Proposal Abstract

I grew up in Hong Kong and have spent over half of my life there. I currently visit at least twice a year. I am a commercial illustrator, as well as a printmaker, and try where possible to combine the two, especially in my HK work. I’d like to present an illustrated talk about my largest public art printmaking project in HK: the permanent interior artwork of Cheung Sha Wan MTR station. I was commissioned to create the artwork for the large scale renovation of the entire station. It was an intense two-year project that incorporated over 100 individual etchings.

Cheung Sha Wan was becoming a residential area, as light industry and factories moved away, so I chose ‘The Home’ as my theme, and created artworks to draw attention to small everyday things that are often taken for granted in the home. I titled the project ‘Teapots, bowls, cups and some spoons’.

As a direct result of the construction process for the panelling in the station, I developed a multi-plate printmaking technique for my artwork. I’d like to show this, and talk about the issues of scale I encountered. I incorporated many different cultural elements into the work, through small details and patterns inside the individual prints, and I would like to describe their cultural significance, and how they reflected the local community.

I would like to present this talk in the ‘crossing boundaries’ category, and highlight the many boundaries I navigated in working on this project: from industrial to residential, from paper print to metal panel on the wall, and from small to large scale. The most significant boundary for me was moving from creating intimate personal work to filling a large public space, where my work serves a community larger than just an art gallery.