Ocula Report 58th Venice Biennale: May You Live In Interesting Times 24 May 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula The 58th Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times (11 May–24 November 2019), certainly benefitted from low expectations, given the lacklustre curatorial of the previous edition, when different segments of the show were conceptually framed with titles like 'Pavilion of Joys and Fears' and 'Pavilion of Colours'. Add to this the...
Ocula Conversation Zheng Bo Hong Kong-based artist Zheng Bo's social, ecological, and community-engaged art practice has, in recent years, focused on moving beyond a human-centred perspective to an all-inclusive, multi-species approach. He takes up marginalised plants and communities of people as subjects in his large-scale interventions, which reintroduce wildness into...
Ocula Report Auckland Art Fair 2019: Conversations Extended 24 May 2019 : Sherry Paik for Ocula The weather was clement for the annual Auckland Art Fair (2–5 May 2019), which was again at The Cloud on Queens Wharf. This year's edition was a get-together of 41 galleries, mostly from around Auckland and across New Zealand, with 5 spaces hailing from Sydney and the rest from Cook Islands (Bergman Gallery), Hobart (Michael Bugelli Gallery),...
Ocula Report The Lowdown: shows to see during Hong Kong Art Week 23 March 2018 Once again, the Hong Kong art machine is gearing up for Art Basel in Hong Kong (29–31 March 2018), now in its sixth edition. With surrounding art fairs like Art Central (27 March–1 April) opening alongside the main event, and an ever-expanding list of exhibitions and happenings taking place, here is a selection of things to see during the...
Ocula Conversation Yoshitomo Nara Artist, Japan In Hong Kong, during April, to receive one of three prestigious Asia Arts Game Changer awards from the Asia Society, Yoshitomo Nara spoke to Ocula about his work, and how he finds the solitude he needs to create, by living in the small and distant city of Aomori, in northern Japan.Born in 1959, Nara studied at the Aichi Prefectural...
Ocula Conversation Shahzia Sikander Artist, Pakistan and New York From being the first in a pioneering group of artists who breathed new life into the ossified tradition of Mughal-era miniature painting, Shahzia Sikander has left a trail in gouache across genres and cultures, gathering an astonishing number of accolades along the way. Still smiling from what looked to be an exhilarating exhibit of her...
Ocula Report If We Build Them, Will You Come? 6 Feb 2015 : Sophia McKinnon for Ocula In 2014, I spent twenty days traveling across central and southern China exploring a cross section of roughly twenty of China’s thousands of new museums. This anomolous ‘museum boom’ has spawned much speculation over the driving factors and futures of this new generation of institutions. It has also catalysed discussion on how...
Ocula Conversation Xu Bing Artist, China Xu Bing is a Chinese-born artist, who was resident in the United States for over ten years, but now lives in Beijing, where he serves as the president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He is most well known for printmaking and installation pieces, as well as the use of text to investigate how language and its presentation impacts our...
Ocula Conversation S. Alice Mong Executive Director, Asia Society, Hong Kong S. Alice Mong became the Executive Director of Asia Society Hong Kong Center in 2012. Prior to joining the Asia Society, Ms Mong worked for almost a decade in New York, where as Director of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) she was responsible for transforming MOCA from a New York Chinatown institution to a leading national museum. Ms Mong...
