Fill in the Blanks - ARTS • TECH Exhibition 2.0

Curatorial Statement

Between the two screens, there is a negative space, a blank space allowing the audience to fill in with imagination.

Between the two shores, there is a harbour, its waters filled with relentlessly moving images and reflections of historical fragments. The meaning in-between is awaiting the audience to fill in.

What has been forgotten between our quotidian life and the collective memories of our city, bygone in the torrent of time? In between the blank spaces, what makes you nostalgic, and what would you like to fill in?

Curator Ng Tsz-kwan invites artists Tap Chan, Ivy Ma and Zheng Bo to explore the nuances of negativity, what we have forgotten in the various scenes of life.

Tap Chan’s work takes a dive into the deep sea and discovers how the happenings and objects of the seabed are connected to our everyday lives. Her works operate between the poles of the figurative and the poetic, consciousness and the unconscious, providing free space for the audience to roam around.

Ivy Ma used to live in Peng Chau, commuting daily on the boat, overlooking the horizon. In recent years, she left Hong Kong and sojourned in different places around the globe, becoming more and more captivated by the visual perspective, rhythm and dynamics of horizontal movements. She recorded what she saw on camera, wishing to juxtapose these images of horizons with the harbour that lingers in her heart in this creation.

Zheng Bo’s recent works root in the serene observation of nature, allowing the audience to rediscover the bonds between people and nature in the concrete jungle we are living in. What has been taken for granted between plants and humans, nature and urbanity, the past and the present? In this creation, we trace the origins of flowering plants through the harvest we knew too well - fruits. What did we sow to reap?

Ng Tsz-kwan constructs an abstract landscape with a collage of shooting and computer-generated images. In between the frames, virtual and realistic depths of the harbour and the two shores unveil bygone memories and nostalgia.

This project also offers a curated audio-visual tour, “Resonant Harbour: A Speculative Water Tour”. You are invited to sit on a boat embarking to the open while listening to a pseudo-historical story about the harbour. The audio journey between the shores is manifested by Zoe Lai Sim-fong and her team who are experienced in theatre dramaturgy based on substantial data collection and research. Cross-disciplinary artist Shane Aspegren who has been living in Hong Kong for many years accompanies the soundscape to provide an immersive experience for the audience. Visually indulging in the moving images on the LED screens and narrated by a painstakingly crafted soundscape, a multisensory feast is set to transport visitors to the imaginative world.

Participating artists draw from physical, mental, temporal and spatial in-betweenness to explore the bygone connections, memories and meanings in various contexts of life, providing room for imagination and rediscovery.