SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, I'm Gary Megan, and welcome to my podcast series, The Gary Megan Show. I've never been one to complicate things, and that includes this title. If you're tuning in, you probably know me, but for those that don't, you have to know that I absolutely love food and travel, and also the opportunity of just talking way too much. In this podcast, we're going to look beyond the world of food and talk to people, whether they're celebrities or sports people, politicians or professionals who trigger my curiosity and interests and have something to share. It's all about their careers, their passions, their beliefs, and maybe some life lessons. So without further ado, let's crack on. So Henya, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for jumping on. We're worlds apart, obviously, and connected by technology. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yes, I think this is our new world. I have to say, one of the things that was a real plus of the pandemic is how much more connected we all became in an extraordinary way. And you know, Zoom, Teams, all of that became our everyday in a way it had never been. And it transented geographies, and you know, it was a good sustainability solution for a little planet.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

I think a lot of us, I know I was complaining about the lack of one-on-one and you know the insights and the inspiration you get when you're in the same room with someone. But now, as things have returned back to normal and I have to fly up to Sydney for a meeting, I'm going, are you sure you just can't do this by Zoom? Because it takes a long time. You know? Yes, it does.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

It does. I mean, look at us here today. You're where are you? In Sydney or in Melbourne? Melbourne. Melbourne.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Yes, we're in Melbourne. So yeah, I mean, it's certainly made a difference. And even though we've returned, I suppose, to, you know, it feels very normal here in Australia now. I always wear it. You know, six months ago. But as we've returned to normal, you can see the stations full of cars on certain days that don't include Monday or Friday. So people are still choosing to work from home. And I quite like it. I think it's a nice return to a new normal, which is we'll see how that goes.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Yes, and it's probably also a recalibration about work-life balance, about what matters, things around value and you know, purpose. It's not a bad thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Absolutely. I must be honest, I was hoping for bigger changes. I think a lot of what people talked about during lockdown was kind of resetting and, like you say, recalibrating, and maybe not connected so much to things and you know, looking at the simpler things to life. But I think human beings quite naturally just they reset back to where they were before, and they still want new cars and big houses, and you know, and we've got elections coming up right now. And yeah, I'm a little disappointed that maybe we haven't been more kind of you know, ambitious, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Ambitious, rough and really to change about change.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Indeed. We need some inspiration.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yes, you do. We do.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Absolutely. I'm not pointing at anybody, I go, but where are our leaders and where is our inspiration? But anyway, you have to tell us because you are, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're the museum director at M Plus in Hong Kong. And I I'll be honest, I've the only way I've seen this is in a kind of virtual sense. And I I've clicked onto a few tours on YouTube, and it is a spectacular building. Can you tell us about it? And tell us a little bit about your role to give the listeners an understanding of what you do.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Absolutely. It is spectacular, but I'm also Australian. So I came to Hong Kong from Sydney, working with Michael Brand at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and what is Sydney Modern, that's about to open in December in Sydney. And prior to that, in Brisbane, where I worked for 20 years, almost 19 years, building collections, working on all kinds of fabulous things, including the Gallery of Modern Art, the expansion there. So museums and museum world, audience building, and actually capital works have been part of my career. And not in a deliberate way, it just happened to be like this. And coming to Hong Kong was extraordinary. For me, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of really a transformative project for our region in Asia. And that's something that I've been advocating for my whole life as a museum worker and thinking about arts and culture and architecture and what we look at and why we look at it. And so to come to Hong Kong and be part, you know, from really working with the architects, and we have great Swiss architects, Herzog Di Morong, who from you know, people would know they did the Bird's Nest at the National Stadium in Beijing. They did the Diang Museum in San Francisco, but also Ted Modern. So we share the same architects for many museums.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

I'm sure the art world, I've listened to a few things where the art world was very excited to have a new center of art in a different part of the world with those kind of connections.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

That's right. And I think it's about a leadership role that Hong Kong is playing in relation to Asia. And the building is absolutely spectacular. I think Herzog and Dimore, Jacques and Pierre, Askan and Vim, they are the four architects that really worked on M ⁇ with Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Moron running the project out of Basel in Switzerland. But I think that they were practicing in London and in San Francisco and in Miami where they did the Perez, and they perfected it for us here in Hong Kong. It's a truly magnificent piece of architecture. And we are a museum that also collects architecture and design. So I always say that the museum is, you know, like an embodied collection work.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

It's super from an outsider's perspective, it's like a standalone city. I mean, it sits in on a beautiful site, and obviously, you know, what I've seen as you kind of and pedestrian too. And I've also heard in terms of infrastructure, it kind of belies the complexity. So the serenity above and the complexity below, because essentially it's reclaimed land, transport systems like the metro, all underneath. So this was it's not even a ground-up, it's a below ground up exercise, enormous.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

It's an extraordinary piece of engineering as well, when you think about it, because this whole West Gowloon district was not there in 1991. And then it was there. It was reclaimed as part of developing the MTR lines, the metro lines, the airport expressway, as well as the big Western Harbour Tunnel. Interestingly, Hong Kong Island does not have any bridges coming into Hong Kong Island. There are bridges around us, you know, in the new territories and in Kowloon side, but all of the access onto Hong Kong Island is under through the water, under the sea. And so it has this beautiful pristine edge to it, because you don't see these bridges coming in, except you go under the ground. And our site looks onto Hong Kong Island, and it is the postcard view, really, of this incredible vertical city. And it it's the first city, you know, it's the first Asian city that went up into the sky. We know it now in right across Tokyo or Bombay or Shanghai, you know, these intense, huge, multi-million people cities. But Hong Kong was the first that went up into the sky, and the density is concentrated as a result, but the infrastructure then becomes far more powerful. So, you know, over 85% of Hong Kongers do not own a car, which means that the public transport system is extraordinary. And all of us walk, catch the metro buses, and so that connectivity is something that is fabulous and it's a very sustainable solution. And we are, you know, when we didn't have uh the pandemic, we welcomed 80 million people into Hong Kong in any one year. No city does that in the whole world. And the museum sits within, you know, three-minute walk from the airport expressway. So when we reopen, which of course we will, it's coming. It will come back. And you know, the expressway is also right next to the fast rail link into the mainland. Of the 80 million, I think something like 35, 38 million uh mainland visitors who come in into Hong Kong as well. So these numbers are truly extraordinary. You know, in London, New York don't welcome that kind of volume of people. And we're at you know, relatively small Asian city at seven and a half million.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

But right in the heart of it. I mean you're half of the world's population within, you know, what are we talking? Seven or eight hours flight. So it's it's incredible connectivity in terms of people visiting. I'd imagine that people are just going to visit for the weekend, much like they do Mona in Tasmania, where it becomes a destination in itself.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

It is a destination in itself, and actually the whole of the district is a destination because we have performing arts. We've got another museum coming up, the Palace Museum, and then M Plus, I believe, is a jewel in the crown, and it really is the largest institution of this kind in Asia. And our, you know, comparative institutions are the Pompidou in Paris or the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in terms of scale as well as the interests, the museum's interests, which span architecture, design, moving images, and visual art from the mid-20th century. So it's it's modern and contemporary and into the future. I mean, people ask me why are we called M Plus? And we're called M Plus because when West Kowloon was being developed, you know, from this nothing to a very, very big something, very ambitious program that Hong Kong set out to develop major cultural infrastructure. And there was a three years of public consultation, and the museum advisory group, advising the authority, advised, you know, the people of Hong Kong said they wanted four museums. They wanted a museum for design, they wanted a museum for moving images and cinema, a contemporary art museum, and a museum for ink, ink art, because ink is very radical practice out of Asia. And what the advisory group advised the authority to say don't do four little museums, do one very large museum that was cross-disciplinary, that embraced all of these, but also more, because we're in the 21st century. We don't know what that would mean. But the actual advisory group could not agree on a name to describe this museum. They kept saying it's got to be a museum and more. You know, it's a 21st century. We are forward-looking, we're looking into the future. And there was a designer on the group, Freeman Lauer, Hong Kong designer, very eminent figure, who was asked by the chair of the advisory group to say, okay, we've written our report, we need an emblem. And so let's put museum and more. Can you think of what that looks like? So as a placeholder, M plus was put on the cover of this report. And it never left us. It's perfect.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Well, some of the simplest things.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Some of the simplest things are the best, aren't they? I was thinking more like, you know, BMW M. It's like the performance symbol. No, it's museum and more.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

And the power of plus, you know, it allows us to be so much.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

This might sound very shallow, having explained this, you know, gargantuan project, which really is a commitment in terms of space too. When you see Hong Kong and how you describe, most of us know how, you know, densely populated and how high Hong Kong is, that all of a sudden you've got a park and a museum sitting on a almost a little peninsula, a little island, not quite, but a little peninsula on its own. It's a very much a it's a huge commitment. I think about our Australian kind of infrastructure. I think we're still arguing after 30 years about in Melbourne putting a single rail line from the airport into the city. So it it makes our kind of, you know, almost irrelevant, doesn't it, in terms of expenditure and, you know, grandeur, I suppose. But I have to ask, and this is where I'm saying it might seem a little shallow, but in this era of Instagrammable everything, what's the most instagrammable image that people post always about M plus? Is it an art piece? Is it the building itself?

SPEAKER_00 12:47

It is the building with the art. So we have, as an institution that has embraced moving images, the architects we brief them that you know our site had to embrace all that it could offer. So we have this incredible site, as you said, right on Victoria Harbor. But our tower, we have a tall, thin blade that sits on this huge, flat platform. That blade houses an LED screen, a screen that projects out into the night from 6 p.m. till 11. Our content, our collections, we do artist commissions. It's a very important creative screen. In a city where there is a lot of light and a lot of moving image that's driven by commercial content, this is artistic. That is what is Instagrammed all the time. Because this is a beautiful screen that sits, you know, aro surrounded by high-rise and this great night view of Hong Kong, and you see the screen, and it's a moving image screen.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

And what's been most popular so far? Because I must admit, you know, if I go to Paris, for example, and I go to the Louvre, I have to kind of burrow in on one thing. It's always too big to just kind of wander around aimlessly. You know, I mean I'm English originally, British or English, originally. So going to, you know, mum and dad would always take us up to London, you know, to the museums, and we'd be bored senseless as kids after we'd seen all the big dinosaurs and or whatever it is we were looking at, and we'd had an hour and a half or two hours of you know, of our brains being full to the brim, and then we'd have to walk out. But I do do that still. So what do people kind of burrow into, or what have they burrowed into thus far?

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Oh, many things actually. I have a board member who said to me, So, Sujanyo, what is our Mona Lisa?

unknown 14:31

You know?

SPEAKER_01 14:32

There you go. What a great way of putting it.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Very nice question. And I said, you know, I will not be able to tell you what the Mona Lisa is. It'll be the people who come who'll decide that in many ways. And we have actually six Mona Lisa at this point. We've been open to the public for approximately 11 weeks because we had a terrible three-month closure because of the fifth wave of COVID. We opened on the 12th of November and we have welcomed over 575,000 people. This is incredible. It's around 8,000 people a day coming into the museum. And that's Hong Kongers coming in at this point because we are not.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

But I was going to say that's without the world visiting.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

That's right. And that's a very, very high visitorship. It's like when the Tate Modern opened and they ended up having six million people in a year. No institution in this part of the world or even in Australia has seen that kind of number yet, you know, when we open. So it's it's very interesting to have opened during COVID times and had that kind of public response. So, what are our Mohammed Lisa's? I'm gonna tell you.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

I was gonna say, tell me. Give us one, at least.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Actually, I'll give you two of the six. One is by Sir Anthony Gormley, the great British sculptor, called Asian Field. It's a one work by one artist. It's an epic piece that consists of 200,000 little clay figurines. A work that was made in 2003 in Guangzhou, in just outside Hong Kong, working with 300 people, a village that was right next to a brickworks because he had to fire all of these figures. And it was very simple instruction. Let's make together with clay uh figures. They had to be the size of your hand, they needed to stand, and they needed to have two eyes. Very simple instruction. And little children threw to their grandparents, all these 300 people worked together. They thought they would make maybe, I don't know, 300 people, you think maybe 5,000? They made 200,000 sculptures in five days. We've been able to display 90,000 of those. It's one of the most moving humanitarian pieces of art. Where the question of who is artist, how can I be artist, is kind of explored.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

And the hands that shaped those pieces.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Every single one is different from the other. So it mirrors us as people. You know, we're all the same, but we're also very different. And in that diversity is our magic, you know, but it also such a profound work for our time. You know, we are living in very divided times. It's about thinking about what that people are.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Yeah, but they're people's fingerprints.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Their own efforts, their own hands.

unknown 17:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

So that's one of our Mona Lisas, and the other one sounds good. The other one is a very, very interesting work from our SIG collection called the Civilization Pillar, which is it's about five meters tall, two and a half meters tall, this big pillar made out of fat that has been extruded through liposuction. And it is made by this Beijing duo, artist couple in Beijing, look thinking about China and consumerism and excess, and what does it mean to live in the modern world? And this civilization pillar with has that just been made out of all the fat from human bodies that have come out of liposuction, it is a compelling work. People stand around it and argue why is this an artwork first? Very good question, but also what does this mean about our society today?

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Yeah. And why is it a piece of art? Actually, before you answer that, it reminds me of the Mona and their Ko-Lacca, which is their poon machine. And I think people were asking the same thing, why is this a piece of art? You can smell it first, obviously, before you get to the exhibition, but it's it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Well, you know, art is certainly in the modern and contemporary world, art is a provocation sometimes, it's a thoughtful reflection. And really, the mid-20th century, one of the great figures that allowed us to make art like this is Marcel Duchamp, and we show his work too, because he began to make this proposition that art could be everyday things, but the art of ideas rather than objects per se. And it was a revolutionary idea, a thought. It unlocked so much in so many people, and the questions that it imposes on the audience and the viewer are as important as the thing itself. So it's not necessarily about beautiful technique or you know being able to mimic the real world as a two-dimensional you know space from a three-dimensional reality. We photography kind of liberated artists from that. So then it became uh art that reflected and critically thought about our lives, everyday lives today. So Civilization Pillar with a title like that, with these, you know, fat, human fat literally in there, and why do we do liposuction at all? Really is, you know, art allows us to think about our lived worlds in really very creative, unexpected ways. And there is pleasure in that.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Yeah, and the the the value of shock as well, to make people really stop and think. I like those. I like those pieces personally.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Yeah, I mean Robert Hughes titled his book, The Shock of the New. You're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I actually liked, and it was in, I think, some of the first kind of video and advertising of M Plus with, and you know, I may mispronounce this, but Liang Shu, I think, who did a piece in the Peak, which was described by the museum as an immersive bamboo structure. But for me, what it did was just remind me of and enormous too, you know, creating an entryway, somewhere you could walk. But that almost for me, that was my first experience of Asia, whether it was, you know, Thailand or you know, Hong Kong or, you know, Vietnam is having enormous, you know, could have a six-star hotel under construction, but with bamboo scaffolding, you know, up the side and people shimmying up the side and doing their daily grind, you know. That looked beautiful. It was interwoven, I think, with peach blossoms and just look gorgeous. It's the kind of place for me I would stand in and wander around for a long time. Everybody would leave me behind.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. So the that bamboo structure, you know, the people who make that scaffolding are extraordinary. I I have watched it and they go right up into the sky. It's terrifying on one hand because it feels so flimsy. But bamboo is a an amazing plant. It is revered in Asia because it gives every part of it sustainance from the root which is eaten through to the actual bamboo columns that are used for architecture, but it's used for shade. It has truly Magical status in Asia and has often been, you know, poets have written about it, great beautiful scrolls have appeared with bamboo on it. But this scaffold was exactly thinking about contemporary world. You know, our the IFC and so on were built with bamboo scaffolds going all the way up into the sky. Still happens here in Hong Kong, and it's the strongest because of its flexibility. In a city where we are hit with typhoons, when the typhoon hits, it bends and waves rather than breaks and becomes very dangerous. That's why bamboo scaffold is used even today because it is so flexible.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

It's like a bamboo floor, it's one of the hardest floors you can put in. You can't scratch it, vent it, or anything.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Our museum has bamboo through its flooring because it's also a very, very sustainable wood. It's the most sustainable wood to use today because it you can grow it so fast. So that work is, yeah, very beautiful work that was part of our SIG prize exhibition.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Can I drag the conversation a little bit back to you? Only because I'm fascinated to know, you know, I think growing up I could never decide what I was going to be. It was very late, I think, in my, you know, I suppose mid-teens. So it was kind of late in terms of making a decision about what I was going to do to become a chef and a cook. And most of my friends thought that was very strange at the time. But what leads you into a life of art and curating art and as you're doing now, director of a museum? I think you said probably 10 minutes ago that it wasn't deliberate.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

No.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Certainly moving to Hong Kong wasn't deliberate.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

No, it was an opportunity that came. I, you know, I come from a family of doctors. My father was a doctor, my grandfathers, both of them, were doctors. My uncles, actually, my son is doctor as well. And the it was So you're the odd one out then. Well, but my mother was musician. She was a musician, you know, she was pianist and very interested in creative worlds. And the expectation in, you know, Asian family, you know, the that's a proper job, you know, to be doctor into sciences. It's understood vocation.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yeah, like a doctor accountant.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Yes. So I was meant to go, I still remember Sydney University sitting, going in to enroll and making this very impulsive decision to think, no, I actually know, I want to work in the arts. I'm going to go and enroll in art history in the fine arts department. And that's what I did. That's what I'm going to major in. I I remember going in and enrolling and then sitting on the train, going back home, thinking, oh my God, now I have to go and tell them that I've just gone over there instead of over here. And I remember the dinner conversation that night with my mother and father to say, okay, I've just come back from Sydney University. I've enrolled, but I've enrolled to do art history. I'm not going down the path of science and medicine as the expectation was. I'm just going to go over here. And it was like, really? How are you going to make a living? How are you going to make ends meet? And I didn't know how I was going to do that. But I just think you have to go where your heart leads you, you know?

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Yeah. Do you recognize that there was a trigger earlier on in your life? I mean, rather than that kind of what seems, as you described, there, an impulsive decision. Do you now look back and go, there it was. Were you in that, I don't know, dug their hands into wet paint and you know, were you a touchy feely, you know. Only say that because apparently I did that with food. My mum said I would, you know, in a high chair you have the tray. She said you would constantly use your hands. And I go, well, nothing's changed, Mum. It's the same.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Yeah, I think you're right. It is about who you are inside, even as a young person. And I and you know, I knew at high school I loved doing my art. I did art and music. I was trained cellist, but I did all the science subjects and maths because I knew that the expectation was there. But I couldn't not do these other things. And I had a great music teacher, Richard Gill, and a great art teacher at high school. These people shaped me as a young person, and I loved and enjoyed that work a lot. And I do know that both my mother and father said, you know, work is an important part of adult life. It takes over. It is, it's a huge part of your the time you spend on earth. And you have to choose doing something that you want to do, that you're moved by and love to do. And that in the end was what made that decision a very good one for me.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

So can you actually pinpoint a moment? I'm only trying to find that squidging food in your fingers moment where you might have been doing something as a youngster or as a teenager where you went, This is what I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

It was probably playing in the the youth orchestra. I played in the youth orchestra, but I knew that I wasn't good enough a cellist to do music. I was good, but not good enough, not in my mind. And so I thought then I have to go into the art world. And I did make art as well, but it was really working. John Evans was the name of my art teacher at high school, and every lunchtime I would be there with a couple of others, and we would just talk about what it meant to make art, to do art in the art class, in the studio. Because at high school, the art studio as a classroom looked very different from all the other. You know, it's big tables, as you say, paint, paper, clay, you know, it was a physical space in a way that the classroom is a more structured, it's a different kind of learning. And I loved the studio.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Yeah, and the expectations are different. You're drawing on a different part of your, you know, your creativity or your brain, for sure. Has it been plain sailing as a career? I mean, you found yourself really, you know, at the I would imagine the top of the pile. I mean, when the borders open, it's going to be the most spectacular inflow of people. So you found yourself in this wonderful role. Has it been plain sailing or have there been moments where you've thought this is not for me? Maybe dad, mum and dad were right, I should have been a doctor?

SPEAKER_00 28:24

I have never doubted the work that I've done because I guess the reason I ended up also coming back to Australia, because I went to the UK and spent eight years after I graduated from university, you know, a true Aussie style. You have to go to the UK and Europe and do all of that. And I did that. And I worked in London and I began my museum career as a young intern at the Tate. And what the Tate told me then, you know, 1979, 1980, and it was only one Tate Tate Britain, was that I felt that the conversation around art and visual art was very restricted. And the only place where there was a discussion around Asian art was in the archaeology and the deep history. There was really no one talking about contemporary and modern Asian or Pacific work at the time. And when I came back to Australia, I remember my husband got the job as a director of the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, and I went to Queensland, and Queensland had just begun a project called the Asia Pacific Triennial, and I knocked on the door and I said, You need me, because you're talking about the things I'm interested in and representing people like me, Australians like me, our diversity, our multicultural histories, but also the diaspora from Asia. And that is what really has been a very important part of the work that I have advocated for is to expand our understanding of modern and contemporary design architecture, visual art histories. And that has never left me. And I guess that's what took me also to Sydney when I was recruited as the deputy director there, and that was to work with Michael and the team with Sana, the Japanese architects on the expansion, and then to Hong Kong here, because that is really why I have done the work I have done. I've never really ever felt that I've veered away from that.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

And like you say, if you love it, then you're not looking anywhere else. People ask me the same thing about food. I go, my whole life is wrapped around food and travel. It's just a wonderful thing. I couldn't think of anything else. I love it. I couldn't think of anything else to do. I describe it as always working, always playing. So people say to me, you know, when you go out to eat, are you doing research? I go, of course. But it's secondary but primary at the same time. I'm enjoying myself, but you know, analyzing detail. And the travel's the same part of that. So I love, absolutely love what I do.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

And travel is such an important part of expanding horizon and thinking about all of that. Art and food, if you just think about it, the ingredients are there, but what people do with it are is the most extraordinary thing. It's you know, it's how you put it together, whether it's in Japan or in China or in Australia or in Iran or in the UK, it's incredible what they might do with the lentil.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Yeah, that's right. How many things you can do with how different people, you know, approach it. I heard somewhere, it might have been a little podcast that you did elsewhere, where you were saying that correct me if I'm wrong, but not a future of art. But if you look at the density of the population, the different cultures and histories and how dynamic Asia is, it's not one place, it's many places and many people. Can you explain that a little bit? Because for me, I look at digital art, for example. And you know, when people talk about NFTs and buying sneakers that are a digital representation, we're moving into the metaverse. As a 55-year-old man, I'm like, oh, I think that's left me behind. I try and stay current, but it's unstoppable and on everybody's mind, right? Just as an example of.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Yeah. I've been thinking about it a lot because I, like I said, in good Aussie style, I went to UK and based myself in London and spent 10 years really traveling in the winter time because it was such a grim, damp, dark place, London. And so I would spend November, December, January somewhere else. Often in Europe, I went to East Africa, I went to Central America, to Mexico, to really an Asia to understand and see. You know, it's it's important to learn, and travel was a really important learning experience for me. And what I realized is that half the world's population lives in Asia. You know, that's a big group of people, and the diversity and cultural richness is extraordinary if you look at that space, from the east of the Bosphorus all the way through to the age of Australia. You know, that's a huge landmass and but incredibly rich culture and incredibly diverse cultures. If you you can think about it in food cultures, you know exactly what I mean when I say that. And it's the same in art culture, architecture, design. It's the same level of richness and diversity. And the reason I say that the future is over here is because we are just beginning to explore what that means in relationship to institutions like museum institutions. It's early days.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

I was going to ask, there was uh, you know, they often recognize the UK, Britain, London, for example, in the late 60s, 70s as being a hotbed for music. All those great bands that roll off your tongue all seem to come out of you know turbulent times and you know, in many cases, you know, uh a complete change in the economy and you know life of people in the UK, right? Whether it was, you know, uh Margaret Thatcher and the you know the miners' strikes and all this kind of thing. Is there a a similar hotbed of creativity in Asia now? Is there a s a kind of an epicenter where seemingly the most interesting things are coming from?

SPEAKER_00 34:26

A sort of zeitgeist?

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Is it too broad a thing to it's probably too broad if you say all of Asia, but there are points, you know, there are certain moments where you can see incredible things happened. I would say from the you know, 70s, late 70s in mainland China, the art world exploded. It was like, and that's what the SIG collection at M Plus really tables the four decades from the 70s through to the 2000s, that was an amazing moment of true avant-garde expression. I would also say that in the late 60s in Japan, that was a moment when Japan connected with the UK and parts of northern Europe around architecture design. But what Japan did through Expo in Osaka was to bring in really key Asian voices and take it to another place. We again have those collection experiences here in M ⁇ by bringing in, say, the very experimental architecture studio called Archigram, who I will say in 1964 made the word Zoom as being what we are now doing as part of our everyday Zoom. That was, you know, Peter Cook and all of them imagining this Zoom in 64. Who would have thought? But there it is, I have the drawing up, and that leads me to your NFT and the metaverse. Again, this idea of a second life, another life, is always very appealing. You know, science fictions have explored it in so many ways and suggested it. But how it's being expressed now through this kind of integration of commerce and money and art and this non-fungible token, it's, I have to confess, is still a mystery to me, but I am fascinated by it because it's clearly a generational shift, and a generational shift that is both collective, because there are many, many people who are, you know, who are entering this metaverse and participating. I have to say, on the critical end of the metaverse, and I will say this on the record, that the metaverse right now is a very ugly place. It needs a better, more aesthetic eye in there. I find this not very nice.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

I can't remember the apes, the whole ape thing. I can't even remember what they're called, not angry apes or ugly apes, but it's a there's a whole series of apes that captured people's attention because they were worth money, even though they don't act, you can't hold it. You can never, you know, you can never hang it on your wall. And I just I felt the same way. I go, it's a little grotesque. You know, there's a somebody's got to have a keener eye, you know, to take it forward. But I suppose it's captured people's attention, and you know, it's another opportunity and another avenue for creativity for a different generation. I suppose that's that's why I'm interested in it, because you look you're always excited to see where another generation takes the same things that you've had or looks at the same things in a different way.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

I completely agree with you. You know, like the beginnings of art, you know, whether it's from how mural paintings were made using egg white, for example, completely experimental use by artists, but now that's you know a way of managing beautiful surfaces. It's the same impulse. It is about curiosity and not being fettered by by your time and just thinking, okay, I'm just gonna go out there. It's us you us institutions, we are slow and you know, take time to arrive at what that really means, but that doesn't matter. Artists and makers, and now clearly, you know, influencers and people who are experimenting with these new forms that have brought in the commercial world into it, are deep in it. And I I guess you know, Hong Kong leads because it's a financial world, it's a very much part of the culture here. So to bring those together is it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Yeah, well, there's lots of things going on, whether it's you know it's economics, it's money, it's disposable income, you know, it's demand, isn't it? I mean, I goodness knows what the artist was, but a very expensive car drove past me the other day, and it had for sure modern contemporary Asian art, and they basically just it's almost like they dipped the car in it. I think it was a Mercedes AMG, you know, it's a $350,000 car and completely bespoke, and it captures everybody's attention. You want to knock on the window and said, Who did this? You know, because it's it's just interesting. It's moving around the city and everybody can see it.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Absolutely, and you know, the thing is Hong Kong has developed in a very muscular market, you know, art market. We are now really second to New York. And that's because of the burdening, you know, really a developing, burdening middle class and upper middle class with uh disposable income, and they are coming to Hong Kong to buy art. But the other thing to say what Hong Kong has is an incredible tax system, and it means that the art market can function here without a VAT, a value-added tax on the art, which makes it very attractive.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Can I drag you into Hong Kong a little bit? Because obviously now you live there, and I need to ask you a couple of things about what you love about it, and you know, maybe some if I can drag you into food, if you're interested at all about where your locals are and what that looks like and what it feels like. Could you tell us something about your favorite places and what about Hong Kong?

SPEAKER_00 40:25

I mean, one of the things to say is that Hong Kong is really one of the most incredible cities to be inside. That density gives it an excitement, I'm sure you know it. It is also a really a city that thrives on excellence. They adore very good things, and very good food is a very big part of Hong Kong's culture. And people here adore their wines and cuisines from any part of the world. You know, everybody really embraces that, and I mean everybody, from the little noodle seller on the corner of any little street in the street, and that that noodle seller is very proud of their master stock and talks about it right through to you know a three Michelin star chef. It's the same arc, and that that is something that drives the people here in Hong Kong that makes it a very, very exciting place to be in. I mean, I love being here because every day is a new discovery. You can go to different parts of Hong Kong Island or even Kowloon side, and literally within a square kilometer, you can experience Hong Kong in so many different ways, from the architecture, from the little alleyways through to the streets that just sell cooking wear. You know, it's an amazing thing to walk through, shop after shop. That is looking at you know the bamboo steamers through to chopping knives, beautiful knives that go from tiny little thin, long things to huge, big fat steel. It's full of that visual culture that is very, very rich. And in the museum, we have just opened a two-star Michelin restaurant called Mosu, a Korean chef who's come to set up the restaurant, and the restaurant is booked out till September already.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Fantastic. So what are we now? Which just so people could put it in perspective, listening to the podcast, we're June. Well, just mid-May recording this now. So that's not bad. That's what you call solid interest.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

Thank you. Thank you. That's why for me, the museum to have that kind of relationship with our culture, you know, and that the culture includes food culture, retail culture, our shops are as exciting as the museum's core exhibitions and collections. It's an integrated experience, and that is what Hong Kong does so well.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

I've got so I mean, you know, obviously we haven't been for a few years, but we actually filmed, I think, the very first series of MasterChef, our overseas trip was Hong Kong. And that experience with our contestants and you know, running around the city with camera crews, and it was monsoonal at the time, standing on the peak, you know, in the I think Matt Preston described it in it was in the dragon's breath, you know, we were being swept sideways and looking over this incredible city. But it's that almost, I think at the time, because it was monsoonal, it reminded me of you know, a scene out of Blade Runner, you know, it was tipping down with rain, neons. I think we were in Monkok and actually really deep into it near the markets, and it's just uh an experience and a half. But what I love about it is I remember going to a little speakeasy, you know, up a dodgy old lift, you know, three or four floors. I think it was called Yellow Doris. It's probably not there anymore. And sitting in there and feeling like, I don't know, it felt like prohibition, like we shouldn't have been there. And you know, drinking martinis. And eating some of some of the most delicious food. You know, and that's different to what we're used to, even though we're very we've got great food in Australia. It's very diverse. I mean, this is kind of a celebration of, in in some cases, tradition that is hundreds, if not thousands of years old. Delicious.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

Well, you know, that is also reflected in the cinema cultures of Hong Kong. Or how Hong Kong has been the city that so much of both science fiction but also, you know, Wonka Wai's film celebrated. It was always the future dystopia or utopia, however you wanted to see it. You I still remember Blade Runner had all of those one chai streets, you know, with this moving image of a geisha speaking. That's you know, that's so real, even now, today. And the sense of discovery, as you say, you could go up, you know, a rickety set of stairs and then you open the door and you're in something extraordinary.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

Yeah, 1920 Shanghai or something. You know, out of this world.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Out of this world. And it's still here. I absolutely experience it as part of my weekly, you know, revelations of Hong Kong.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

Where are your must-visits for uh, you know, so when friends start to come and visit you from Australia, where are your you know, three top places other than M plus?

SPEAKER_00 45:27

Other than M plus.

SPEAKER_01 45:28

Uh it's gonna be high on the list, but where are the must, you know, must-go places that you gives you the essential Hong Kong experience?

SPEAKER_00 45:35

In my local area where I live, there is a wonderful gin bar called ping pong. That's a must visit. It's so beautifully done. You actually literally go down a set of it, used to be a ping pong parlour, and that's why it's called ping pong. It's a red door, and it just says ping pong, and you think, what is it? You open the door, you go down, and there it is. The most gorgeous gin bar you could possibly imagine. And with art, you know, with the most incredible djinns that you can think of, and the tonics, and then lovely tapas. So that's a one of my must-do's and must-sees. In terms of walking the streets, I think it's really important to walk in Hong Kong. And I would say walking through the streets of one chai would have to be a must-do. Like you just go, you just go in and out and get lost, and you know, it's wonderful. I love going to the races here, you know, the Happy Valley race course, because you know, Hong Kong without its gambling, without its horses, wouldn't be Hong Kong.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

I used to work for a chef many years ago that uh worked in Hong Kong for a number of years. And he said he could never figure out, he'd come out of London, he could never figure out why at certain times of the day there seemed to be a lot less chefs in the kitchen than there was supposed to be, until he found out they were all nipping out to place bets on the racing. How fantastic is that! And he said, I've worked out, he said I used to chase them down the street, and then I realized it was so much part of the culture that they just revolted against him. You know, it was like rebellion, and he just needed to let them do what they were doing, it made them happy for the rest of the day.

SPEAKER_00 47:19

You know, and it's a very, very safe city as well, because you know, people, I I mean, gambling is is a part of the everyday culture. I remember when my son came to visit during the rugby sevens and he just had such a great time, he couldn't make the last train home, didn't matter. It was like four in the morning. He's just hanging out in a little what they call the pocket park, and there were all these guys who were betting on some board game. Oh some. And so, you know, he decided he would also gamble there. But the experience of that kind of, you know, an unexpected encounter, but so friendly, so safe, so interested in each other and the relationship of a social relationship. This is something also very Hong Kong, you know, it's it's utterly safe city. I can walk at three in the morning anywhere, and it's fine as a woman.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

I'm getting jealous because it needs to be a ticket that gets booked very soon. I'm gonna ask you a couple of you know, kind of rapid fires at the end to get us out, if you don't mind. And we could have talked a lot more, but I'm conscious of your time. So, and they're probably quite predictable, but uh sometimes I quite like the last one. So, what do you gravitate towards?

SPEAKER_00 48:34

I gravitate towards the good things in life.

SPEAKER_01 48:39

I love that. Best trait?

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Best trait is I probably my impulsiveness and willing to listen to everybody. I think that's a good trait. It's probably also my worst trait.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

Yeah, there you go. Too much democracy, not enough autocracy.

SPEAKER_00 48:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

Yeah? Yeah. What are you afraid of?

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Probably getting old. I don't like the thought of getting old at all. I'm getting old, of course. Which is why I should have.

SPEAKER_01 49:05

There's a pleasure in being older and wiser.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

Yes, but I don't like the thought of it.

SPEAKER_01 49:10

I must be honest, I went to dinner with friends, and some of them are older, and they were talking about all the things that they have. And I thought the one thing that I still have is fifteen years on them. I know it sounded terribly selfish, because I'm getting old myself, but I thought, what an invaluable commodity. I don't really care about as I'm getting older, I don't really care about the things, but that what do they call it when you covet youth? It's that idea of eternal youth and coveting youth.

SPEAKER_00 49:41

That's my I do covet youth.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

Yeah. As long as you don't go for liper suction, we're all good. I don't want to see any of you, but M plus that's not you on display, if that makes any sense. If you'd listen to the rest of the podcast. And probably the last one is why do you do what you do?

SPEAKER_00 50:00

Passion. I do what I do because I really believe in it. I have a deep passion for it, and it gives me such joy. I love it. Like you say, what you do, it's like you cannot not do it, right?

SPEAKER_01 50:13

Well, thank you very much. Some wonderful insights, and enough, I suppose, to tease us into thinking about booking a flight to Hong Kong and coming first to the museum rather than the streets of Wan Chai. Although that's a tough one for me. I wouldn't mind streets of Wang Chai first and then heading to West Kowloon via the city of Kowloon first. That's right. Head down to the art centre of Hong Kong. So thank you so much for your time and have a wonderful day. Thanks for being on my podcast.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

Thank you very much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 50:42

Thanks, Hanya. I hope you enjoyed that chat. Don't forget to let me know who you'd love me to talk to. I'll call anybody. Make sure you subscribe to my podcast so you can keep updated with new episodes as they launch.