How selling Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher a piece of video art changed the life of Hong Kong-based Digital Art Fair co-founder Gillian Howard
- When Carrie Fisher visited the gallery at which Gillian Howard worked to buy a piece of video art no one else was looking at, ‘it was a moment that struck me’
- No one was trading digital art at the time, Howard says – the encounter changed her career and led her to starting the Digital Art Fair
As well as launching one of the most successful film franchises of all time, epoch-making space opera “Star Wars” (1977) made stars of several cast members, including actor, novelist, script editor and raconteur Carrie Fisher, who played the pivotal role of Princess Leia.
Gillian Howard, Hong Kong-based co-founder and global fair director of the Digital Art Fair, explains how the film, and an encounter with its star, changed her life.
It started when I was really little, growing up in Hong Kong. I read a lot as a kid. I remember my dad would go to the news-stand every day, get breakfast, get a newspaper and, if it was a good day, he’d let me have a comic book.
When I was a bit older, my uncle, who used to work at Microsoft, got a computer, and I started spending so much time trying to play video games.
I was fascinated with technology and with science fiction. I was not playing with Barbies. Star Wars was really core to me when I was a teenager.
I wanted to be an artist, but my mum and dad told me, “You will starve.” I went to journalism school because I wanted to make my dad proud, but I still worked in a gallery part time.
After I graduated, I still wanted to be an artist, and I ended up working part time as an art dealer. In 2012, I was hired by an art collector to open a gallery for him in Hong Kong, Erarta Galleries.
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We opened the gallery at a time when Hong Kong had a lot of international travellers. We had a charity function, and Carrie Fisher was there. Then, when we opened the gallery the next day, she walked through the door – I remember I was still moving glasses away from the opening party the night before.
She said, “Hi, can you walk me through the gallery?” I didn’t recognise her at the time. I thought, “I know you from somewhere.”
There was an artist she was fixated on, Alexander Fedorov, and his work of video art Natural Habitat. How significant that moment was for me: she was looking at a piece of video art that no one else was looking at.
It was a moment that struck me. I shipped the work to her home in Los Angeles, on a USB stick inside a wooden box. It was weird for me as a dealer: no one else was trading digital art at the time.
I was 23 years old, just graduated from school, selling video art for the first time – and it was to Carrie Fisher.
She was in the gallery for about an hour, and then she kept in touch for a long time – phone calls as well. She would write to me and ask me about the history of the artist. She was such a lovely, sweet lady.
It’s the sort of story that doesn’t come about that often in life. I’m really glad that it happened in mine. It changed my career, and led to me starting the Digital Art Fair.
