Industrial chic

Wah Luen Industrial Building, Fo Tan

Even before we moved to Hong Kong, we had read about this interesting town in the New Territories where many artists has settled. Similarly to somewhere like Brunswick or Fitzroy in my home town of Melbourne, this has become home to many artists because the rents were once cheap, and there were many old industrial buildings that could be rented cheaply as art studios.
This weekend and last weekend, these studios all have an open house, which is called the Fotanian (伙炭), and is now in its tenth year. Luckily for us, we found out it was on before it had finished, rather than afterwards, which would be more usual.
After more than the usual trials and tribulations on the MTR, I met up with M and another friend at Fo Tan station, and we wandered up in what I believed was the right direction. This being a new city to me, and one I have already become lost in, I have a healthy respect for how easy it is for me to become turned around. Perhaps this is not helped by most maps at MTR stations not having north at the top (this seems common here). Apparently the most important axis of the compass for Chinese society is East-West, rather than North-South in whitefella society, so perhaps that is why.
We walked about a kilometre through fascinating blocks of industrial buildings, many seeming to be mechanics workshops, gradually seeing more and more people heading in one direction. As we got closer we started to see signs for the Fotanian, and people clutching their bright pink maps/brochures, and we realised we had come to the right place.
Given that most days I still feel like a tourist here, it was great to be traipsing in and out of these industrial buildings, often walking up and through various truck loading zones, under scaffolding

Much admired bamboo scaffolding

 and often up clanky wheezing industrial elevators. I felt a lot less like a tourist, and much more like an arts-hound, and that has to be good, I think.
Though my accomplices had much busier days than me, and did not have the energy to see everything, we managed to see quite a few studios in the time we were there. There were hundreds of people at this event, and depending on the number and quality of lifts in a building, often quite a wait for a ride up, which added to the sense of anticipation. I was interested by the history of this art community, and how many of the 80+ artists involved are former students of a particular artist, who I think was a lecturer in contemporary art at nearby Chinese University of Hong Kong.
We were investigating studios pretty much at random, as we weren't familiar with any of the names of the artists as far as we could tell, so I was happy when we stumbled upon a ceramic studio at one of the places that we visited. Having learnt pottery in Melbourne for the last few years, I am hoping to find a studio to become part of here, so I noted down the details of the place to check out later. There was the usual variety of work on display, from more functional pieces, to more conscious sculptural pieces, to whimsical creations in a category of their own.

I was quite taken with these red bowls, with their deliberately distorted rim, and little Chinese character (not one I recognised) imprint on the front. I suppose my pottery work tends towards the 'craft' end, wanting to make beautiful but practical objects from clay, so this stoneware was right up my alley.
This particular studio was up on the rooftop of this industrial building so it opened out onto a HUGE terrace (particularly by Hong Kong standards) with interesting views across Fo Tan and to the surrounding hills. I am sure most HongKongers who went up there were secretly thinking, 'Imagine if this was our place, what we could do with this space'. We certainly were.
On a final note, I was interested to see if it was possible to pick the artsy crowd by their clothing, in a way that you probably could do in Melbourne (lots of black, for starters). However it was not clear that there was a particular subculture of arts lovers gathered at this event, at least not that I could 'read'. I certainly saw a few people dressed in a funky and avante-garde fashion (I must learn how to say, 'Can I take a photo of you?' in Cantonese - can anyone help me with the jyutping for this?) but nothing like what I had expected. It is something I will keep my eye out for, at future culture-vulture type events.