The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority presents a major exhibition which sees six giant inflatable sculptures on the site of the Park at West Kowloon Cultural District, next to M+, Hong Kong’s future museum for visual culture.

Monumental artworks of this scale have never been presented alongside one another in Hong Kong, making “Mobile M+: Inflation!” one of the largest contemporary art exhibitions ever mounted in the city to date. It brings some of the most important works of public sculpture created in recent years to the city for the first time, and features selections by internationally renowned artists as well as newly commissioned artworks by local and regional artists Tam Wai Ping and Cao Fei. The six works will be accompanied by a performance piece by Tomás Saraceno (Argentina) which will be staged on 4 and 25 May and 8 June 2013.

Inviting members of the public to interact firsthand with large-scale inflatable sculptures, “Mobile M+: Inflation!” aims to pose questions about the nature of public art and the ways in which audiences might engage with it. Several of these are derived from everyday objects that have been inflated to outsize proportions as a way of rendering the familiar unfamiliar, more tangible, and uncannily touchable than ever before. Other works in the exhibition question the nature and potential of art and architecture in public space through installations that evoke ephemerality and reflect on human relationships to built environment and to the natural world.

By exploring the ever-shifting notions of nature and artifice, intimacy and monumentality, temporariness and permanence, as well as beauty and the grotesque that characterise these exhibits, “Mobile M+: Inflation!” will create a diverse experience that probes the role of public art in the context of an evolving and endlessly mutating constructed landscape. The exhibition acts as a prelude to the opening of the Park in 2014, highlighting the future possibilities for multi-disciplinary arts programming in the fourteen hectare site, planned to include music festivals, large-scale sculpture and installations. The Park will provide green open space and gardens, contributing parkland to the heavily built up cityscape for residents to enjoy.

Inflation! is a part of Mobile M+, a series of pre-opening ‘nomadic’ exhibitions curated by M+ that aim to engage the public ahead of the opening of the museum, scheduled for completion in late 2017. By initiating and realising projects that would not be possible in a single museum building, Mobile M+ seeks to turn the perceived disadvantage of being “rootless” into a strategic advantage by organizing events that embrace a multi-disciplinary approach.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of on-site events ranging from artist talks, workshops, guided tours to performances.

Dr Lars Nittve, Executive Director of M+ said, “Inflation! is an example of the numerous possibilities that the future park will offer for our exhibition programming. It represents our ambition to display the full spectrum of visual culture from a Hong Kong perspective that incorporates a global vision, from now till the future M+ building finally opens and is operating in all its glory.Inhabiting the future site of the Park of West Kowloon Cultural District, ‘Mobile M+: Inflation!’ also broaches the possibilities of how art might play an integral role in this park as we go forward.”

Participating artists: 

Cao Fei (China); Choi Jeong Hwa (South Korea); Jeremy Deller (UK); Jiakun Architects (China); Paul McCarthy (USA); Tomás Saraceno (Argentina); Tam Wai Ping (Hong Kong) 

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Thursday: 12pm to 7pm
Friday – Sunday & Public Holidays: 11am to 8pm
Closed on Mondays
During Art Basel Hong Kong: 10am to 8pm

Admission: Free of charge

Image: With the Wind, Shenzhen, 2009 © Jiakun Architect