Spring Workshop is a nonprofit arts organization based in Hong Kong. Founded in 2011 as a residency program and exhibition space, Spring has been called "rather enjoyably resistant to categorization" and a “visual arts equivalent to a hacker space.” In 2016, Spring received the Prudential Eye Award for Best Asian Contemporary Art Organization.
History
Spring Workshop has worked with more than 350 local and international residents and collaborators, including Ming Wong, Wu Tsang, Heman Chong, Wong Wai Yin, Qiu Zhijie, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Ho Tzu Nyen, Melati Suryodarmo, Jalal Toufic and Michael Friedman. Spring has organized over 100 public programs, exhibitions, and produced several publications. Located in the industrial neighborhood of Wong Chuk Hang, the organization is housed in a 14,500 sq. ft of warehouse space, including studios, an exhibition space, kitchen, lounge, and a terrace—providing a live/work set up for both short-term visits and long-term research and production for artists, curators, writers, researchers, and musicians. The organization has helped address the shortage of space faced by creatives in Hong Kong where many artists, designers, and architects occupy industrial blocks in Fo Tan, Kwun Tong, and Chai Wan. Spring is privately funded and conceived as a five-year initiative with the aim to experiment with the way art is produced, experienced, and supported. In 2016, the founder Mimi Brown stated that Spring, at the end of its five-year run, would enter a period "where it can lay fallow for a while like a field."
Exhibitions and programs
The Spring team has produced various research-driven exhibitions that were organized in collaboration with their residents. These exhibitions include A Collective Present with Tiffany Chung and Koki Tanaka ; Sailing Through Ha Bik Chuen’s Archive with John Batten ; Without Trying with Wong Wai Yin ; Duilian with Wu Tsang ; Days push off into nights ; The Permeability of Certain Matters with Christodoulos Panayiotou and Philip Wiegard ; Adventures in Reality with Michael Friedman ; and The Universe of Naming with Qiu Zhijie. Aside from exhibitions, Spring has commissioned works for ongoing display from Hong Kong artists Kacey Wong, and ESKYIU, while also featuring works by Magdalen Wong and Iftikhar Dadi, among others. Spring has also collaborated with many non-profit arts organizations in Hong Kong and abroad, such as Asia Art Archive, Para Site, Tai Kwun, Videotage, and Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, among others, to create and host exhibitions and programs. Spring's first presentation in 2011 of Yang Fudong'sThe Fifth Night was in collaboration with Videotage. Sumangala Damodaran's Singing Resistance was conceived with Claire Hsu in partnership with Asia Art Archive. Spring presented the performance program for the exhibition Taiping Tianguo, curated by Doryun Chong and Cosmin Costinas, as well as Islands Off the Shores of Asia, curated by Inti Guerrero and Cosmin Costinas of Para Site, which highlighted work by Ming Wong developed over his two residencies. The organization hosted the HKNME's Modern Academy music education program for young professionals, and a dance program created by Happ’art featuring the work of choreographer Bruno Isakovic. It hosted M+/Design Trust grantees Ling Fan and Joseph Grima as residents. Ari Benjamin Meyers's An exposition, not an exhibition was presented as a prelude to the launch of the Kunsthalle for Music with Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. Moderation was co-created with artist Heman Chong and curator Defne Ayas, former director of Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, and featured several programs, including Guilty Pleasures by Ang Song Ming; Incidents of Travel, a program conceived by Latitudes featuring Nadim Abbas, Yuk King Tan, Ho Sin Tung, and Samson Young, A Fictional Residency with Oscar van den Boogaard, and The Social Contract by A Constructed World. In 2018, Spring presented Dismantling the Scaffold—the inaugural contemporary art exhibition at Tai Kwun, the center for heritage and arts located at the former Central Police Station complex in Hong Kong. Dismantling the Scaffold is considered as "an introduction to a new cultural monument in the city." The exhibition was curated by Christina Li, who organized several key projects during her tenure as Spring's director between 2015–17.
Publications
Spring has produced a group of publications that use non-traditional publishing and production formats. A Fictional Residency and The HK FARMers’ Almanac were produced by writers onsite in a book-sprint format. Stationary 1 was distributed hand-to-hand as a gift; Stationary 2 arrived in email inboxes at the recipient's invitation. The ten seconds that determine whether A gets made into a work is a two-volume pocket set from artist Wong Wai Yin.
