bc magazine

India by the Bay

india-by-the-bay-2016

India by the Bay returns from the 25 February – 1 March with a range of events that look to bring India’s cultural dynamism to Hong Kong. There’s a mix of classical and contemporary including music, theatre, dance, food, film and literature as the festival reflects India’s artistic depth and diversity. According to the organisers the India by the Bay aims to celebrate the common cultural strands shared by Hong Kong and India and their multi-ethnic populace.

India by the Bay – 24 February to 1 March 2016

24 February – Festival Opening

7:15pm, 25 February – Film – Sharmila Tagore at Asia Society Hong Kong Center
Indian film actress Sharmila Tagore in conversation with Festival Director Sanjoy Roy.

7:15pm, 26 February – Literature – Shobha De at Asia Society Hong Kong Center
Best- selling author of 18 books and widely-read columnist Shobhaa De in conversation with Sanjoy Roy.

6:45pm, 27 February – Music – Rajasthan Josh at Asia Society Hong Kong Center
World music band which combine the folk traditions of the North Western region of India with vocal styles ranging from mystic Sufi traditions, bhajans to the popular folk songs of Rajasthan.

12:30pm, 27 February – Lunch – Karen Anand at Ovolo Southside Hotel

6:45pm, 28 February – Dance – Nityagram at Asia Society Hong Kong Center
The Nrityagram Dance Ensemble are one of the foremost dance companies in India. Although steeped in and dedicated to ancient techniques, the Nrityagram dancers also look to carry Indian dance into the twenty-first century.

7:15pm, 29 February – Theatre – C Sharp C Blunt at Asia Society Hong Kong Center
C Sharp C Blunt is based on the concept of the loop. An electronic musician, live on stage creates and layers loops from live sound. The loop in its nature reflects the training of the singer through endless repetition and also the process of cultural and social programming. This cultural programming also defines the specific way girls and women are supposed to behave.
The play looks at traditional gender roles as engrained by culture versus the woman as the globalised consumer living in a new market that caters to her wants and needs. We look at the performer as a site of battle between purity and consumption, between servitude and ego, between being-looked-at-ness and self-determination.

7pm, 1 March – Buddhist Day – Shantum Seth at Ovolo Southside Hotel

Tickets for all events are available at www.indiabythebay.com

Septiembre Mexicano

Experience Mexico during Septiembre Mexicano as The Consulate General of Mexico in Hong Kong organizes a series of art, culture, music and gastronomic activities, open to the public, to celebrate its 205th anniversary of independence.

Fashion
Mexican designer Carmen Rion, presents her latest textile designs at the “Renaissance of Fashion” event. Rion is also a fashion researcher and is well known for ‘rescuing’ traditional Mexican textiles and integrating them into her contemporary creations.
Carmen Rion
Date: 9am-5:45pm, 31 August – 25 September, 2015.
Venue: The Fashion Gallery, Polytechnic University, 11 Yuk Choi Rd, Hung Hom.
Tickets: Free

Food
Enjoy millenary dishes and 21st century Mexican haute cuisine as chef Jose Lazcarro prepares some of the most traditional dishes including: ceviche, shrimp agua chile, mole poblano, green pipian at Cafe Too and the Lobster Bar in the Island Shangri La. Chef Lazcarro worked with Alain Ducasse in Paris in 2009, then in the USA with Robert McCormick and is currently Executive Chef at Quinze in his hometown of Puebla.
Chef Jose Lazcarro
Date: 8-30 September 2015.
Venues: Lobster Bar and Grill, 6/F, Island Shangri-La; Cafe Too, 7/F, Island Shangri-La.

Art
Abstract artist Roberto Turnbull inaugurated his first solo exhibit of 26 artworks entitled Mexican Big Bang: Paintings by Roberto Turnbull at the HK Museum and Art Gallery, HK University earlier this month. Turnbull is a versatile artist comfortable in the realm of painting and sculpting; in the chaos of the flat abstraction, and in the order of three-dimensional geometry.
Mexican Big Bang
Roberto Turnbull
Date: 9 September – 29 November, 2015
Venue: Drake Gallery, HK Museum and Art Gallery, HK University
Tickets: Free

Film
Alamar (To the Sea, 2009), directed, written and produced, Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio, captures the unconditional love of a father for his son as they spend time together amid the stark beauty of unspoiled nature of the Banco Chinchorro coral reef before the son departs for Italy.

Alamar
Alamar (To the Sea, 2009), directed, written and produced, Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio, captures the unconditional love of a father for his young son as they spend time together living in a stilt house amid the stark beauty of unspoiled nature of the Chinchorro coral reef before the son departs for Italy.
Date: 7pm, 24 September, 2015
Venue: Global Lounge, G/F, Fong Shu Chuen Amenities Centre, HK University.
More info: +852-2511-3305 / jm@mexico.com.hk

Music
Ernesto Anaya is one of the most popular Mexican musicians of the last 30 years offers. His countryside roots combined with an operatic style create a very particular and original style of Mexican folkloric music. Anaya is a singer, composer, violinist, guitarist, pianist, and producer, as well as a jaranero or jarana player. The Jarana is a guitar-shaped instrument from the southern region of the state of Veracruz, Mexico.
Ernesto Anaya
Date: 27, 29 September
Venue: Orange Peel
Tickets: tbc

Septiembre Mexicano
More info: facebook.com/consulmexhk

Source: Consulate General of Mexico in Hong Kong

Panda by Sadhu-X

#Occupy: an expression of global conscience is an exhibition at the City Museum Kathmandu that seeks to acknowledge the art and creativity that is inspired by the spirit behind occupy.

An expression for social justice that grows into a social movement, largely with the use of social media: this is what has defined a generation’s efforts to stand up for what they believe is right, it is what has inspired thoughtful and provocative art and literature, and it is what has helped destroy the notion of staying silent, and being ignored when speaking up. If “we” see something, we say something. If “we” feel something, we do something. If those in position of delivering social justice turn a deaf ear, “we occupy.”

#Occupy resonates and is an ode to a generation looking for itself, and eager to “do something.” It is a generation occupied with liking, double tapping ♥, showing up, being seen, obsessing about everything, obsessing about self, a generation occupied with wanting to do something, to mean something.

Among the many exhibits is Panda by Sadhu-X one of two pieces commissioned by Kashish Das Shrestha the curator of “#Occupy: an expression of global conscience” who says this about Panda.

“When the International New York Times published an image by Vincent Yu (Associated Press) of Hong Kong police dragging a protestor away, I spoke with Aditya Aryal (Sadhu-X) on using that image to make a larger point about accountable systems. I also wondered if we could play with the dynamics of Banksy’s iconic protestor with flowers. So I urged Aditya to replace the protestor from Vincent Yu’s photo with something else, as Banksy replaced a Molotov cocktail with flowers. After a day, Aditya proposed a teddy bear. We eventually settled on a Panda.

In early December 2014, as the #OccupyHongKong protest was in its last throes, China extended its ‘Panda Diplomacy’ to Israel, offering to loan its zoo in Haifa two pandas. China has often used pandas as a way to extend its diplomatic relations with the receiving country. However, China’s relationship with the global ecology and wildlife is far from being diplomatic.

In November 2014, China’s top leaders were implicated in a massive illegal haul of ivory using the President’s jet. The news was based on the report ‘Vanishing Point: Criminality, Corruption and the Devastation of Tanzania’s Elephants’ published by Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). In it, China is repeatedly declared the global leader in enabling illegal wildlife trade. In July, EIA also reported on how China’s illegal timber trade is the leading cause for loss of forest in Mozambique. And days after the Panda diplomacy made news, EIA also reported how captive-bred tiger trade in China is posing an “enforcement nightmare” and “stimulates illegal trade.”

Political unaccountability has many serious repercussions for a society, and a global ecological crisis is as serious as any. In this piece, we have tried to express both these issues, while paying homage to an iconic street art.”

www.thecitymuseum.org/occupy

Miso Zo – The Spirit of the Gadfly

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Fresh from a series of large scale paintings about the Umbrella Movement, artist Miso Zo’s latest project is a mixed media installation entitled The Spirit of the Gadfly.
Take a walk down to Umbrella Square to have a look.

http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2014/Umbrella-Movement-Miso-Zo/45916996_7t2NVR#!i=3736658405&k=2L8sXqw

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http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2014/Umbrella-Movement-Miso-Zo/45916996_7t2NVR#!i=3736657800&k=VqDQMnK

Umbrella Movement: Miso Zo

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http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2014/Umbrella-Movement-Miso-Zo/45916996_7t2NVR#!i=3710640890&k=8K2hPc8

Towards the Wanchai end of Umbrella Square, artist Miso Zo has for the last few weeks been painting a series of large scale artworks in acrylic and oil. The images of the Umbrella protests are striking – walk down and take a look or have a chat with Miso.
Click on a photo to see more images

http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2014/Umbrella-Movement-Miso-Zo/45916996_7t2NVR#!i=3710598809&k=GVf9Z4Q

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Waking Eye: Searlette Lau and Minnie Law

Across the three Umbrella Movement zones, Hongkongers have been using all sorts of means to express themselves and their frustrations with a government that has lost touch with their needs and stifled hope. Searlette Lau and Minnie Law are two City University students who put the finishing touches to their art installation on the walls of Legco yesterday.

Inspired by their professors description of art in other protests zones around the world and a global project called Insideout which transforms messages of personal identity into works of art – the two students wandered amongst the protestors picking out 100 who were asked to cover their eyes. The resulting images were blown up and pasted together to create the installation.

www.insideoutproject.net

Umbrella Movement: Pepper Spray

Art installation in Causeway Bay

Photo: unknown, Passion Times

Sandro Botticelli’s Venus @ University Museum and Art Gallery – 18 October – 15 December, 2013

Art and it’s enjoyment is always personal, so unlike many publications and art critics who’ll ram their likes and preferences down your throat until you suffocate in agreement or face snide comments on your taste, at bc we suggest you go take a look and like what you like and enjoy it. In that vein it’s worth taking a wander over to the University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG) of the University of Hong Kong sometime before the 15th December to take a look at Sandro Botticelli’s (1445–1510) Venus in person.

An iconic image of the high artistic achievement of the Renaissance (14th–16th centuries) Botticelli produced a number of unique Venus paintings, the carefully executed tempera painting on wood relates to ancient classical sculpture and the tradition of depicting the goddess Venus as a heroine, symbolising love, beauty, fertility and prosperity in Greco-Roman mythology.

A rebirth of Antiquity, the Italian High Renaissance is significant for the sophisticated stylistic and technical advances in science and art, and the methodical study of nature and the human body. Botticelli’s painting, a depiction of the nude, exemplifies these values in which the verisimilitude and beauty of the human condition as an ideal form is achieved by the finest artists in early modern Europe.

There are a series of lectures and talks to complement the exhibition

Sandro Botticelli’s Venus – An Italian High Renaissance Masterpiece
When: 18 October – 15 December, 2013
Where: University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG) of the University of Hong Kong
Time: 9:30am to 6pm, Monday to Saturday; 1 pm to 6pm on Sunday
How Much: Free
Details: Call 2241 5500 or http://www.hkumag.hku.hk/main.html

Extras:
Lectures:
7pm, 18 October – Sandro Botticelli’s Venus and the Italian Renaissance
Speaker: Dr. Opher Mansour, Fung Ping Shan Gallery, Fung Ping Shan Building, UMAG

2:30pm, 23 November – Botticelli and the Bonfire of the Vanities
Speaker: Dr. Kathryn Blair Moore – Fung Ping Shan Gallery, Fung Ping Shan Building, UMAG

Workshops:
1 December – Introduction to ‘Western’ painting -specifically oil techniques

(content from UMAG was used in the production of this article)