Culture & Leisure

In the opening game of the 2021/22 Hong Kong Premier League on Saturday afternoon, Kitchee, the champion of last season, beat the Eastern by one goal at the Mong Kok Stadium. In the 14th minute, Gavilán, No. 11 of Kitchee, used a made-up shot to score, which made his team win. Under the current COVID-19 prevention policy, the stadium can only accommodate up to 4,800 spectators, compared to 6,664 before the pandemic. 3,163 people came to watch today’s opening battle, reaching 65% of the maximum capacity.  “The fans here are very enthusiastic. I've never been so close to the players in the game,” said Wang Jida, a university student who came to watch the competition for the first time. The opening game is the focus of the league as the two teams were the champions and runners-up last season. Kitchee got 37 points last season to win the title while Eastern got 34 points, only one victory from the championship. Last time the two teams met in the League, Kitchee defeated Eastern 2-0, which directly led to the latter ranking second with a victory gap. This time they still cannot get a result of victory. The competition rules of this season are the same as last season. The eight teams will play in three cycles. After the first two cycles, the top four in the tables enter the “Championship group” to compete for the title in the last cycle, while the remaining four teams enter the “Challenge group”, in which they need to avoid ranking the last and being regulated. HK FC and HK U23 have newly joined the Premier League this season. The returning teams are Kitchee, Eastern, Lee Man, Southern District RSA, Tai Chung, and HK Rangers.  “This year's champion will probably still be Kitchee. Only Eastern and …

  Soluna Fine Arts, an Asian contemporary art gallery with deep roots in South Korea, located in Sheng Wan, hosted a month-long exhibition themed “PRISM” from September to October to celebrate its three-year anniversary. Prism - an optical term - is a piece of glass or transparent material cut with precise angles to reflect or disperse a beam of light, forming a rainbow. It symbolises ways people used to see things with respective judgements and prejudices, the organiser said, as they filter facts and live under their own spectrum. The exhibition displayed 36 pieces of artwork produced by sixteen South Korean artists and one Hong Kong artist collaboratively. One of the exhibits was “Buncheong Tiger” - a pair of classical Korean pottery of white slip and transparent glazes covered with dark stones - crafted by artist Huh Sang-wook. Agnes Wy Ching-yi, the gallery operation manager, said the exhibition aimed to promote Asian contemporary art with its items representing a diversity of cultures and styles across countries. “Many people have known us as an art organisation with a lot of Korean artists, but we are starting to represent and excavate Hong Kong artists as well,” she said. “PRISM” was a milestone to the gallery as for the first time it launched an exhibition on its anniversary, she said, and it gave artists a platform to reflect on their work over the years. Over 500 visitors attended the exhibition, said gallery assistant Hannah Lee. It was open to the public for free. “Since we have to display the artworks from 17 artists in our gallery which is not very spacious, the balance of exposure gained by every single artwork is one of our concerns,” Wu said, speaking of the challenges her team faced in running the exhibition. They had to thus switch …