24/2/2004
Para/Site: Open Work
Centre A, Vancouver
The exhibition offers a look at some of Para/Site's projects from the past eight years that have made this artist collective a noteworthy case in the history of artist-run spaces. It takes place in the context of an important international symposium, InFest: International Artist Run Culture. The exhibition Para/Site: Open Work offers a look at some of Para/Site's projects from the past eight years that have made this artist collective a noteworthy case in the history of artist-run spaces. It takes place in the context of an important international symposium, InFest: International Artist Run Culture. Leung Chi Wo, Tim Li Man Wai and Sara Wong Chi Hang.
Participating artists: LEUNG Chi Wo, Tim LI Man Wai and Sara WONG Chi Hang
Co-curated by David Ho Yeung CHAN (Para/Site) and Alice Ming Wai JIM (Centre A)
Presented in conjunction with a major symposium InFest: International Artist
Run Culture http://www.paarc.ca/infest/
Founded by a group of artists in 1996, Para/Site is the first contemporary art
space in Hong Kong devoted to installation art.
The exhibition Para/Site: Open Work offers a look at some of Para/Site's
projects from the past eight years that have made this artist collective a
noteworthy case in the history of artist-run spaces. It takes place in the
context of an important international symposium, InFest: International Artist
Run Culture
Para/Site: Open Work presents an opportunity to assess the identity of
Para/Site, not so much as a coherent entity, but rather as a loose set of
'open book' strategies that have always been mindful of the position of the
'curator-artist', as well as the role the quotidian plays in the work of
artists.
Over the past few years, with the increased interest in contemporary Asian art,
Para/Site has been invited as a collective to participate in different
international exhibitions, such as the Venice and Gwangju biennales. This
development has led them to increasingly address the challenging question of how
to translate the local interests of the group in an international context.
The exhibition at Centre A is presented as an open platform in that allows
visitors to participate actively in interpreting Para/Sites history. Accessible
archival documents in the form of photographs, video and a variety of texts are
interspersed with works of installation art that include a coffee shop, an
architectural folly, and a walk to the sea.
Purposely resisting the 'frame', this mode of display negates the
conventional notion that meaning is communicated in an unbroken line from the
artist through the work of art to the viewer. Instead Para/Site: Open Work seeks
to embrace a variety of readings, inviting the audience's own interpretive
strategies and experiences to create the final meaning of the art space's
social commitment. It is precisely through this critical engagement that
Para/Site itself becomes an open work of art.
Para/Site Art Space is a non-profit art space run by independent artists with
the aim of promoting the development of contemporary visual art in Hong Kong.
Funded by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) and private donations,
it seeks to establish and maintain a platform for artists and other art
practitioners to realize their vision in relation to their immediate and
extended communities through the production of artistic works, exhibitions and
curatorial projects as well as through dialogue, critical analysis,
publications, research, education and cultural exchange.
Para/Site: Open Work is presented with the support of the Home Affairs Bureau
(Arts Development Fund) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
Government. Centre A also wishes to acknowledge the support of its individual
donors, private foundations and government funding agencies, including the
Canada Council for the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and City of
Vancouver Office of Cultural Affairs.
Opening: Wednesday, February 25, 6-8pm
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm
Centre A - The Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
849 Homer Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 2W2
T 604.683.8326