M+ Broadens Scope With New Acquisitions
By Kitty van Leeuwen
Installation view of ANTONY GORMLEY’s Asian Fields (2003) at the warehouse of the former Shanghai No.10 Steelworks, Shanghai, 2003. Photo by Dai Wei. Copyright the artist. Courtesy West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, Hong Kong.
Following the opening of the second edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong on May 15, Hong Kong’s future museum for visual culture, M+, announced a slew of new acquisitions including Asian Field (2003) by British artist, and Turner Prize-winner, Antony Gormley. Speaking about the monumental work, which was donated by a Hong Kong philanthropist who wishes to remain anonymous, executive director of M+ Lars Nittve called it, “one of the most important public artworks created in recent years in China.”
The work, which consists of 210,000 clay figures, was fabricated in the village of Xiangshan in Guangdong province, China. Local clay was used, giving the figures their signature red color. With 350 workers employed in its creation, the piece was completed within five days. Asian Field has since toured across China, stopping in the country’s largest cities, including Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing.
The previous days it was announced that the Brown Family Annual Acquisition Fund will donate HKD 5 million to M+ annually over the next decade to be spent solely on acquisitions from Art Basel in Hong Kong. This year the results were works by emerging artists from Hong Kong and China, as well as Japan, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. Among them are Memento (White Shirt) and Memento (She Can’t Remember) (both 2014) by Hong Kong artist Au Hoi Lam, Cotton Rope No.7 (2012) by Dubai artist Hassan Sharif, Untitled (1975), a work by Japanese artist Kishio Suga and American artist Byron Kim’s Belly Painting (Yellow Green with Streaks) (2004). According to M+’s chief curator Doryun Chong, these works reflect the global vision of the museum.
