A Secret Garden in Hong Kong

Visitors are given a key... to go where?

At 5pm I made my way up to the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre for an intriguing art installation that is headed by local artist Kingsley Ng. He always has interesting projects with lots of meaning and significance behind them and are usually executed well, which is why I was keen to check it out.

This latest one is called Secret Garden and it is loosely based on the book by Frances Hodgson Burnett and the wildly popular colouring book by Johanna Basford, and is site specific, as the building used to be the former Victoria Barracks for the families of British soldiers to live in.

The exterior of the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre

The building underwent renovations in the 1970s to become a government-run place for art classes, and the families that lived here were either moved to Tamar or left Hong Kong. So Secret Garden has a fictional story of three children who discovered a secret garden here and when they had to leave, they promised to come back on the last night.

But what does the last night mean? Ng says it could be June 30, 1997 when the British handed back Hong Kong to China, or it could mean the day the families had to move. The interpretation is open to the visitor, who is led on a 40-minute guided tour through the building to see different aspects of this secret garden.

Ng explained afterwards that he coordinated the project, giving the secret garden theme to several groups of artists who interpreted it in their own way, from books with empty pages, to ceramics to items from our childhood.

Ceramic balls are placed on spotlights with dramatic effect

I don't want to give too much away in terms of what exactly you see in the installation, but it's the various things you see, touch and hear that build up multiple meanings or like a patchwork quilt, create loose connections.

When we visited for the preview it wasn't quite dark, so it'll be better when it starts in earnest tomorrow when it's shown at night.

The first batch of free tickets were snapped up right away, but Ng told me the second batch will be released on Monday March 19 at noon. Check it out at www.hksecretgarden.com.

Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre

7A, Kennedy Road

Hong Kong

(In Hong Kong Park)

Moving Art Installation

Our tram for the next 25 minutes or so, with the upstairs covered up

This afternoon I had a chance to see some art on a tram.

Called Twenty five Minutes Older, not much is told ahead of time, except that visitors can either take the tram from Sheung Wan to Causeway Bay or from Causeway Bay to Sheung Wan, a ride that takes approximately 25 minutes.

Although almost all the free tickets were snapped up, the artist, Kingsley Ng let me ride at one of the times with fewer people, which happened to be today at 4.20pm.

Kingsley Ng explaining the proceedings

However, when I got there, the tram was experiencing delays thanks to the rainy weather and so I and about 10 other people waited patiently under cover.

From the outside, the tram looks like any other, but the upstairs is covered up. We entered the ground floor, and Ng was there explaining the situation: When we went upstairs, it would be very dark, and no photography, mobile phones or flash were allowed at all. The actual piece would be about 15 minutes long and we would arrive at Wan Chai or Causeway Bay.

Then we were each handed a pair of headphones, that at first had sounds of ocean waves. Then we went upstairs and saw the windows were covered up and almost all the seats were taken out; there were some cushions on the floor so I sat down on one of them. When we settled in, the lights went out and a series of phrases were projected in Chinese and English, while music played in the background.

We then started to see a view of Central and I recognized the shops as we went by, but they were upside down and in black and white. What was going on?

Periodically we'd hear a woman's voice speaking poetic phrases that didn't seem to add up to much, but I was more entranced by the images we were seeing in front of us.

Looking through the pinhole camera on the tram

When the lights finally went up, Ng explained the images we saw were in real time, projected from a camera obscura that was actually right next to me. He wanted to show that things we see are fleeting -- that we cannot record them because they are gone.

Perhaps it was a message to tell us to stop and metaphorically smell the roses, to not always focus on capturing things for posterity, but to remember the moment.

Our trip ended in Wan Chai and the rain was coming down in buckets.

Twenty five Minutes Older is running until June 2, as part of "The 5th Large-Scale Public Media Art Exhibition: Human Vibration", presented by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

Another work that was part of this show was the large light installation on ICC that got yanked after the ADC claimed the two artists changed the title of the work without consulting it or the curator.

One of the panels adding context to Ng's tram installation

But many believe it was turned off because the pair explained after the work was launched, that the large number on the ICC was actually the number of seconds counting down to July 1, 2047, when "one country, two systems" ends.

While watching the seconds countdown was daunting, being in the tram with a few people and experiencing the same thing was a memorable and intimate way to experience art -- moving art -- that also made you think about how we spend our time, and that it that will never come back.

Twenty five Minutes Older by Kingsley Ng

www.25mins.info