Peer to Peer: UK/HK Online Festival
Sara Jaspan, Exhibitions Editor
What role can the visual arts play in tackling the climate emergency and promoting a greener recovery? How can artists connect with communities in a rapidly changing political and social landscape? How should museum collections and archives adapt to provide greater public access and become more representative? What is the relationship between art and activism? These are just some of the questions engaging artists around the world, and which will be discussed at length by artists, curators, and art leaders from Hong Kong and the UK as part of Peer to Peer: UK/HK.
The online festival occurs for the first time after previously existing as a physical exchange between the visual arts in both geographically separated, yet deeply interconnected regions. Free to attend and open to all, it will take place over three days as a series of panel discussions, before opening out into a month-long online exhibition featuring newly commissioned digital works by UK-based artists Antonio Roberts, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley and Hetain Patel, and Hong Kong-based artists Lee Kai Chung and Sharon Lee Cheuk Wun. 15 existing works will also be presented alongside, and the show is accompanied by a series of social media led artist residencies.
During a time when travel is limited, Peer to Peer 2020 brings voices from two different sides of the world together to respond to global events and issues, and lobby for the importance of international artistic exchange amidst our profoundly unsettled present. Organised by the University of Salford Art Collection, Open Eye Gallery, and CFCCA, this online festival should offer some fascinating new perspectives on the current climate and the role of the arts in helping to shape new futures.
