"Dripping with Aurum"

The Shanghai-based art collective Liu Dao opens its inaugural show "Dripping with Aurum" at island6's second space on No. 1 New Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong. A luxe, lush celebration of the city's glorious success, the gold-themed show is a tribute to element no. 79 on the periodic table, which we are all too familiar with. We lust after gold, bedeck our wrists and necks with it, coat it on plates, tables, picture frames and even love it whole. We write songs, sing arias, spin fables and make proverbs about it. In some dizzily decadent moments we even eat it in desserts.

Our passionate love affair with all things aurum is well-grounded. Gold is the most malleable of all metals. Its brilliant yellow stands in contrast to the gray and white of most other metals, and unlike its less exciting cousins, it maintains a proud, lustrous shine without oxidising in air and water.

In many ways, Hong Kong is perfect epitome of the city of gold. The Fragrant Harbour's strategic location has attracted generations of beady-eyed opportunists, from the salt miners of the Han and Tang Dynasty, the colonial-era entrepot traders and the East India Company's opium dealing. Even today, as Asia's fashion and financial hub, Hong Kong still gleams as an El Dorado that attracts punters like the Californian gold mines in the 19th century.

Liu Dao comes across the straits from Shanghai to bask in the glow of the city's rags-to-riches success. In celebration of this, Liu Dao opens in Hong Kong with a multi-coloured electronic artshow rejoicing in all things that twinkle, shimmer, sparkle and dazzle us with their radiance. The familiar pouting, lipsticked LED sirens beckon behind blinking, illuminated towers scattered around orphaned antique furniture that the art collective has breathed new digital life into. Fantastical Oriental papercutting worlds light up with gentle video-animated figures that give viewers a voyeuristic glimpse into their strange quirky lives. In our paean to the most precious metal, Liu Dao has set up a show that is at once exotic, erotic and exhilarating.

Who says that not all that glitters is gold?