One tender greeting, “Hello, how are you?” brings warmth to Australia in winter through the equally warm neon lights. The Hong Kong group “Australia-Hong Kong Link” invited 12 artists to hold an art exhibition in Sydney with the theme “Hello, how are you?”
More than 150 people came on the opening day, June 17, as support for the event. Former Hong Kong legislator Ted Hui Chi-fung and New South Wales MP Dr. McDermott delivered speeches at the exhibition’s opening ceremony.
Exhibits include photographic works, sculptures, videos, installation art (experience art interactively), and other diverse methods, building cultural links to bring warm greetings to Hong Kong people who have emigrated overseas.
And by connecting the local community to share Hong Kong’s cultural characteristics with foreigners.
One of the curators, Pamela Leung, returned to Hong Kong in May this year. She specially ordered a neon sign to bring back to Australia, displaying in English “Hello” and in Chinese “How are you” in blue and red lights.
She said, “This neon work is the exhibition’s theme. In addition to saying hello to the diasporic Hong Kong people, I also want to say, ”Neon also emigrated!”
The colorful neon signboards, once the most representative cultural symbols on the streets of Hong Kong, are disappearing one after the other and are rarely seen in Hong Kong nowadays and have become a collective memory.
Leung also hopes that bringing the neon signs to Australia for display means that Hong Kong people who have emigrated overseas continue to shine, as do the neon lights.
Another new exhibit is an item of installation art “Return to the Pavement,” created by Leung herself, using a batch of dolls donated by the elderly. Visitors can also contribute to support the event and take the dolls home as a souvenir.
Leung continued to talk about the theme of this exhibition. It was inspired by an exhibition held in Sheffield, England, in January this year. “I have seen many new emigrants from Hong Kong to the UK recently, and I wanted to make a caring greeting to them, from which the theme of this exhibition was born.”
She added that Sydney is where most Hong Kong emigrants settle in Australia, so it is meaningful to choose Sydney as the site of this exhibition.
In this exhibition, she collaborated with another art curator, Rachael Kiang, for the first time, including 11 Hong Kong artists from 4 different cities in Australia and an artist from Taiwan.
Pamela Leung said that Hongkongers are a relative minority grouping in Australia. This is a good opportunity to let local people recognize the art and culture of Hong Kong, understand Hong Kong’s history, and demonstrate the spirit of solidarity and mutual support of Hong Kong people.
“Through this exhibition, audiences not only can increase their understanding of Hong Kong artists but also, by going through their works, be able to understand their different stories, feelings of diaspora immigrants, or homesickness. Hope to create some resonance and maybe achieve some healing effects!”
“Hello, how are you?” Cultural and Creative Art Exhibition, Sydney, Australia,
Date: June 16-July 2, 2023
Time: 11:00 am to 5:00 pm (open every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday)
Venue: Articulate Project Space, 497 Parramatta Road, Leichhardt NSW 2040, Sydney.
