ARTISTS TALKING

Sally Lai is currently a Clore Leadership Programme fellow and holds an MA in Curating from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Based in Manchester, the wide range of exhibitions and projects she has been involved with reflect her special interest in contemporary Asian art and international exchange.

Lai gained her first curatorial and organisational experience as curator and manager at Galeriasia in Hong Kong (1999 – 2000), where she fundraised from the private sector and set up this contemporary Asian art gallery art from scratch.

As a Visual Arts Officer at Arts Council England (London office) in 2001 – 2002, Lai managed the Artists’ Fund, set up Artquest, an information service for artists in London (in partnership with University of the Arts London) and implemented a strategic initiative, Testing Ground, in partnership with Thinking Skills Assessment? (TSA), the Architectural Foundation, Crafts Council and King’s Fund. Furthermore, she initiated a craft-based critical writing fellowship in collaboration with Goldsmiths’ Textile Department.

Focus on Hong Kong

Sally Lai most recently co-curated (with Yuen Fong Ling, in collaboration with Hong Kong-based curatorial partners Howard Chan and Siu King-Chung) ‘Arrivals and Departures: New Art Perspectives of Hong Kong’, which was on display at Urbis, Manchester. Due to its huge success, the show was extended for a further four months to July 2007.

‘Arrivals and Departures’ was the first major exhibition on Hong Kong to take place in the UK, presenting new work by five British Chinese artists and five Hong Kong-based artists. According to Lai, “The ten new pieces show the artists’ responses to the shifts in Hong Kong’s cultural identity from its colonial past to its future as part of the world’s largest economy. Their sources of inspiration are diverse, ranging from tourist imagery, cityscapes, myths and family histories to lived experience.”¹

‘Double Acts’ (April – June 2007) was the first of two exhibitions Lai curated as a guest curator for Phoenix Arts Association, Brighton. The show was “a celebration and mini-survey of collaborative practice in the UK today. It (sought) not to answer the behind the scenes questions but to provide a context for pondering these questions.”² Her second exhibition at Phoenix will be a Hong Kong exhibition, expected to take place in March/April 2008.

¹Quote by Sally Lai, in: Sara Walters, Coming and going at Urbis, Manchester Evening News, 18 January 2007.

²http://www.phoenixarts.org/archived-exhibs/2007/exhibitions_2007.htm [22 August 2007].

Chinese Arts Centre

Between 2002-2005 Sally was curator at Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester – the UK’s centre for the promotion of contemporary Chinese visual arts. Here she was responsible for devising and running the organisation’s artistic programme. Lai bravely coped with the challenge of presenting the (then) newly founded institution to the public, press and artistic community – during her stay visitor figures significantly increased as well as the diversity of the audience. Furthermore, her ambitious and wide-ranging projects, which included touring shows and a live art festival, often provided artists with their first solo or UK exhibitions.

Lai has a particular affinity with video art. Her final show at the Chinese Arts Centre was a solo exhibition of New York-based video artist Patty Chang (October 2005 – December 2005). In 2004 she commissioned the video piece Whodunnit by Ming Wong (March – May 2004). Ming Wong created a classic Agatha Christie-style drawing room detective drama with a cast of African, Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Eastern-European, Irish and Jewish descent to question pre-conceived stereotypes of cultural identity.

Besides video, Sally Lai’s interests also cover a very wide range of artistic practice. Prior to the Patty Chang exhibition, she co-curated, with designer Amechi Ihenacho, ‘Re-Fashion’ (May – July 2005). The concept of the show was to reveal “something of the creative process behind designer’s work as oppose to purely presenting finished garments.”³ For this exhibition, the curators chose innovative designers Maria Chen Pascual, Julian and Sophie as well as Justin Oh to explore this idea.

‘Happy and Glorious – Mad for Real’ (September – November 2004, Chinese Arts Centre) presented the first full-scale exhibition of the provocative and often controversial Chinese artists Cai Yuan and JJ Ci (aka ‘madforreal’). This included a commission of new work from the artists, who dealt with topical issues such as trans-national identities, immigration and citizenship.

³www.chineseartscentre.org/exhibitions/refashion/index.html [22 August 2007].

Independent projects

Lai has used her extraordinary organisational skills to develop networks at the Triangle Art Trust where she successfully initiated and created an action plan for workshops and residencies in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China in 2003.

Lai has also curated a range of independent projects, which have encompassed design, photography, large-scale site-specific installation, video, sound, performance, and an informal critiquing network. Her freelance projects include ‘Urban Nomads’ at South London Gallery, a site-specific project by Thomas Kilpper in a disused building at St Thomas’ Hospital, as well as several projects in public spaces in Hong Kong.

Lai uses her broad experience for a number of advisory roles including acting as a Specialist Advisor to Visual Arts Department of Scottish Arts Council (since 2003) and as Curatorial Advisor to Axis’ Open Frequency. Furthermore she is a member of the Cultural Diversity Advisory Group for Manchester City Council, the Action Group of Mission, Models, Money – a national action research programme and campaign for change, which looks to address sustainability challenges faced by cultural organisations – and Culture Northwest.

Critical debate

In addition, Lai regularly contributes to national and international art journals, writing on exhibitions and biennials, as well as developments in Asian art in the UK. She has published articles in Art Asia Pacific, Untitled, Art Monthly and Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Asia Art Archive (Guest Columnist, Oct 06) and Arts Professional.

Sally Lai is not only adept at building national and international networks. She is also very much interested in alternative ways of generating debate and enhancing opportunities to engage with contemporary art for a range of audiences. Her exhibitions of contemporary Asian art are major contributions to a form of cultural exchange in the UK. She is becoming a key figure in the dissemination of art and ideas relating to the development and complexity of art by Asian artists, as well as the national and international arts scenes in the UK.

Yvette Mutumba

Yvette Mtumba is a London based, German born curator, currently undertaking a PhD on Black Art in Germany.