Fantasy journey wins top prize

To win Asia's largest prize for contemporary art, Laurent Gutierrez and Valerie Portefaix fulfilled a fantasy which had drawn them from France to Hong Kong nearly 20 years ago.

"We were fascinated by ports, and at the time, Hong Kong had the world's largest," said Portefaix. "People think of Hong Kong as this dense city, but it's in fact a cluster of islands and ports.

"We wanted to show what it feels like being on these highways of container ships." Their winning entry for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, titled Back Home with Baudelaire, No. 5 , is the product of a journey the artistic duo took aboard a French container ship called Baudelaire, going from Yantian port in Shenzhen to Hong Kong, captured in a collection of 10 panoramic images and a 16-minute film.

Established in 2003, the Sovereign Asian Art Prize is Asia's longest-running and largest prize for the arts, with a US$30,000 grand prize.

The submissions from the 29 finalists were auctioned at a gala dinner last night, with 50 per cent of the proceeds going to the artists and the other 50 per cent used to support art education and art therapy programmes in poor communities across Asia.

"The prize is based in Hong Kong and we want to give back to the city. We will be developing a new project working with residents of the city's cage homes," said Howard Bilton, founder of the charity, The Sovereign Art Foundation and chairman of the Sovereign Group.