WMA Masters 2016/17 – MOBILITY Winners Announced
From 14 April to 6 May, the photographic works of this year’s WMA Masters finalists can be viewed by the public at Comix Home Base. The artists will bring their interpretation of MOBILITY to life through images. The winner of this year’s WMA Masters and WMA Commission were announced on April 13th, one day before the finalist exhibition is opened to the public.
The WMA Masters Finalists’ Exhibition kicked off with Professor Anthony Cheung today, Secretary for Transport and Housing, as Guest of Honor.
WMA Masters Winners and Finalists
A panel of renowned industry leaders in photography, art, publishing, and the non-profit sector including Zoher Abdoolcarim, MaryAnn Camilleri, Abby Chen, Anthony Po-shan Leung, Christopher Phillips, Kevin W.Y. Lee and Paul Zimmerman, picked out this year’s winning works. Wei Leng TAY’s work “The Other Shore” and Kurt TONG’s work “Threads of Sisterhood” won the WMA Masters jointly, sharing a cash prize of HK$250,000.
The other four finalists whose works are also exhibited include:
Weilun CHONG – “Please Mind the Gap”
Billy H.C. KWOK – “From Transit to New Lives”
LAM Yik Fei – “Along the Hong Kong Border”
LEE Wing Ki – “Tsang’s Odyssey”
BIO OF WINNING PHOTOGRAPHER:
Wei Leng TAY
Working predominantly with photography, sound and video, Wei Leng Tay’s practice considers how socio-economics, history, family and the state intersect with memory and notions of displacement and self-identity. She has collaborated and exhibited with institutions and organisations such as the Australian National University CIW Gallery, National University of Singapore (NUS) Museum, Vasl Artists’ Collective, Pakistan, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, and ARTER Space for Art, Istanbul. Tay has been a recipient of awards such as the Poynter Fellowship through Yale School of Art and the National Arts Council Singapore’s Art Creation Fund. Her work forms part of public and private collections including those of the National University of Singapore (NUS) Museum; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan; Heritage Museum, Hong Kong, and Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Japan.
Kurt TONG
Born in Hong Kong in 1977, Kurt Tong was originally trained as a health visitor at the University of Liverpool. He has worked and traveled extensively across Europe, the Americas and Asia. In 1999, Kurt co-founded Prema Vasam, a charitable home for disabled and disadvantaged children in Chennai, South India.
Kurt became a full-time photographer in 2003. He was the winner of the Luis Valtuena International Humanitarian Photography Award with his first picture story documenting the treatment of disabled children in India. He worked for many other NGOs and covered stories from Female Infanticide to ballroom dancers.
He gained his Masters in documentary photography at the London College of Communications in 2006 and began working on much more personal projects. He has since been chosen as the winner of Photograph.Book.Now competition, the Hey, Hot Shot! competition and the Jerwood Photography Award for his project People’s Park, a wistful exploration of the now deserted Communist era public spaces. “In Case it Rains in Heaven’ exploring the practice of Chinese funeral offerings, has been widely exhibited including a solo exhibition at Compton Verney and features in several public collections. A monograph of the work was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2011.
His more recent work, ‘The Queen, The Chairman and I’, a multilayered narrative picture book dealing with the story of Hong Kong of the last 100 years and the Asian Diaspora through the lives of his own family is presented as a Chinese teahouse. The project has been exhibited across 5 continents, most recently at the Victoria Museum in Liverpool, UK and Galleri Image in Denmark and Visual Art Center at the Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco. The installation travelled Impressions Gallery in Bradford in 2016 and will continue to tour different venues across the UK.
Much of Kurt’s recent work, while remaining photographic in essence, has moved towards installation and sculptural based, pushing the boundaries of the medium. Echoed Visions, a series of installation question the medium of photography, made its debut at the Identity Art Gallery, Hong Kong in February 2014.
心.思.過., a public participation project set within an classical Chinese garden in Zhongshan opened in August 2015 and will become a permanent feature within the park.
His latest work Sweet Water, Bitter Earth and Trust Little in Tomorrow made their debut at Unseen in Amsterdam, with planned exhibitions in 2017 both in the UK and US
He is represented by Jen Bekman Gallery in New York and The Photographer’s Gallery in London.