Ora-Ora Live — Episode 9: Interview with Jeff Leung

Henri: While preparing for the interview, I talked to you about my interest in your background. I was curious why you came to be so interested in curation. You said that you are not only a curator, you are also a researcher. You have a lot of ongoing passion projects. Let’s talk about that. Firstly, let’s talk about your research on artist-led art spaces. You began your career in Para Site. It was founded by different local artists. I would like to hear your thoughts about this.

Jeff: Creators’ interests usually stem from their personal experience. As I said earlier, after I graduated, I began working at Para Site Art Space where I planned and executed exhibitions. Back then, we called these art spaces that are single-handedly managed by the artists themselves “artist-run art spaces”. Nowadays, they are called “self-managed organisations”. Having had experience running those kinds of exhibitions, I developed an interest in these art spaces.

While studying art, I gained knowledge about Hong Kong’s art history. During the mid 1980s and 1990s, some artists found that traditional art spaces did not sufficiently allow them to carry out their own artistic intentions. They needed art spaces that were evolvable. White Cube-style exhibition venues are not enough for them. They tried to find other art venues. Organisations also rented spaces for their own exhibitions. Around 1996, the Hong Kong Arts Development Council provided funding to artists which allowed them to experiment with other art venues. Para Site was formed in 1996 and I joined the Para Site team in 2001. I gained knowledge about art spaces while working there and also explored other spaces during my spare time.

Henri: In 2003, you were involved in preparing for the Hong Kong Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. What did you do?

Jeff: The Hong Kong Arts Development Council was responsible for organising and managing the team. They issued public invitations where individuals, art organisations, and artists could submit their own proposals. In 2003, Para Site submitted the proposal and succeeded. I was therefore participating in the project as part of the Para Site’s artistic team. Other than brainstorming ideas, I was also responsible for the operations of the project and helped in realising and visualising the team’s ideas.

Henri: I noticed that you enjoyed going to exhibitions and doing research. Is there anything you could share with us about this?

Jeff: The Chinese University of Hong Kong is famous for its student-led exhibitions within the Arts Faculty. As CUHK art students, we were exposed to the idea of exhibitions at an early age. While we were exposed to it, I was still unfamiliar with the concept and decided to take the initiative to learn more about it on my own.

While I was still a student, I enjoyed looking at other students’ exhibitions. After I graduated, I kept visiting exhibitions in universities. Hong Kong has nine universities that offer courses relating to art and design. What I observed is that the style of the graduates’ works very much correspond with the teaching methods of their respective schools. For example, if students graduated from City University’s Creative Multimedia department, you would know their works would have something to do with multi-media or digital media. If you graduated from Hong Kong Art School or Chinese University’s Fine Arts department, your work tends to be more classical and traditional. Learning environments have a lot to do with one’s artistic and stylistic development.

As time goes by, the mode of graduate exhibitions have evolved. The students themselves wanted their exhibitions to be unique and stand out from the past years. There are a lot of structural changes. There are some minor changes that most people don’t even notice. After 2000, there was a trend where students put their name cards next to their own exhibitions. We rarely see that nowadays. There are a lot of reasons to this, which I won’t delve into for now. In the last 5–7 years, the art industry has flourished. Art galleries have provided support to these student graduate exhibitions by sponsoring awards. At the same time, student artists wanted more variety and would make their own awards.

Jeff: Choosing artists for an exhibition is similar to having a meal. A balanced diet is important. Famous artists make marketing easier, young artists provide a breath of fresh air, experienced artists guarantee quality. Just like meals with fish, vegetables and meat, you need variety. You can change the proportions based on the situation which could potentially lead to great results.

Henri: What advice can you give to arts students?

Jeff: Even before the pandemic, the local art scene was undergoing a paradigm shift. For example, as I mentioned earlier, art spaces have slowly evolved from being exhibition space-oriented to become project space-oriented within the last 10 years. Art spaces no longer only consider financial gain and operation costs. They became more open to co-work spaces where different kinds of exhibitions can be incorporated there. Given that land rent is high in Hong Kong, it should be noted that that a change of environment is a given every 3 to 5 years.

Henri: There is no permanence. There is more flexibility.

Jeff: There is basically no sense of permanence. As investment bankers like to say, you have to have exit plans, where you have to prepare to leave and find new models anytime. A clear example will small spaces like 100ft PARK. They have exit plans and are not here for the long-run. This is one paradigm shift. Another change I noticed in the art scene, which is prompted by the pandemic, is that the new generation’s artists need to be able to use two different channels to promote their work. This is a very typical Hong Kong mindset. Artists now have two different ways of thinking — commercial sense and artistic vision. They are also skilled in communicating using both creative and presentational language, and in the ability to talk to an audience.

The world has become more and more technologically advanced. I noticed that there is a lot of fragmentation between communities. Upon graduation, students can work for art galleries on fine art projects, they can also work on community art projects. Both works involve aesthetics, but the communities involved are different. As a result, you need to utilise different languages in order to present and communicate with different communities. The creative industry needs to have a start-up mindset. If your idea is innovative and difficult for people to understand, you have to find the right channel and language to present your ideas and to find suitable collaborators. I think that there will be surge of smaller-scale co-working and collaborating work in the coming years among the younger generation of artists. This kind of collaboration has been more common among the creative media circle previously, but I feel like it will find its way to art galleries and community art projects. There will be a start-up element to it. The new creative innovation development will be a mix of commerce and culture.