Performance x 4A 2019

HONG KONG. 26 – 31 MARCH 2019.

Venue: Art Central Hong Kong, Central Harbourfront Event Space, 9 Lung Wo Road, Central, Hong Kong.

Artists: Bettina Fung, Brian Fuata, Minja Gu and Ko Siu Lan.

Building upon its critically acclaimed performance programme, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (4A) returns to Hong Kong’s Art Central for a fourth year with Performance x 4A: a series of interactive live works examining ideas of time and duration that question the futility and fruits of human endeavour. Featuring over 100 leading international galleries in 2019, the 2018 edition of Art Central had its highest ever attendance, welcoming over 39,000 international collectors, curators and art enthusiasts.

In partnership with Art Central, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art will continue to push the boundaries of durational performance art in 2019 by commissioning four artists from the Asia Pacific who will transform the fair experience. Bettina Fung’s | 馮允珊 (Hong Kong/United Kingdom) I am tired with you uses the traditions of printmaking to create a collective mind-map of the audience’s reflections on fatigue, labour relations and possibilities of ‘non doing’. Brian Fuata’s (Australia/Samoa) Care disfigurements (other men’s flowers) crosses emotional, artistic and entertainment spectrums and will traverse the fair from booth to booth with a combination of performance exercises, deadpan humour, bed sheets and mineral water. Minja Gu’s (Korea) The Authentic Quality: HK will set up a restaurant-cum-exhibition-cum-relational-aesthetics project in a fair booth, prompting audiences to re-evaluate cycles of consumerism through the ubiquitous three-minute noodle packet and Siu Lan Ko’s (Hong Kong/Canada) New Territories Old Territories will ask audiences to consider their ideas of Hong Kong now and into the future through interactive sculpture works examining ideas of space, geography, and nationhood.

Art Central will showcase over 100 leading galleries alongside a dynamic program of ambitious installations, engaging panel discussions and experimental film. As Art Central’s exclusive performance partner, the performance works presented by 4A seek the public’s participation with site-specific movement, activity and actions that encourage critical engagement.

About the artists:

Bettina Fung | 馮允珊 is best known for her performative drawing practice that invites collaboration. Drawn to the liminal space between nothing and existence that is potent with possibilities, Fung is interested in sharing process and allowing works to unfold over time before an audience. Fung’s key exhibition history includes works at Surface Gallery, Nottingham, UK, Spacex, Exeter, UK, Musee d’Art, Toulon, France and the One Billion Rising UK Art Festival.

Brian Fuata works in performance through live and mediated forms. He employs various modes of presentation within the framework of structured-improvisation. In Fuata’s works, the act of viewing is a reciprocating action between artist and audience and audience with each other. Fuata employs the ‘blank sheet’ as a recurring motif in his work, which transforms with different contexts into emails, paper, Word.Doc, google.doc, SMS text, concrete, film, and in the case of his 20-minute ghost performances, a white bedsheet. Major solo works include Placeholder, Enjoy Gallery, Christchurch (2016); All titles, Performa Biennial, New York (2015); Untitled (ghost machinery refit/letting go of the sheet), Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015); and nationally at the Close to the knives (one to five) email performances, Tarrawarra Biennale, Tarrawarra (2016); FIFO Ghost, Liquid Architecture at the National Gallery Victoria, Melbourne (2015); Apparitional Charlatan… Carriageworks (2016); Privilege (performance), Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2015); Points of Departure: one to three, email performance, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2014) He is one half of Wrong Solo a performace collaboration with artist Agatha Gothe-Snape since 2009.

Minja Gu’s performance works explore the cyclical forces of consumerism in society with durational pieces that turn everyday occurrences into ceremonies and rituals. Gu’s key recent exhibition history includes works in SPACE CROFT, Seoul, Arko Art Center, Seoul, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, and The Taipei Biennale, Taipei. She received the award of excellence in the Songeun Art Award in 2010 and in 2018 was one of the participants for the Korea Artist Prize.

Ko Siu Lan lives between Hong Kong and Toronto, and creates text based installations and durational performances that examine ideas and constructs of space, geography and identities. Ko’s art installations and performances have been shown internationally in Beijing, Brussels, Bangkok, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, London, New York, Paris, Sao Paulo, Stockholm, Singapore, Tel Aviv, and Warsaw.

Documentation: