Can our city pull off what Venice did and host its own art biennale?

In August, M+ museum hosted an event to look back on the works presented by Hong Kong artists in recent editions of Art Biennale in Venice. During the questions and answers session, a man in the audience asked the panel - comprising artists and curators who have represented Hong Kong in various biennales - if Hong Kong might get round to hosting an art biennale of its own at some point.

It’s an ambitious proposition, if not somewhat inappropriate, given the timing. Surely Hong Kong has more pressing issues to deal with at the moment than trying to put together an art biennale on a scale comparable to that of Venice. Venice’s Art Biennale is at least 10 times the size of Hong Kong Art Basel - the city’s flagship annual art event. While Hong Kong Art Basel covers 14,000 square meters of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, and attracted 93,000 visitors in its last edition, Arsenale, one of the two main venues of Art Biennale in Venice, alone measures 50,000 square meters, not counting the 93 national pavilions, and the themed shows in Giardini del Castello. Art Biennale lasts seven months, draws over 500,000 visitors and is indeed gargantuan compared to other large-scale, high-profile art fairs around the world.

Hong Kong has a mature, informed audience. It also has the ability to attract the capital needed to sustain massive shows designed around contemporary art

And yet nobody in the room thought it was preposterous to suggest if it might be possible to pull off a Venice in Hong Kong. For although Hong Kong’s image as a prospective host of what is sometimes described as the Olympics of art has taken a beating in the recent months, there is indeed a lot going for this city, culturally speaking.

First, Hong Kong has a mature, informed audience. It also has the ability to attract the capital needed to sustain massive shows designed around contemporary art. This has been proved beyond doubt by the tremendous growth of Hong Kong Art Basel which in its wake has spun off an art-themed industry featuring at least three other art fairs, gallery openings, auctions, performances, rides and charity dinners - all running simultaneously. If one were to count these ancillary events, taking place all over the city, and the pervasive carnivalesque vibe in the air, Hong Kong’s art fair week in March already resonated with Venice’s Art Biennale.

Second, the local government’s support toward the cultivation and exposition of art in Hong Kong is remarkably generous, if the funds allocated to cultural development in the last annual budget is anything to go by.

When art, audience and political will are aligned, more than half the battle is won. But does Hong Kong have the space to host an art biennale? While it might be difficult to find a sprawling 50,000 square meter erstwhile military dockyard such as Venice’s Arsenale in Hong Kong, the city has its own set of structures that bear the marks of its industrial past and have since fallen to disuse, in Wong Chuk Hang or Fo Tan, for example - the difference with Venice being that shop floors are often stacked above one another rather than spread out horizontally.

Although having to climb across floors may not be the most conventional way to experience an art biennale, I imagine Hong Kong’s architects are capable of finding creative solutions to negotiate the heights - building external lifts and skywalks between high-rises, if necessary. This might be an opportunity to explore the potential of vertical architecture in a myriad of ways.

Venice Biennale was launched in 1895 with a view to giving a boost to the city’s sagging tourism prospects and establishing its credentials as a leading center of avant-garde art. It’s a model that requires huge investment - in terms of money but perhaps more so in terms of genuine intent to bring about a positive change in people’s lives. Still, it is probably worth a try.