Art in Wong Chuk Hang by John Batten
Wong Chuk Hang is not – usually, and until recently - itself a destination. “It is near Aberdeen and Ap Lei Chau,” that is how it is usually referred to - and located for those that don’t know. It is a spot that you speed through. Just past the Aberdeen Tunnel and the open fields of the Wong Chuk Hang sports grounds. Often, it is a place not quite reached as the Ocean Park turnoff comes first or a left-side turn takes you to Repulse Bay. A narrow slice of anonymous industrial buildings that hover - even threaten - as you zip past, quicker if your bus takes the elevated flyover. Wong Chuk Hang is a scourge of a place if that is only it: grey walled, glimpsed and unvisited. However, behind Wong Chuk Hang Road things have always quietly happened. The muscle-trim new recruits run their jogging routes from the grassy Police Training School parade ground, around the nearby sports fields, along the nullah and amongst delivery vehicles in the industrial area. On nearby Welfare Road, Tung Wah Hospital’s Rehabilitation Centre for the physically disabled is next to the Catholic Church’s large historic Holy Spirit Seminary sitting on a protruding hill directly over Aberdeen Harbour. Vitasoy’s drinks are manufactured in Wong Chuk Hang. And so is the pungent Po Sum On oil; whose pervasive odor occupies the entire industrial building in which it is located. The car repair workshops of Lamborghini, Maserati and Mercedes-Benz are housed in advanced technological workshops on Heung Yip Road. While the AMS mini-bus company’s green buses are repaired in grittier surroundings. Straight through Wong Chuk Hang at one end of Nam Long Shan Road is the famous floating Jumbo Restaurant. I ran my own art gallery in Wong Chuk Hang’s Remex Building between 2006 to 2009 after many active years in Sheung Wan and Central. When I arrived, the construction of the South Island MTR Line had not yet been announced, the old Wong Chuk Hang Estate was still standing and the area was predominantly industrial. The Nam Long Shan Cooked Food Market provided cheap chan cha teng style food - and the area’s one large yum cha restaurant was still busy. In 2013, Wong Chuk Hang is much changed. Construction of the MTR’s South Island Line has now taken over the entire valley. This ugly intrusive railway line (and of unproved usefulness as the area’s buses are quite efficient) has replaced the unique air and open space corridor running from Deepwater Bay along the Wong Chuk Hang nullah to Aberdeen Harbour. The site of the old housing estate will be replaced by luxury housing built by the MTR. The area’s industrial face is rapidly changing. Wong Chuk Hang’s convenient location and large industrial spaces at reasonable rent has attracted the opening of many art spaces. There is also the construction of hotels and office buildings to tap the new South Island MTR Line opening in 2015.
Unfortunately, many industrial properties are now being eyed for office redevelopment to sit in the newly termed Wong Chuk Hang Business District. This construction activity makes the lower costs and larger industrial spaces a possibly short-lived attraction for the area’s new art spaces. In the meantime, the non-profit Spring Workshop is the most impressive art space in Wong Chuk Hang. Occupying an entire floor of the Remex Centre, this 5-year project (after which it will cease operating) hosts talks, workshops, artist residencies and exhibitions. Qiu Zhijie’s The Universe of Naming was an ambitious two-part collaborative installation with Hong Kong students who collected objects from the surroundings streets and reassembled and arranged them in Spring Workshop. The first gallery to open on the south side of Hong Kong Island was Koru Contemporary Art - whose space in the Wai Hing Building in Tin Wan on the Pokfulam side of Aberdeen is filled with sculpture. Longtime Central gallery, Alisan Fine Art, is also located in this building. Gallery Exit is located on the other side of Tin Wan Praya. Blindspot Gallery (in the same building as Po Sum On Oil) has a beautiful under-renovated factory unit that is only used for large exhibitions – its most recent Wong Chuk Hang show featured an exhibition of contemporary Chinese photography from the 1990s. Pékin Fine Arts, Art Statements, 3812 Contemporary Art Projects and Yallay Space are also located in Wong Chuk Hang and are slowly organizing more frequent exhibitions. Opening this month after relocating from Hollywood Road is Plum Blossoms. And, not far away on Ap Lei Chau is Art Projects Gallery and Feast Projects. People may say that Wong Chuk Hang is too difficult to get to, but it is only ten minutes from Wan Chai and buses from all around Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories run to and through Wong Chuk Hang. It is an excellent place for a day-trip visiting galleries and then dinner in one of Aberdeen’s many restaurants or in Repulse Bay.
This article was originally published in Paroles magazine, September/October 2013.