Fashion, fine art & fun: Hongmen Live

Dyce Productions and clothing company Hongmen Art share the same noble vision: that art's merits should be decided by the people because, after all, it's for the people. Overly idealistic? Far from it: what the creative coalition have up their collective sleeves for JUE festival will be just that, as well as a good old fashioned mix of fun, audience interaction, music, booze and a quite astonishing array of talent.

Hongmen Live takes place this Saturday at the gorgeous River South Arts Centre. Building on the success of last year's Artists' Battle, Bree Harrison, Dyce's energetic executive producer is at it again, this time focusing on digital design. Four artists, two rounds and just thirty minutes to come up with a viable t-shirt design for event partners, Hongmen, all adhering to a per-determined theme. As if that weren't challenge enough, the four brave, creative souls will be designing in front of a live audience, their digital dabblings appearing on massive screens behind for all to see. A judging panel from Hongmen and Shanghai's creative community will peruse, pick holes and praise before deciding who takes home a pretty fabulous 5,000rmb prize.







As an approach to apparel design, it's unorthodox – unless, that is, you happen to be Jon Ang, founder and CEO of Hongmen Art. " The model that we're built on is that of community based design, or crowd sourcing", he explains of the company's framework that sees hundreds of independent designers submit their ideas in monthly online competitions.

"The idea is to bring these people together in order to fuel our core operations. How we source and how we find our designs all come from this competition, and so a live event like this is kind of an extension of that and something we wanted to do both to showcase our top talents, and also to get the word out there that we're looking for artists"

And artists, take note: with a monthly prize fund of 10,000rmb, this is a competition worth entering. Professional, amateur and student designers regularly pocket the cash and thanks to Hongmen's online forum, the talent pool is self motivating, self selecting and, importantly, self monitoring – works must be original and copycats are quickly caught.

"The voting element effectively screens what comes in and of course it's a great way of testing how the designs will fare in the marketplace - a lot of our really good ones have come from a foreign artist who wants to test his work in a Chinese context, for example.

It's quite organic: the better artists I reach, the better quality t shirts I can make. The more I sell, the larger the revenue, so the larger the prize money and the more events I can throw - it's like a built in loop. It's not a charity to support the arts; it's a viable, profitable and systematic way to approach artists with money-making built in. It's both sustainable and open to growth".

So what will Jon and the judges be seeking at Saturday's artstravaganza? What makes a good t-shirt design? The formula sounds deceptively simple: originality, feasibility in terms of cost, and adherence to theme – the creative and collaborative potential of the Hongmen Art platform.

"A painting that has a thousand colours would look great, but you'd never be able to print it on a t-shirt; it would just cost so much money. It takes a lot of skill to use just three colours and still make something that looks good".



Such are the challenges the four contestants – foreign and Chinese; professional, student and amateur – will face on Saturday night, with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop as their weapons of choice.

Alongside the battle will be a contemporary art show comprising some 100 pieces by some of the city's most creative talents (all for sale, should something take your fancy), live graffiti courtesy of Dezio and Fury, live screen-printing by the very talented Idle Beats, glittering video projections by the lovely Tina Sparkles, hip-hop crew The Losst Unknown on the dance floor and Heatwolves on the DJ decks. Oh, and as if such a tantalizing lineup weren't temptation enough, tickets include free entry to the Privé after party, hosted by The Ice Cream Truck.

"The event is all about bringing people together, building a platform and adding some momentum to Shanghai's creative scene" smiles Bree, whose company slogan – fine art as entertainment – is challenging barrier after barrier, awesome event by awesome event. And this latest collaboration with Hongmen promises more of the same: not only some fabulous art, creativity by the bucket load and a cool t-shirt or four to boot, but also, and importantly a Shanghai night not to be missed.

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Fancy winning a pair of tickets to Hongmen Live this Saturday 26 March? Then email us here with the subject line 'Hongmen' as fast as you can type.

Otherwise, tickets are available here, at source on Xinle Lu, or at River South Arts Centre for 69rmb/55rmb (students) pre-sale; or 80rmb/69rmb (students) at the door. Includes one drink.

Doors open at 7pm; battle will commence at 8pm