A goldfish on a Rolls-Royce greets visitors to The Peninsula Hong Kong, as part of Art in Resonance, an annual programme of site-specific commissions. This year works by Angel Hui, Albert Yonathan Setyawan and William Lim are installed in the luxury hotel from the start of the Hong Kong Art Week until early May.
The goldfish belongs to Swimming in Light, a commission by Angel Hui, one of two artists selected to represent Hong Kong at this year’s Venice Biennale. Drawing on the familiar sight of goldfish sold in transparent plastic bags in Hong Kong, particularly at the Goldfish Market in Mong Kok, the artist collaborated with artisans who embroidered goldfish imagery onto plastic bags. The work also extends across parts of the glass frontage and the historic awning, where its bright colours sit against the building’s restrained façade.
Inside the grand lobby, Metamorphic Modulation by Albert Yonathan Setyawan occupies a semi-enclosed circular structure. The work’s 700 small ceramic elements—leaves and flowers, individually slip-cast and left unglazed—are arranged in repetitive patterns. Curated by Louis Copplestone of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), the installation was intended, Copplestone says, to let visitors “get lost in the pattern”.
“Repetition and balance creates a sense of order in our life,” Setyawan says of his work. “In a way they are the building blocks of our reality.” The repetitive process of making the ceramic elements in the artist’s compact Tokyo studio instills in the work a contemplative rhythm, while also blurring the boundary between craft and art.
“This whole idea of monumentality is achieved not through scale, but through tiny objects,” the artist adds, describing the structure as an attempt to “create a space within the space”. This modular work is the part of an ongoing collaboration between the hotel and the V&A, and is expected to travel to London later this year, where it will be reconfigured for a different architectural setting.
A third commission, Walking on a Bright Future, by the Hong Kong architect, artist and collector William Lim, responds directly to its setting. Installed in one section of The Verandah Café, the textile and spatial intervention was developed with artisans from Tai Ping Carpets, who translated one of Lim’s paintings into a large hand-tufted wall tapestry. Drawing on Lim’s work across architecture, design and image-making, the immersive installation extends onto the floor through checkerboard distortions in the carpet.
Taken together, the three commissions interrupt familiar spaces with moments of surprise, while showing how Art in Resonance supports artists in developing new work at scale.
