Like a giant steel angel, with wings outstretched, Freeman Lau Su-hong's gleaming sculpture Nature of a Man stands sentry over the central piazza of Hong Kong's Yat Tung Housing Estate.
Its elegant lines and robotic joints are in dramatic contrast to the drab uniformity of the public housing project a stone's throw from the city's airport.
PHOTO: AFP
In Hong Kong, where soaring steel and glass citadels of commerce are the preferred expressions of man's accomplishments, Lau's sculpture is rare indeed.
The few pieces of public art in the former British colony tend to be held within the new public housing developments or hidden from the general public within exclusive private complexes.
"For a major city like this, there are sadly few examples of public art," bemoaned architect Desmond Hui, director of the Centre for Cultural Policy Research at the University of Hong Kong.
"It's not because Hong Kong people would not like public art, but there just isn't a culture of it here."
A symposium held this weekend may help change that, bringing together for the first time artists, politicians and investors to discuss the cultural and economic benefits of public art in a city in need of a facelift.
"We are anxious to learn; we are eager to introduce our city to you," Patrick Ho, the government's secretary for home affairs, told the invited guests, which included architects, town planners and designers from at least seven different countries.
His appeal was telling of a government that has sought in the past two decades to reverse the artistic neglect of countless previous decades.
"The government has been very supportive of promoting and paying for public art," said Hui, who has written countless research papers on how to promote design and arts awareness in the community.
"It's just that Hong Kong lacks the experience to put up major public works of art."
Since the mid-1980s, the government has supported at least a dozen major permanent projects in new housing estates and temporary exhibitions in public parks.
Among them is the Tung Chung Artwalk, among whose collection of monumental sculpture is Lau's Nature of a Man.
The project is ambitious by any standard: 16 specially-commissioned pieces by local and Chinese artists grace the concrete walkways of one of the city's largest housing developments.
"Getting official support is not really the problem," says Hui. "There are many other reasons behind the lack of public art."
Chief among them, he says, is the perception in a city driven by money that art has no immediate economic benefit. "Why spend on something that makes no money?" goes the argument.
"The economic benefits are not immediate, but they do come," said Hui. "Apart from making the city more attractive to tourists, public art can -- for instance -- be used to add prestige and therefore value to a property."
He points to trendy Beijing-based development company Soho, whose imaginatively designed housing projects on the mainland have made its homes among the most sought after in the Chinese capital.
"They use commissioned art in their developments to add to the overall desirability of the homes and they sell as a result," says Hui.
Other past factors that have mitigated against a culture of public art in Hong Kong is a colonial history that saw the city's former British overlords balk at any but the most necessary infrastructural investment, plus a lack of local artists.
Among attendants at the symposium, at which Hui spoke, were executives from the city's subway company, the MTR Corp., and the semi-private Airport Authority, both of whom have sunk millions of Hong Kong dollars in recent years into exhibitions in major stations and at the airport.
"There is no end of support for public art, just a lack of coordination, which this symposium hopes to address."
Hui hopes that from the event, Hong Kong will gain a better understanding of the benefits of public space, especially at a time when there is confusion over the city's role in a greater China and its place in the world economy.
"At its simplest, public art enriches the city experience visually, but it also brings to its people a shared experience, a unity that Hong Kong is missing at the moment and really could do with," said Hui.
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