island6 sets out to take Hong Kong by storm!

Dates: From June 29th to August 29th 2012

Vernissage: June 29th, from 7 to 10 pm

Curation: Loo Ching Ling 吕晶琳, Jack Mur, Katharina Droste

Research: Jean Le Guyader, Nicolas Grefenstette, Dave Ahern, Alexia Kalteis, Lelia Pollett

Organization: island6 (Hong Kong)

Art Direction: Thomas Charvériat

Coordination: Yeung Sin Ching 杨倩菁, Exir Kamalabadi

Venue: island6 Hong Kong, No. 1 New Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong SAR

Artists: The Liu Dao 六岛 Art Collective

World dominance begins with a single step. The electronic art collective island6 is taking a southwards-leap into the fashion and finance hub of Asia – the tiny, dynamic, bustling, East-meets-West city of Hong Kong. Located in the Sheung Wan Arts District in north-west Hong Kong Island, island6 Hong Kong finds itself very well situated in an area steeped in local history and culture, as evidenced by the birds’ nest and herbal tea shops, traditional bakeries, a thriving local market and Chinese furniture and porcelain stores.

However, certain sections like the famous Hollywood Road have been increasingly finding a new identity with the infusion of small couture boutiques and local and international contemporary art galleries. island6 Hong Kong will therefore find illustrious neighbours in Para/Site Art Space, Schoeni Gallery, Sundaram Tagore, Tang Contemporary, Cat Street Gallery, Input/ Output, Studio Rouge and many more.

island6 Hong Kong will follow in the footsteps of her big sister in  Shanghai in showing cutting-edge new media art that explores contemporary issues in Asia through multimedia,  interactive artworks. In its signature style of fusing the traditional with the modern, the artworks on display will involve the use of  LED,  interactive components,  photography, video,  neon,  sculpture and post-contemporary  painting imagery.

Babylonian Heights, Liu Dao 2012

Big Fine, Liu Dao 2012

Color Me In, Liu Dao 2012

Mouthful of Yellow, Liu Dao 2012

The Shanghai-based art collective Liu Dao opens its inaugural show “Dripping with Aurum” at  island6′s second space on No. 1 New Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong. A luxe, lush celebration of the city’s glorious success, the gold-themed show is a tribute to element no. 79 on the periodic table, which we are all too familiar with. We lust after gold, bedeck our wrists and necks with it, coat it on plates, tables, picture frames and even love it whole. We write songs, sing arias, spin fables and make proverbs about it. In some dizzily decadent moments we even eat it in desserts.

Our passionate love affair with all things aurum is well-grounded. Gold is the most malleable of all metals. Its brilliant yellow stands in contrast to the gray and white of most other metals, and unlike its less exciting cousins, it maintains a proud, lustrous shine without oxidising in air and water.

In many ways, Hong Kong is the perfect epitome of the city of gold. The Fragrant Harbour’s strategic location has attracted generations of beady-eyed opportunists, from the salt miners of the Han and Tang Dynasty, to the colonial-era entrepot traders and the East India Company’s opium dealing. Even today, as Asia’s fashion and financial hub, Hong Kong still gleams as an El Dorado that attracts punters like the Californian gold mines in the 19th century.

Liu Dao comes across the straits from Shanghai to bask in the glow of the city’s rags-to-riches success. In celebration of this, Liu Dao opens in Hong Kong with a multi-coloured electronic art show rejoicing in all things that twinkle, shimmer, sparkle and dazzle us with their radiance. The familiar pouting, lipsticked LED sirens beckon behind blinking, illuminated towers scattered around orphaned antique furniture that the art collective has breathed new digital life into. Fantastical Oriental papercutting worlds light up with gentle video-animated figures that give viewers a voyeuristic glimpse into their strange quirky lives. In our paean to the most precious metal, Liu Dao has set up a show that is at once exotic, erotic and exhilarating.

Who says that not all that glitters is gold?