The voter registration for this year’s Legislative Council General Election closed earlier this month. The election takes place once every four years, and it includes direct elections from five main geographical constituencies, as well as the functional constituency elections.
However, the right to vote in the functional constituency system has long been controversial. Some criticise the distribution of votes as unfair and exclusive, seeing the system only grants eligible corporations and legal entitles, as well as individuals who are members of those bodies, a chance to vote. As a result, the outcome of the election rests solely on a small number of people, and this also applies to the “Sports, Performing Arts, Culture and Publication” functional constituency. Those involved in the respective industries often claim that their voices aren’t heard or fully represented by their constituency in Legco. The Works spoke to a few stakeholders from the Performing Arts and Culture circles to see why, and how, they think the system is unjust.

The name Impressionism is derived from Oscar-Claude Monet’s work “Impression: Sunrise”, which he first exhibited in 1874 with a group of Paris-based artists. After the exhibition, French art critic Louis Leroy wrote an article where he coined the term “impressionist” to mock the artists, accusing their paintings of being sketchy, unfinished and nothing more than their initial impressions. However, the term was subsequently adopted by Monet and like-minded artists as a way of identifying themselves. Monet was a leader and key figure of the impressionist movement in the 19th century, but it took almost 30 years for the public to finally embrace this new style of art and for Monet himself to become one of the most influential painters in the history of art. The exhibition “Claude Monet: The Spirit of Place” currently showing at the Heritage Museum, in collaboration with Le French May and the Réunion des musées nationaux – Grand Palais, until 11th of July, is showcasing 17 of Monet’s works from the 1870s to the 1910s.

We’re living in an age of smartphones where taking selfies is very common practice. However, back in the days, when taking photos of yourself was not possible, painting self-portraits was a very important genre in art history.But for the new series of works by the British artist Antony Micallef, we might have to take a closer look at the changing genre of self-portraiture. Micallef uses his reflection in a mirror as a starting point for his figure paintings, but he doesn’t want his paintings to be read as portraitures. Running until the end of June at Pearl Lam Galleries, visitors can pay a visit to Micallef’s visually-charged figure paintings at its Hong Kong Pedder Building space.