Looking at Zheng Bo’s pencil-on-paper sketches of bamboo thickets at British Council Hong Kong’s (BCHK’s) Bookshop Gallery, one might be forgiven for wondering how they are related to artworks by the legendary British sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986), to whom the exhibition is dedicated. Moore is known for creating monumental sculptures that take the edge off the protrusions and crevices of the human figure, turning them into well-rounded curvilinear forms, mostly with gaping holes. Compared with fellow exhibition participant Liao Wen’s sculpture of interlocked giant needles — an obvious homage to Moore’s obsession with volume, negative spaces and playful manipulation of the viewer’s perspective — Zheng’s sketches invoke a world of exquisite quietude, one in which it is possible to commune with nature.
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Curator Jims Lam explains that Zheng’s connection to Moore is “more conceptual than stylistic”. Last year, Zheng created a bamboo garden in Somerset House in London, as part of his conceptual art project, Bamboo as Method. His bamboo drawings are sketches from that show, made on a daily basis for its entire duration — a practice that resonates with Moore’s routine sketching of bones, pebbles and twigs accumulated in his Hertfordshire studio. Many of Moore’s signature sculptures — different iterations of the reclining nude, for example — began their lives as a drawing of a random object in which the artist saw more than what meets the non-artistic eye.
Similarly, the three artworks by Wilson Shieh — in which the artist reimagines iconic Hong Kong structures such as the HSBC headquarters, the Bank of China Tower and Two IFC as female kung fu warriors, mixing elements from tradition, mythology and urban design — can appear light-years away from Moore’s ethos. Lam points out that “Shieh’s work shares Moore’s interest in the body as a vessel for cultural and symbolic weight,” adding that like Moore, both Shieh and Zheng “draw inspiration from their immediate environments”.
“In both cases, I wanted to show how Moore’s concerns with form, identity, and presence continue to resonate with contemporary practices.”
Moore’s Visions. More Revisions. is the inaugural exhibition of BCHK’s Bookshop Gallery, which opened last week. The Hong Kong outpost of the organization responsible for showcasing British culture across the world plans to share the more than 90 works — by artists who are British or have a British connection — in its collection with the public in the form of curated experiences. Moore, being a British icon and familiar to the local audience through a number of solo exhibitions at the Hong Kong Museum of Art since 1964 — and also seeing that two of his representative sculptures, Oval with Points and Double Oval, are on permanent display in Central — was a natural first choice for Bookshop Gallery’s opening show.
Moore’s lithographs at the BCHK exhibition help shed light on the artist’s process. The reclining figure studies done on approximately A4-size paper, for example, are practice sketches for Moore’s archetypal gigantic sculptures realized over several iterations in bronze, stone and wood. Lam says the sketches “echo the emotional and formal qualities of Moore’s sculptures — there is a shared sense of compression, rhythm, and symbolic weight,” hastening to add that their presence in the exhibition is meant to offer visitors “a different entry point into Moore’s practice — one that shifts from the monumental to the personal”.
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“They reveal his sensitivity to movement, repetition, and emotional nuance, offering a more nuanced reading of his practice — one that encourages reflection rather than explanation.”
If you go
Moore’s Visions. More Revisions
Dates: Through Oct 5
Venue: Bookshop Gallery, British Council Hong Kong, 3 Supreme Court Road, Admiralty
www.britishcouncil.hk
Contact the writer at basu@chinadailyhk.com
