Weekly News Roundup: October 28, 2022

Artists Create Rugs to Save Tigers

Twelve international artists and creatives, including Ai Weiwei, Anish Kapoor, Maya Lin, and Raqib Shaw, have designed rugs for “Tomorrow’s Tigers 2022,” a collaborative fundraising project launched by conservation group World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 2019. The project is curated by Artwise Curators, and executed by rug craftsman Christopher Farr. “Tomorrow’s Tigers 2022” aims to raise GBP 1 million (USD 1.16 million) and double the number of wild tigers to reach 6,000 by 2022. An exhibition showcasing the works on offer will be held at Sotheby’s London from November 24 to 29. Ai’s single rug is priced at GBP 150,000 (USD 174,000) while editions of rugs by other artists start at GBP 10,000 (USD 11,600). According to the WWF, by 2010 the number of wild tigers had declined to 3,200.

Tony Davis’s Pyramid to Stay on Bondi Beach

On October 21, sculptor, painter, art educator, and fine-wood craftsman Tony Davis won the AUD 70,000 (USD 45,300) Aqualand Sculpture Award at Sculpture by the Sea, an annual sculpture exhibition in Australia. Chosen by a judging panel that comprised art critic Terence Maloon and artist Wendy Teakel, Davis’s winning work, Folly Interstice (2022), features a seven-meter-high Jarrah-timber-and-steel pyramid that explores Donald Judd’s claim that “if it’s not functional, it must be art.” The artist welcomes visitors to feel the texture of the material and engage with the sculpture, which will be installed permanently on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Established with the idea of forming “a sense of community” by David Handley in 1997, Sculpture by the Sea is the world’s largest free-to-the-public sculpture exhibition, featuring both Australian and international artists. With 108 sculptures on display along the coast this year, the exhibition returned to Bondi for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Public Screening of Taiwanese Documentary Canceled in Hong Kong 

Director Tseng Wen-chen’s The Lucky Woman (2020), which documents the struggles of migrant workers in Taiwan, was cut from the Hong Kong Arts Centre’s ifva All About Us Film Festival 2022 because it features scenes of protests. On October 24, Tseng announced on the film’s Facebook page that she had decided to withdraw the documentary, originally scheduled for screening on October 30, from the festival. According to Tseng, the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration (OFNAA) in Hong Kong had requested that she remove protest scenes from the work before it is approved for public screening but she chose not to comply with the censorship board’s request. The news came after OFNAA barred an outdoor screening of Christopher Nolan’s Batman: The Dark Knight (2008) last week, claiming that the film was “too violent.” Earlier, in June this year, Hong Kong director Erica Kwok’s The Dancing Voice of Youth (2020), an experimental film about the city’s protests in 2019, also did not pass OFNAA’s screening for its showcase at the 27th ifva Festival.

Shortlist for The Richard Mille Art Prize 2022

The Louvre Abu Dhabi and sponsor Richard Mille, a Swiss watchmaking company, announced the ten finalists for the 2022 Richard Mille Art Prize. The artists will be featured in an exhibition at the Louvre Abu Dhabi from November 18 to February 19, 2023, and the winning artist of the USD 60,000 prize will be announced early next year. All ten artists are active in the United Arab Emirates and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): Afra Al Dhaheri, Ayman Zedani, Dana Awartani, Elizabeth Dorazio, Manal Al Dowayan, Rand Abdul Jabbar, Simrin Mehra Agarwal, Shaikha Al Mazrou, Vikram Divecha, and Zeinab AlHashemi. They will present new or existing works based on the concept of an “icon” or the “iconic” in an exhibition curated by the director of Abu Dhabi’s Cultural Foundation, Reem Fadda. The competition received 246 total submissions from artists working in the region. 

• Australia
• United Kingdom
• Hong Kong
• Taiwan
• United Arab Emirates