; gambling is perhaps more predominant in our culture than we think. Set in the context of the PRD region, the exhibition, sets out to reflect on the population's fanaticism in superstition for fortune-seeking and life reversals, a prevalent belief in China and augmented in the Guangdong region. Gambling, essentially a Chinese invention, like divination, both seeks for spiritual affirmation, attempts to predict, manipulate and to an extent, change one's fate. From spatial arrangement and interventions, idol worship to rituals, gamblers and the masses share the same hope for change and liberation, and the spread and creation of these acts work intermittently to consolidate a belief system where people seek solace in.

Octomania (On drawing the number eight) will feature paintings, installation and mixed-media works aiming to examine the ways beliefs are created through icons and myths and the sanctity that connects the two activities together. Taking cues from the Chinese everyday life and media fueled icons, they are transformed by the artists, to present a humourous, and sometimes somber view of gambling and fanaticisms.

For more information, please contact Christina Li at 2517-4620 or info@para-site.org.hk.

藝術家: 儲雲, 段建宇 , 周滔 , 李少莊及李天倫

「拾發」是取材於本土以賭博為主題的影片，檢視賭博於當代中國人社會中的地位、傳統上有關賭博的神話、見解，以及它們對我們生活的影響。參與的展覽藝術工作者均來自香港、廣東及澳門的珠江三角洲地區，通過作品思考賽馬賭博等活動的本質，與一眾賭徒篤信追尋幸運、以博彩遊戲去贏取中國人的完滿的基本生活的一廂情願心態。

中國是最早有文獻記載賭博活動及現時賭博人口最龐大的地方，單是去年中國人的網上賭博消費已達六百萬元人民幣，賭博可能已支配了我們的生活文化。是次珠江三角洲地區展覽，反映全民狂熱潮「拜」、迷信、祈福，寄望藉此扭轉乾坤的中國民間的普遍信念，如何漫延整個澳門地域。賭博乃中國人所創，如占卜一樣，讓人尋求精神上的肯定、試圖運用預言去改變個人的命運結局。由空間的安排及介入、偶像崇拜到宗教儀式，賭徒及群眾抱著對於改變和解放的共同願望，以那些行動的創造和傳播間歇地加強人們賴以尋求慰藉的信仰系統。

「拾發」一展以繪畫、裝置及混合媒體作品，探討由不同偶像和神話所產生的信念，及聯繫兩者的神聖事物。 從充滿影子的房間 ， 碧咸的黃金右? ， 幸運手 袖 ， 廣東省通緝犯的告示至郊外幫烤?動手術的水墨畫 等作品 ，藝術工作者從中國人每天的生活模式及經傳媒?化了的偶像人物中取材，呈現出幽默和時而陰沈的對于賭博和狂熱的看法。

Octomania (On drawing the number eight) is organized by Para/Site Art Space and is generously supported by:
是次展覽由Para/Site藝術空間主辦

Para/Site Art Space is a registered charity art organization, financially supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and private donations.
Para/Site 藝術空間乃非牟利慈善藝術機構，並為香港藝術發展局資助團體。

Para/site Art Space

Gallery hours: 12-7pm (Wed - Sun)
Close on Mondays, Tuesdays & public holidays
開放時間：正午12時至晚上7時 （逢星期一、二及公眾假期休息）

G/F, 4 Po Yan Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
香港上環普仁街4號地下

- The Gaze and the Division in the Contemporary Art Creation of Taiwan and Hong Kong

A Realm with No Coordinates is an artistic project in between artists from Hong Kong and Taiwan. It includes a website for curators, artists and writers to communicate and together explore on the theme of the project. The coming exhibition in 1a Space is just the first actual exhibition, out of a series of three.

Creative identification in a realm with no coordinates
By bringing together artists and writers from Hong Kong and Taiwan across the strait, the project reflects upon the common identity question raised in the two land, and explore different ways to attend a kind of creative expression of subjectivity, which the identitication charted into a territory beyond existing coordinates. Via generating dialogues and exchanges in between artists and works, artworks and texts, and scenerio shiftings as the venues changes, the project try to foster an encounter of the different realities of space/time, so works of the artists and writers could response to the situation at hand, but bring us further insights that chart beyond the present limiting parameters. Since the exhibition at 1a will just be the first actual exhibition venue of our project, after the exhibition has toured Taipei and Tainan, the project will organize a further documentary exhibition accompanied by a conference in Hong Kong, so audiences in Hong Kong could keep track and see how the project continues to evolve.

The Subjectivity of Contemporary Art in Hong Kong and Taiwan
Both Hong Kong and Taiwan are highly modernized Chinese society. However, they have quite different historical path of development, and their relation is becoming more polticially delicate and sensitive after 1997. But as Mainland China is gaining its momentum in its economical development as well as importance in different world platforms, the previous comparative paradigm of Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan is getting more imbalance. The economical, cultural and political aspects have produced much tensions and deadlocks. Even in the contemporary art scene, as the Chinese art is getting gthe international limelights, Hong Kong and Taiwan artists are being marginalized. By attending to the common and division character of the contemporary art practice in face of such situation, the project hopes to evocate a new discoursive paradigm that could restore a platform for our own subjectivity to participate in the global world.

Exhibition Peroid:
Date: 26 Aug - 10 Sep 2006
Opening: 26 Aug 2006, 5pm
Art Talk: 26 Aug 2006, 6pm

Venue: 1a space
Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village
63 Ma Tau Kok Road,To Kwan Wan, KLN, Hong Kong
Tel: 852 2529 0087
Email: admin@oneaspace.org.hk
Website: http://www.oneaspace.org.hk

Date: 30 Sep - 22 Oct 2006
Venue: Nanhai Art Gallery
National Taipei Teachers College
No.3 Lane 19 Sec.2 Chongqing S. Rd.
Taipei, Taiwan
Tel: +886 2 2392 5080

Opening Hours:
Wednesday - Sunday, 2 - 9:30pm

Date: 4 - 26 Nov 2006
Venue: Art Center
Tainan National University of the Arts
No. 299, Sec 2, Dongmen Road
East District, Tainan City, Taiwan
Tel: 886 6 2096808
Email: artcenter@mail.tnnua.edu.tw
Website: http://artcenter.tnnua.edu.tw

Date: 9 - 17 Dec 2006
Venue: The Chinese University of Hong Kong(CUHK), Hong Kong

Curators:
Chen Zuei Wen (陳瑞文), Ray Poon (潘大謙), Lau Kin Wah (劉建華)

Artists:
Taiwan:
Chen Kai Huang (陳凱璜), Chen Wei Fung (陳維峰), Fang Wei Wen (方偉文), Gong Yih Jau (龔義昭)
Lai Chih Sheng (賴志盛), Lin Huang Ti (林煌迪), Yu Wei (游崴)
Hong Kong:
Cheung Lik Kwan (張歷君), Amy Cheung (張韻雯), Jeff Leung (梁展峰), Leung Chi Wo (梁志和)
Leung Mee Ping (梁美萍), Tozer Pak (白雙全), Deng Siu Wah (鄧小樺)

Project Website．計劃網站:
http://stumail.nutn.edu.tw/~m09419015/2006

Photo Exhibition
10:00am - 8:00pm Mon - Fri
2:00pm - 6:00pm Sat
23.8. - 20.09.2006
Goethe-Gallery
14/F Hong Kong Arts Centre, 2 Harbour Road, Wanchai
Free admission
2802 0088　email: kultur@hongkong.goethe.org

The Goethe-Institut Hongkong will present Leung Chi-wo's photo series on the topic of domestic space adaptation in Hong Kong at the Goethe-Gallery from August 23 to September 6, 2006.
Domestica Invisibile is an ongoing photo series project conducted by Leung to explore the psychological responses and physical adaptations to one's living space which is very often pre-defined by others nowadays. Constant exposure to our mundane surrounding may indeed encourage our negligence to its details, which can be a rich reflection of the character, situation or background of the one who uses this space. Domestic space also denotes our privacy that may not be very often exposed to the public, especially in an urban context of the lack of space which is particularly relevant to Hong Kong where the artist comes from. However, it may also be a universal practice of dealing with space which is unnecessarily limited, such as that we all like to hide things underneath our desk in a way everybody could see them. It depends on the choice of what to be seen. Its visibility is always subject to the viewer or user's intention.

This exhibition at the Goethe-Institut Hongkong includes a major selection of the series previously shown at the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial (supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council and Mrs Alice King) and projects made in Plymouth, England (commissioned by Asian Art Space Project and Plymouth Arts Centre) and Sapporo, Japan (supported by Inter-Cross Creative Center). It is the first solo exhibition of Leung Chi-wo since 2003 and also first-ever showing of the series in Hong Kong. A catalogue with the same title, introduced by Chang Tsong-zung, curator of the first Hong Kong pavilion in Venice Biennale, will be officially released at the exhibition.

Leung Chi-wo
Born in Hong Kong in 1968, Leung graduated with a MFA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1997 after a photography study in I'Istituto per lo Sviluppo Socio-Economico dello Spilimberghese in Italy and an internship in het Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Ghent, Belgium. He has exhibited in Hong Kong, New York, Melbourne, Tokyo, Oslo, Vienna, Hamburg and Toronto, etc. Awards received include the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship (1997) and the Urban Council Award of the Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial (1996) and the First Prize in Sculpture from the Philippe Charriol Foundation (1995). In 2000, he has held a solo exhibition in the Queens Museum of Art, New York. In 2001, his site-specific project was exhibited in the Hong Kong Pavilion in the Venice Biennale.