Identity ‧ Commission

WMA Commission Award Recipient Announced

 (Hong Kong: 9 April 2016)  The WMA Commission engages image makers to further provide in-depth studies of the yearly socially relevant theme, and extend public interest locally and globally. Each year the WMA Commission invites entries for proposals from artists and photographers from both Hong Kong and the international community, to create new photo-based work in Hong Kong, focusing on the annual theme. This year the theme of the proposals had to contextually relate to the theme IDENTITY and to HONG KONG.

A four-member Selection comprising of Fung Ho Yin, Assistant Professor, School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Melissa Lee, public art curator, consultant, and on the faculty at the English Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Ying Kwok, independent curator, founder of Collector Club and Dr. Anthony Ng, WYNG Foundation Trustee selected Ducky Tse Chi Tak as this year’s WMA Commission recipient.

Over 170 proposals were received and according to Melissa Lee, “The submissions this year were thoughtful, profound and on the whole, extremely insightful in contextualizing Hong Kong’s place as an international identity to the rest of the world.  The judges were pleased to pick the WMA Commission winner this year whom we think epitomizes the 2016 theme of Identity for Hong Kong. Ducky Tse’s work encapsulates the complexity of Hong Kong’s international identity as well as the unique individual that has, on the one hand an importance in preserving local and historical memory, and on the other hand, an attentiveness to Hong Kong’s future.”

Finalists included (in no particular order): Doreen Chan, Birdy Chu, Lau Pok Chi, Anson Mak, Jens Olof Lasthein, James Binning, Sampson Wong, Matthew Leung, Elaine Ho and Ken Kitano.

Bio of Ducky Tse Chi Tak–WMA Commission Recipient:

Ducky Tse Chi Tak was born and lives in Hong Kong. Early in his career he worked as a professional photojournalist for over 15 years. Currently, he is an independent photographer and visual artist. For many years, his main focus in photography is to record environmental and spatial changes in Hong Kong.

Ducky participated in and organized the first Hong Kong International Photo Festival in 2009. He has been the recipient of many awards including being a winner in multiple years of The Society of Publishers in Asia – Excellence in Feature Photography. His work has been presented in various exhibitions in Hong Kong, Japan and France and has been acquired by private collections and by museums.

Upcoming WMA Commission Exhibition (July 2 to July 11, 2016):

TRES the WMA Commission recipient for the theme WASTE will be back in Hong Kong to exhibit their works from July 2 to July 11, 2016 at Connecting Space. They would be putting out a publication – Ubiquitous Trash: Hong Kong – a conceptual map of the routes of recollection, production and distribution of waste in Hong Kong.

Waste narratives are visible through photography, drawing, cartography and other field note methods. Complemented with statistics, interviews, art based research, among other research methods as to obtain a more complex view of Hong Kong waste particularities and its relation with the global scale problem.

TRES (integrated by Ilana Boltvinik and Rodrigo Viñas, Mexico City) is an art research collective that has focused on exploring the implications of public space and garbage through artistic practices that concentrate on the methodological intertwining and dialogue with science, anthropology, and archaeology among other disciplines. Of particular interest has been the inquiry on the subject of garbage as a physical and conceptual residue that entails political and material implications. Since its foundation in 2009 by Boltvinik, Viñas and Mañón, TRES has worked with different qualities that shape garbage. Its mobility in the project A Cluster of Oblivion, its spatial traits in Blind Spots, its symbolic value in An Informal Gaze, its aesthetics in the book Desechos Reservados, and its intimacy in All the Shines is Gold, amid others.

The upcoming theme of the WMA Commission will be MOBILITY and the call for submissions would be in October 2016.

For more details please check out the website: www.wma.hk