Leung Mei-ping
So Yan-kei
Leung Chin-fung
Law Man-lok
Janina Green
Patrick Pound
Raafat Ishak
Lau Kin-wah
Brett Jones
OCEM involves three Australian and four Hong Kong artists in a cross-cultural dialogue
Organisation for Cultural Exchange and Mishap (OCEM) comes out of an ongoing
relationship between two artist-run spaces: West Space in Melbourne and
Para/Site Art Space in Hong Kong. Launched by Jaspar K.W. Lau (Hong Kong) and
Brett Jones (Australia), the exhibition will be held in Hong Kong and Melbourne (4.07.2003 - 26.07.2003) respectively.
Based on the concept of a cultural exchange organisation, OCEM is not an
Organisation in the sense of having an administrative infrastructure or a
delineated institutional voice, but rather is a fluid composite of practice as
enacted by artwork, documents and dialogue developed over an immeasurable length
of time.
OCEM is interested in organisation, and not organization as institution. OCEM
understands the primacy of artist-initiated activity. The members of
Organisation at any point in time will be the organisation. This project has no
aims beyond allowing artists to develop their own aims and objectives for
Organisation. Organisation recognizes that these aims and objectives are
developed via a process of organisation by member artists, and are therefore
also subject to change and negation by member artists. The aims and objectives
of Organisation are subservient to, and a direct result of imagining and
enacting scenarios to do with organisation. It understands practice as a series
of layered negotiations with social and cultural formations constituted through
a radical critique of these constructs through play and subversion.
OCEM involves three Australian and four Hong Kong artists in a cross-cultural
dialogue that attempts to exercise the scenario and enactment of Organization
cultural exchange and mishap, reframe some of the issues surrounding
trans/cultural practices, epitomised in the booming international exhibition
circuit, international biennales and artist residency programs. In this sense it
aims to consider why cultural exchange projects are regarded as important and
how they affect and engage with participants in different cultural contexts.
Hong Kong Participants:
LEUNG Mei-ping
SO Yan-kei
LEUNG Chin-fung
LAW Man-lok
LAU Kin-wah (Curator)
Australian Participants:
Janina Green
Patrick Pound
Raafat Ishak
Brett Jones (Curator)
Para/Site Art Space
G/F, 2 Po Yan St, Sheung Wan, HK (near 224 Hollywood Rd)
Tel: (852) 2517-4620