All posts tagged: Kong

Christie’s 20th/21st Century Evening Sale in Hong Kong Totals $73.3 M.

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[ad_1] Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in our special Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter for Art Basel Hong Kong. Sign up here to receive it every day of the fair. The first auction held by Christie’s at its new Asia headquarters in The Henderson building in Hong Kong last September was a buoyant affair, carried by excitement for the glitzy locale, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. That inaugural evening sale, for 20th- and 21st-century art, brought in $113.4 million (with buyer’s premium), a more subdued haul compared to past boom years, but still a solid result. Related Articles On Friday, the house held its second 20th/21st century auction in its new digs, the first aligned with this week’s Art Basel Hong Kong, which opened to VIPs Wednesday. According to a post-sale release, more than 7,000 people visited the headquarters to take in the lots ahead of the evening sale, many of them in town for Art Basel. While the room was filled to capacity, the pace of Friday’s evening sales was a bit slower, totaling $73.3 million (including buyer’s premium), with few surprises. The sale …

The 7 Best Booths at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025

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[ad_1] Often, when I try to describe what’s so exciting about the art scenes in Hong Kong and China, I’ll say that artists here seem to be asking far different questions than those in the US, or coming up with completely out-of-left-field ways of approaching an answer. Hong Kong–based De Sarthe’s presentation, which features artists interrogating how contemporary social narratives intersect with new technology, is a good example of what I mean. Mak2, who last year had the buzziest work in the fair’s Encounters section, returns with another intriguing piece. For the new project, Home Sweet Home Backyard (2025), the conceptual artist produced a video game where fairgoers can play as virtual gold diggers. The more people play the game, and find gold, the higher the price rises for an accompanying suite of seven triptych paintings. Those works, inspired by the video game The Sims 4, were produced by commissioning sections from artists on Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao. It’s a humorous metaphor for art’s attention economy: the more regular people pay attention, the more the …

8 Under-the-Radar Shows to See During Hong Kong Art Week

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[ad_1] Curator Aaditya Sathish recently recalled returning to Hong Kong from New York in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. It was, he said, a fascinating time. “From what I could understand, Hong Kong was very much a place to trade global contemporary art. But over the pandemic, there was a focus on the local. A lot of independent art spaces started to emerge, and I remember seeing everyone flock to these places,” he told ARTnews. “There was a desperate need to look at what was around us.” Indeed, Hong Kong’s art scene has been through a crash course in survival, shaped by a whirlwind of disruptions—from mass pro-democracy protests to the pandemic, and more recently, the imposition of the national security law. As arts journalist Enid Tsui notes in her newly published book, Art in Hong Kong: A City in Flux, defining “Hong Kong art” is no easy task. For years, Hong Kong artists have avoided grand ideological declarations, instead gravitating toward the everyday, the mundane, and the deeply personal. But the turbulence …

China’s CATL to file for at least US$5 billion Hong Kong listing this week, sources say

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[ad_1] SYDNEY: Chinese battery giant CATL plans to file a Hong Kong listing application this week to raise at least US$5 billion, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. The filing could come on Tuesday or Wednesday, added the sources, who could not be identified discussing confidential information. CATL did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. A listing of the Shenzhen-listed firm, the largest battery maker in the world, would be the largest listing in Hong Kong in four years, according to Dealogic data. At US$5 billion, it would be the biggest listing since Kuaishou Technology’s 2021 initial public offering that raised US$6.2 billion, the data showed. The city’s equity capital markets have languished in the past three years as a result of Chinese regulators slowing down the approval process and volatile global financial markets. CATL’s planned float in the Chinese offshore market comes amid rising geopolitical tensions as the US in January added Chinese tech companies including CATL and Tencent Holdings to a list of firms it …

Nintendo unveils Donkey Kong Country at Super Nintendo World in Japan

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[ad_1] Nintendo’s famous game designer Shigeru Miyamoto showed off the Donkey Kong Country area at Super Nintendo World. The unveiling is a major addition to the theme park within a theme park that opened at Universal Studios Japan in March 2021. Nintendo has opened or is opening its theme parks in Hollywood, Osaka, Orlando (2025) and Singapore (TBD). The aim is to widen its funnel for consumers and get more people familiar with Nintendo’s intellectual property than gamers alone. The entrance to Donkey Kong Country in Super Nintendo World in Japan. The new area is part of the Super Mario World section of the theme park in Japan. As you move from one area to the Donkey Kong Country, Miyamoto pointed out that you move from blocks to rocks as you go through a tunnel. With a jungle theme, Miyamoto showed off the Donkey Kong Tree House and the Golden Temple. On the temple, there’s a face of a monkey with steam spewing out of its mouth. He played large conga drums that were connected …

Christie’s First 21st Day Sale in Hong Kong Sees Middling Result

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[ad_1] The day after Christie’s inaugurated its new Hong Kong headquarters with a $134 million evening 20th/21st century art sale, reality bit for the house, as its first 21st Century day sale brought in just $16 million plus fees. Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips have each made major investments in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the region in recent years. Sotheby’s will inaugurate its own new Hong Kong headquarters in November, and Phillips opened a new Asia headquarters in city in 2023. It’s still too early to say whether those investments will help the houses defy the global art market’s ongoing stagnation, but ArtTactic did report recently that sales of art at Hong Kong evening sales tanked 40 percent by value during the first six months of this year compared with 12 months earlier. That was their lowest level since 2017. Related Articles We should have more data soon however, as all three houses will be using their new digs to hold year-round auctions in the city, as opposed to previously holding all of their sales …

Chinese Company Places $1.2 B. Bid for K11 Art Mall in Hong Kong

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[ad_1] In a shock development that sparked headlines in Bloomberg, the Business Times, and Sing Tao this past week, K11 Art Mall in Hong Kong’s shopping district, Tsim Sha Tsui, received a $1.2 billion offer from CR Longdation, a state-owned Chinese company and a subsidiary of China Resources Holdings Co. K11 Art Mall is owned by Hong Kong–based property firm New World Development, which was founded by Cheng Yu-tung in 1970. His son, the billionaire Henry Cheng, is its chairman. Cheng’s grandson, Adrian Cheng, currently serves as the company’s CEO and is a familiar face on the annual ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list. Related Articles Per Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the family is worth more than $20 billion. Adrian Cheng launched the K11 Group, which includes various entities such as K11 Craft and Guild Foundation and the K11 Art Foundation. The latter, an internationally renowned foundation, has staged more than 60 exhibitions across China’s major cities and beyond, showcasing works by some of the world’s leading contemporary artists, including Katharina Grosse, Guan Xiao, Neïl Beloufa, Zhang Enli, …

The British judges ruling on the law in authoritarian Hong Kong – podcast | News

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[ad_1] Since 1997, British and Commonwealth judges have sat in the highest court in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong legal system is derived from English common law and foreign judges, including those from the UK, have been said to add expertise and prestige to its court system. But in 2020 Beijing imposed a strict national security law to clamp down on pro-democracy protests. Since then the number of foreign judges has fallen as fears grow that the judges are lending credibility to a system where basic rights and freedoms are not being respected. On Monday one of Hong Kong’s best known pro-democracy activists, the jailed media mogul Jimmy Lai, will be appealing against one of his convictions. Like many people in Hong Kong he is a British citizen, and one of the judges who will hear his appeal is also British. Campaigners have said it is a shocking situation and called on the three remaining British judges – who are retired but are all in the House of Lords – to quit. Amy Hawkins explains …

The Guardian view on the rule of law in Hong Kong: the verdict of foreign judges is damning | Editorial

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[ad_1] Seven years ago, Lord Neuberger, a judge of the Hong Kong court of final appeal – and formerly president of the UK’s supreme court – described the Chinese region’s foreign judges as “canaries in the mine”. Their willingness to serve was a sign that judicial independence remained healthy, “but if they start to leave in droves, that would represent a serious alarm call”. That was before the extraordinary uprising in 2019 to defend Hong Kong’s autonomy, and the crackdown that followed. The draconian national security law of 2020 prompted the resignation of an Australian judge, and two British judges quit in 2022. Last week, two more birds flew: Lord Sumption and Lord Collins of Mapesbury. Lord Sumption (with other judges) had said that continued participation was in the interests of the people of Hong Kong. Now he says that those hopes of sustaining the rule of law are “no longer realistic” and that “a [once] vibrant and politically diverse community is slowly becoming a totalitarian state”. He cited illiberal legislation, Beijing’s ability to reverse decisions by Hong …

‘We refuse to disappear’: the Hong Kong 47 facing life in jail after crackdown | Hong Kong

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[ad_1] The verdict wasn’t surprising but outside room no 2 of the West Kowloon courthouse, people still wept. The panel of Hong Kong national security judges had set down two days for the hearing but dispensed with the core business in about 15 minutes. In the city’s largest ever national security trial – involving the prosecution of pro-democracy campaigners and activists from a group known as the “Hong Kong 47” – almost all the defendants were found guilty of conspiracy to commit subversion. Their crime was trying to win an election, holding unofficial primaries in 2020 attended by an estimated 600,000 residents. The plan was devised by organiser and academic Benny Tai, who had previously been jailed over his involvement in the 2014 “umbrella movement”, and whom Beijing has labelled a “vicious traitor”. Tai’s plan began with primaries to select the best candidates to win a legislative majority. They would then block government budgets to potentially force a dissolution and the resignation of the chief executive, Carrie Lam, in an effort to have the government …