Rob Garratt

Hong Kong

Writer and Editor at Freelance

no longer screaming into the void

Articles

8 unmissable global arts festivals to add to your bucket list

1 week ago | cathaypacific.com | Rob Garratt

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The Many Unlived Lives of Tibetan Choreographer Sang Jijia

1 week ago | zolimacitymag.com | Rob Garratt

There were two careers mapped out for Sang Jijia from before he was even born – and neither dancer nor choreographer was in the stars. As one of two boys born to a Tibetan family in a small mountainous village in Xiahe County, in the central Chinese province of Gansu, tradition dictated that he should become either a monk or a translator. “We have just the main street,” Sang remembers of the tiny hometown he was born into in 1973, which his four siblings still call home today.
Hereafter: Hong Kong Composer Charles Kwong’s First Concerto

3 weeks ago | zolimacitymag.com | Rob Garratt

When Super Typhoon Saola struck Hong Kong in summer 2023, there were inevitably those that celebrated time off work, those who mourned missed weekend social engagements, and those that were deeply inconvenienced. But few people might have felt the heartbreak of Charles Kwong, the Hong Kong composer who was looking forward to the world premiere of his first concerto, for piano and orchestra.
Watch out for the auteurs

1 month ago | chinadailyasia.com | Rob Garratt

The 49th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) leans heavily toward art cinema’s traditional heartland, welcoming three European auteurs to share their work and present masterclasses to the city’s cinephiles. But whatever cultural cues Leos Carax, Albert Serra and Juho Kuosmanen might share, the three filmmakers are worlds apart in their aesthetic sensibilities and thematic obsessions. The one trait they all share? The power to provoke.
Watch out for the auteurs

1 month ago | chinadailyhk.com | Rob Garratt

The 49th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) leans heavily toward art cinema’s traditional heartland, welcoming three European auteurs to share their work and present masterclasses to the city’s cinephiles. But whatever cultural cues Leos Carax, Albert Serra and Juho Kuosmanen might share, the three filmmakers are worlds apart in their aesthetic sensibilities and thematic obsessions. The one trait they all share? The power to provoke.
Going solo

1 month ago | chinadailyhk.com | Rob Garratt

The triumph of individual will emerged as an eerily prescient theme at the recent Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF). Many of the most compelling stories told were solo shows, or productions leaning on the prowess and reputation of a single talent. After absorbing more than a dozen works over the weeks-long festival, these are some of the most affecting pieces this writer experienced. Pina unpackedCristiana Morganti wrote Jessica and Me in 2014 as an act of reinvention.
Big, bright and immersive

1 month ago | chinadailyhk.com | Rob Garratt

Hong Kong’s art month is back with a robust offering of public art. Any visitor to Tsim Sha Tsui’s Avenue of Stars can scarcely miss the 7.5-meter-high, brightly colored cartoonesque figure towering over Victoria Harbour. On display through May 13, The Lobster Painter is the latest large-scale steel sculpture by Philip Colbert, who describes the opportunity to display at such an iconic location as “a dream”. “I love the idea of the sculpture, with its dripping paint brush, towering above ...
Think local

1 month ago | chinadailyhk.com | Rob Garratt

As well as gifting the city’s art lovers with an unprecedented opportunity to encounter works from some of the world’s leading galleries, Hong Kong Art Week, observed in the last week of March, also offers an invaluable platform to artists, curators and galleries closer home. At this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong (ABHK), more than half of the 240 participating galleries hail from the Asia-Pacific, including 28 exhibitors with a permanent base in the city.
How Lucid Express Became an Hong Kong Hit Overseas

1 month ago | zolimacitymag.com | Rob Garratt

The hazy, effervescent sonic poetry of Lucid Express appears bathed in a nocturnal, neon half-light – perhaps because it’s normally carved out after midnight. The dreamy indie band are among Hong Kong’s greatest guitar-based exports, one of the few acts to have built a sustained reputation overseas.
HK Arts Festival serves up medley of good, excellent and cliched

2 months ago | chinadailyasia.com | Rob Garratt

Tradition and technology danced hand in hand at the opening weekend of the 53rd Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF) — which swept this writer from an afternoon at a “virtual reality” (VR) ballet to the rousing spectacle of the festival-opening concert by the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna on Feb 28.