Gallery owners Ysabelle & Willem on their new PHD and Hong Kong’s dichotomies.

Sep 3

*Ysabelle Cheung & Willem Molesworth, owners of PHD Group*

Ep.28 | Ysabelle Cheung and Willem Molesworth, gallery founders of the PHD Group in Hong Kong talked about the background of their new gallery, their current exhibition at the Korean Cultural Centre in Hong Kong, and they explained why they are committed to this city despite all the transformative changes in Hong Kong.

Property Holdings Development Group (PHD Group) is a contemporary art gallery with a focus on critical engagement, research, and collaborative practice. Founded in 2021 in Hong Kong, the gallery is situated in a 1970s rooftop clubhouse adapted by BEAU Architects, and shows emerging and mid-career artists from the region.

Ysabelle Cheung is a writer and editor based in Hong Kong. Her fiction writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from Granta, Catapult, and the Rumpus. Her short story ‘Please, Get Out and Dance,’ published in The Margins (AAWW), was nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize. Her essays and cultural criticism have appeared in the Atlantic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Artforum, and Lithub, among others. She is co-founder of the contemporary art gallery Property Holdings Development Group. She is represented by Jade Wong-Baxter at Frances Goldin Literary Agency.

Willem Molesworth is a co-founder of Property Holdings Development Group (PHD Group), a private, contemporary art gallery based in Hong Kong that showcases and represents emerging and mid-career artists from across Asia. He was formerly the director of de Sarthe, where he initiated an annual summer residency program for Hong Kong-based artists. He has staged over fifty contemporary art exhibitions in ten years and has worked closely with dozens of contemporary artists as well as the artwork of many established 20th century artists. He was a board member and vice president of the Hong Kong Art Gallery Association from 2018-2021. Additionally, he co-organized the first two editions of UNSCHEDULED, a boutique, alternative art fair platform in Hong Kong created in response to the pandemic. Willem is a public advocate for the arts and has been quoted in publications such as The Art Newspaper, Tatler, ArtAsiaPacific, Hyperallergic, South China Morning Post, and Le Monde.