Four Hongkongers in running for Sovereign Asian Art Prize

Four Hong Kong artists are on this year's list of 30 finalists vying for the region's biggest art award, the Sovereign Asian Art Prize.

And some of them took the opportunity to call for better funding and support for artists in the city, saying the private sector could not continue to drive development in the arts.

Among the award finalists announced yesterday were local artist Lam Tung-pang's plywood landscape painting .

Movana Chen's , a large work knitted from the shredded pages of her favourite Asian art magazines, is on the list as well. Also shortlisted is the MAP Office - the Hong Kong-based duo Laurent Gutierrez from Morocco and France-born Valerie Portefaix - for , a photography work of a cargo ship's voyage from Yantian port in Shenzhen to Hong Kong. Morgan Wong is in contention with a conceptual digital print work exploring interpersonal space.

Other finalists from across the Asia-Pacific region included Taiwan's Charwei Tsai, whose work is a photograph of a baby octopus on which she has written her passport number to express the feeling of alienation.

, an oil painting by Australian artist Marc Standing, was also selected. The award was founded by the Sovereign Art Foundation in 2004 and is funded by Swiss private bank Julius Baer. Hong Kong artists have won the prize many times in previous years.