Attention Spam
Adapta Launch Exhibition
5 UK Based Urban Artists Exhibition
A collaboration between Schoeni Art Gallery Hong Kong and UKAdapta London.
Vernissage: 6:30pm - 8:30pm, 13 November 2008
Exhibition: 14 November - 10 December 2008
Venue: Main Gallery, 21-31 Old Bailey Street, Central, Hong Kong
Website: www.schoeniartgallery.com
Schoeni Art Gallery is delighted to launch our latest satellite project Adapta, in collaboration with UKAdapta, London. This project will focus on what has recently been coined as "urban" art - or as we like to call it "21st Century Contemporary Art" - with the idea to bring this rather unnoticed genre to the Hong Kong public. Adapta will bridge the gap between the understanding of this global urban art movement, creating dialogue and focusing on cultural exchange. We aim to demonstrate, educate and provide a wealth of inspiration especially for the youth of today, through exhibiting works from this talent-pool.
Adapta's first project will be held in November 2008, with a launch exhibition in Hong Kong called Attention Spam. In this day and age, visual media plays an indispensible role in everyone's lives, almost to a point of saturation. One could consider it as visual spam. For its exhibitions, Adapta filters through the multitudes of visual pollution to find and exhibit the best pieces of contemporary art, and in this case, art emerging from Britain, showcasing some of the best pieces of contemporary art by 5 UK based artists.
The urban art movement derives from graffiti which began in the late 1960's in New York and Philadelphia. Since then the genre has expanded and grown into a cross-cultural phenomenon with significant socio-cultural impact, developing into "street art" which encompasses all artistic incursions into the urban landscape, including a wide medium of stencil, stickers, posters, airbrush, etc… One can see "street art" as a new "renaissance" and explosion of creativity, new ideas, and talent, with all artists using the public space as a huge museum. Street art is a form of creative expression and a statement of identity; it is special because it is a form of expression that has the ability to be shockingly evocative, providing rawness that challenges the viewers directly and affects their aesthetic sensibilities. It is art that thrills. Urban art has become a burgeoning phenomenon which is no longer ignored by the art establishments, being recognised and taken in by museums, galleries, curators and auction houses alike. This has allowed artists more time to develop and solidify their work, thus narrowing down the fine line between fine art and street art by introducing a plethora of thoughtful and effective alternatives to artistic expression.
