Asia Art Archive’s 2018 Fundraiser Seeks to Support Education and Research

This year, Asia Art Archive (AAA)’s fundraiser will offer 75 works of art up for auction, generously donated by artists, collectors and galleries around the world. This Annual Fundraiser continues to be an essential source of funding that supports the independent non-profit in building collections on the history of contemporary art in Asia. Furthermore, it seeks to keep materials free and accessible for research and education. This Annual Fundraiser is the most important source of support for AAA, raising more than half of the organisation’s operating target. The artworks featured in this article will be amongst those up for auction in a week’s time, including works by Louise Bourgeois, Luis Chan, Ho Sin Tung, Huang Rui, Vishwa Shroff, Samson Young and more.

The year of 2018 sees AAA launching new collections that highlight both individuals and initiatives that are significant to recent art history in Asia. They include the Salima Hashmi Archive, Out of Context Research Project, Betsy Damon Archive, Li Xianting Archive, and Lee Wen Archive. Hosting a major conference with the University of Hong Kong earlier this year, AAA drew on the importance of art writing and periodicals for the region, along with public commitment, addressing gender disparities in their collection through a series of programmes dedicated to women in art history. 

This year’s sponsors include Aesop, Christie’s Hong Kong, Helutrans Artmove, Chubb, Willis Towers Watson, Altaya Wines, and Jebsen.

Media sponsors include ArtAsiaPacific, The Artling, CoBo Social, Design Anthology, Hong Kong Tatler and Ocula.

To bid online from 9 October to 3rd November, click here. 
 

Louise Bourgeois

Alluding to the famous fluted sponge cakes that transport the narrator back in time in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, Madeleine draws on a highly personal visual language to express themes around the unconscious, sexual desire, and the body. Printmaking was an important part of Bourgeois’s practice–her belief was that the entire history of the creative process could be found in it–and this print is part of the works produced with the small press in her own home.

 

Luis Chan

With an artistic career that has spanned the majority of the twentieth century, the legendary Luis Chan is considered the pioneer of Hong Kong modern art, described by John Clark as a “genius.” A donation from the Red Rock collection, Untitled is a unique work from Chan’s 1964–1971 period, during which he began to transition from realistic watercolour landscapes to luminous, fantastical works. The painting contains a psychedelic parrot, anticipating the strange fish and birds that would become a trademark of his later work. Featuring a painting technique that begins with smears of colour on the paper surface, Chan’s paintings express a spiritual space that depicts the richness of inner lives.

 

Syaiful Aulia Garibaldi

Emerging Indonesian artist Syaiful Aulia Garibaldi is fascinated by bacteria and fungi: Often associated with decay, they are also necessary for new life and are an integral part of the natural cycle. In Porculen Lirza, Garibaldi’s intricate, mosaic-like configurations allude to fungal ecosystems or living colonies of microorganisms that have a structure and language that run parallel to our own, exposing a network that is quietly and powerfully at work.

 

Huang Rui

Huang Rui co-founded the Stars Art Group, a movement composed of contemporary Chinese avant-garde artists in the late 1970s to early 1980s that focused on free artistic expression. One of the works inspired by the Zen culture Huang encountered while living in Japan, Space (Zen)’s internal rhythm reveals a musicality that offers the titular space for meditation and transcendence, deconstructing spatial collectivism in order to arrive at a sense of individual liberty.
 

Yurie Nagashima

Award-winning artist Yurie Nagashima’s series Wildflowers – comprised of photographs of a field in Berkeley, California – stands as a formal challenge to the loss of Japanese well-being that resulted from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. Set within a silver-leaf frame specially chosen by the artist, Untitled’s unassuming flowers in a familiar environment capture a crucial moment for Nagashima, when with a sense of relief she began feeling that everything would be all right–and that she could inhale and exhale without worry.

 

Vishwa Shroff

Vishwa Shroff’s minimalist Barbican records a liminal yet specific moment in time through an architectural scenario. Shroff, who lives in both Japan and India, created Barbican as part of her Perspective series, which looks at the spatial and narrative possibilities of urban and domestic spaces. Shroff’s precision and manipulation of perspective hint at the uncertainty within an archaeology of space that implies not only what could happen but also what has already happened. The work was featured in Architectural Digest magazine.

 

Samson Young

Samson Young, who represented Hong Kong at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, is often regarded for his sound-related installations. In this recent work, Theme and Variations (old enough to run, old enough to fire a gun) provides an exciting new direction in his work highlighting a study in formalism. Featuring an excerpt from the highly critical manifesto and book New Formalism by Dana Gioia, Young’s work meditates on the challenges of formal structure, its potential for vitality, as well as fundamental cultural importance.

 

Together with Christie’s Hong Kong, a preview of the artworks lined up for auction will be on show to the public from 9 – 12 October, They will be available for bidding online at www.aaa2018auction.com from 9 October - 3 November.

Preview
9 – 12 October 2018

Reception
9 October
Christie’s Hong Kong
The James Christie Room
22/F Alexandra House
18 Chater Road, Central

For more information about Asia Art Archive, click here.