While Hong Kong’s hotly anticipated museum of visual culture M+ may not be slated to open its Herzog & de Mueron-designed doors until 2019, it has already made its mark on Hong Kong’s artistic landscape with M+ Pavilion, a permanent space showcasing exhibitions of works from the museum’s unrivalled collection.

Imagined as an elevated platform that both emerges from and blends into its immediate landscape, M+ Pavilion’s mirrored external walls and extended terrace offering views across Victoria Harbour provide a taste of what’s to come from the final space. Serving as the primary site for M+ exhibitions until the completion of the main building, Shifting Objectives: Design from the M+ Collection, which runs from 30 November 2016 until 5 February 2017, is the second show mounted in M+ Pavillion.

The inaugural installation was a site-specific commission by Hong Kong artist Tsang Kin-wah following his participation in the 56th Venice Biennale. Inspired by William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, it was a fully immersive experience that drew on philosophy, literature, religion and popular culture in order to examine the conditions of human existence.

Returning to a more traditional gallery structure for its second exhibition, Shifting Objectives displays more than 120 design objects from 1937 to the present day and investigates the ways that, as our use of these objects has evolved, so has their design. With an internal space designed by Hong Kong-based studio Collective, the presentation has been split into two sections.

The first, Histories, assembles these objects within their historical contexts and looks at how they were shaped by – and indeed helped shape – the social, cultural, economic and political currents of their time, examining narratives of design across Asia from post World War II Japan to the Postmodern era.

Conversely, Constellations presents around 40 works, loosely arranged to encourage viewers to enter into a personal dialogue with each item, whether with its craft, purpose, or otherwise. Highlights from this section include objects by Japanese studio nendo and Hong Kong-based designer and artist Stanley Wong.

Shifting Objectives: Design from the M+ Collection will run from 30 November, 2016 to 5 February, 2017 at M+ Pavillion, West Kowloon Cultural District.

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