For me, the nineties in Hong Kong was the best of time. While hesitating about climate of the city's future, people inevitably had to move forward. Everything was in motion, everybody worked enthusiastically toward identifying one thing or the other; Chinese, Hong Kongese, pre-colonial, post-colonial, and the degree of Britishness affecting and intervening ordinary people’s lives. For a moment, we did have a cultural identity crisis, and many cultural projects produced around that period reflected just that - who were we as a Hong Kong people? In 1993, I was invited to work on the third phase of a project curated and directed by Wong Wo Bik namely A Metropolis: Visual Research into Contemporary Hong Kong 1990-1996. My contribution to the project was to take portraits of selected artists, who were from different area. Basically we knew each other well because there weren’t many working in the arts and it was a small and tight-knit circle. However, they represented certain aspect of Hong Kong activities and creativities in the nineties, and admittedly they were among the best in the art field. In the course of organizing some old pictures I came across these six prints again, but found one - Sunny Pang's portrait missing. Instead I located the test strip. As a matter of fact, this mini series of portraits had never been officially exhibited. The 8x10 prints that I found and which are on view here were work prints, a small part of the printing materials for the more substantial book printed in 1996 as a result of the multi-year visual research project.
尊子 Zunzi (cartoonist)
梅卓燕 Mui Cheuk-Yin (Dancer, Choreographer)
黃仁逵 Yank Wong (Painter)
鄧達智 William Tang (Fashion Designer)
唐景森 Tong King Sum (Sculptor)
彭錦耀 Sunny Pang (Dancer, Choreographer, Performing artist)