Gallery review #3

Date: 16th March 2013

Venue: JCCAC 30 Pak Tin Street, Shek Kip Mei, Hong Kong

Event Title: Handicraft Fair

Handicraft Fair aims to provide a platform for hand-crafters to exchange and sell their products, and also to share their experience to the general public. Hence, to let more people enter the world of art, and to shorten the distance between art and daily life. Handicraft Fair values the design and materials. Furthermore, they also put so much effort to ensure the quality, originality, and attractiveness towards consumers.

I saw the advertisement of this fair and decided to pay there a visit with my friend after lesson. When I stepped into the fair, the crowd shocked me. I had never expected there would be so many people know about this event. I could hardly walk comfortably with my friends. However, the products displayed were so delicate with many details. We talked to many hand-crafters about their backgrounds and the intention to have their own brand and products. Most of them are university students or fresh graduates who have not found a stable job. They spend their leisure time to make the handicrafts. Not only they can earn money by selling the items, but also to enjoy the work as that is what they love. Some of them even plan to expand their business by opening a shop in the future. I am so glad that I have visited the fair. I would like the Hong Kong government runs more fair like the one JCCAC held.


Hong Kong Really Really Free Market (HKRRFM) is organised by the Hong Kong Design Community was an emphasised activity in the Handicraft Fair. It aims to build a community based on sharing resources or unneeded items, caring for one another and improving the collective lives of all by forming a temporary market and offering both goods and services based on an alternative gift economy. I found this very interesting as people put down many fascinating gift, for examples slippers, t-shirts, and dolls. People gathered around this little wood and exchanged goods. I picked up a little dedicated stickers and put down a package of chocolate, hoped that I can contribute a little to the need.

This picture is called "New Born Artists", which is inspired by and created in JCCAC. The artist specifically includes friends and other artists from the art circle as "main characters" of the artwork and asked them to send him their baby photos in the years the artist spent in JCCAC. Now he is still collecting these images from people he knows there and his database is still increasing! This artwork aims to explore the similarity between art and children: artists need a every-young mind and soul in the process of creation. With their pure and sincere care to surroundings this expressed the worldview of integration in truth, kindness and beauty.

This art piece is very eye-catching as each of the baby face is different. JCCAC is a platform for young artists to show their talents to the public. This idea is new and creative.

Somewhere/ Nowhere (photographic)

I went into this small gallery and saw a series of unusual photos. The title of this exhibition is “Somewhere/ Nowhere”, which caught my sight immediately. There are no people in the photographs.

Many people love travelling and they usually take photos of the landmarks of that specific places/ country. However, this photographer, Veron, is different from the rest of us. Yet, even people may not shoot themselves, the photos are more or less the same as the only thing different is the people in front of the landmark. This series of photos were shot with both film and digital in the places where Veron has gone in the past ten years. The photos do not show any hints of their locations.

The theme of this exhibition is so strange. The photos show a person, or two old men, or even only a tree. Sometimes I did not even know what I was looking at. I went deep down to this topic and I found out that the way of appreciating these photos was not about the place where the photo was shot, it was all about the way of seeing. That is the reason why the topic is called “Somewhere/ Nowhere”. The photos were shot in “Somewhere” yet participants can simply treat it as “Nowhere”.