Christy Cheung

Chief editor and writer of Collect

The M+ Museum has recently installed the Playscape in its north roof garden, inviting visitors to use not only their eyes but also their bodies to understand and appreciate the works on display. Inspired by one of the most versatile and critically acclaimed artists and designers in the twentieth century, Isamu Noguchi, the interactive outdoor gallery features three sculpture installations – or what can be considered play equipment – by Noguchi. Dotted throughout the garden are various configurations of his signature work Octetra, a modular geometric structure created based on patterns found in nature; there is also a labyrinthine pyramid, extracted from a playground in Japan designed by Noguchi, standing stately on one side overlooking the Hong Kong skyline, which is then juxtaposed by a semi-sphere concrete mound that appears to have grown out of the ground. Like nature, these sculptures are open-ended yet deeply connected to the human body, created with modern aesthetics, freedom of interpretation and social function in mind.

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Mark Peaker

Co-founder

It can be said that often the most beautiful things can be hidden in plain sight, seemingly unseen, but easy to find.  London has many such gems, from forgotten statues overgrown in the corner of cemeteries to ornate ceilings that are missed as one simply fails to glance upwards.  However, for myself, one of my home city’s most beautiful hidden gems proudly stamps its presence yet is often unseen and is certainly misunderstood, it is the Route du Roi, or “Rotten Row” as it is now known.  

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Collect’s Pick: 3 Masters of Abstraction to Look out for in Sotheby’s Spring Sales

Christy Cheung

Chief editor and writer of Collect

Presented together in the modern evening sales on the 27^th of April, the works of Georges Mathieu, Hsiao Chin and Fernando Zóbel are poised to achieve impressive results. While the three masters share the same language of abstraction in their art, their distinctive visual vocabularies are distillations of their own unique intercultural experiences and experimental endeavours grounded in their personal pursuit of a singular artistic identity and their exceptional sensitivity to forms, colours and materials, resulting in highly idiosyncratic expressions that helped shape post-war art in their own right.

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What the Post-war School of Paris Tells Us about the World We Live in Then and Now

Christy Cheung

Chief editor and writer of Collect

The end of the second world war ushered in a new era of modernity characterised by lingering trauma and ideological oppositions on one hand, and innovations and global integration on the other. The atomic bombs catastrophically pressed the reset button of the world order, bringing an end to the dominance of European colonial powers that not only led the colonised to rediscover their national identities but also created a new consciousness in the West, with American emerging as the new superpower, the imminence of the Cold War, and also Europe struggling to recuperate from its war-torn state. To say that the post-war period was complex is an understatement. However, in the field of art, these rigorous changes resulted in two decades of incredible cultural productions around the world; artists tirelessly experimented and broke artistic traditions in all fronts to respond to the horror of the war as well as to make sense of and search for hope in the new world.

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