In our only studio visit outside of Fo Tan, we journey to Kennedy Town to meet Nadim Abbas, who studied sculpture at London’s Chelsea College of Art and Design. Abbas also holds an MPhil in comparative literature from Hong Kong University, and is a member of bands The Yours and A Roller Control.

“Watch out for the coral,” he says as we enter the room, which is filled with books and instruments, as well as items that figure in his installation for the exhibition. “I spend a lot of time walking around looking for objects that strike my fancy, particularly in flea markets, ten-dollar shops, and household goods stores,” he notes. We walk by his kitchen, where he has a number of toy models in progress.

Abbas leads us to his office. There’s a framed still from Adrian Wong’s video Hak She Wuih Tuhng Mau Jai (Triads with Kitten) in the room. As we sit down to look at images of his previous work, primarily installation and photography, it becomes apparent that his art practice is steeped in reading and research. “I am one of those people who like to read instruction manuals from cover to cover,” he says. During our conversation, he mentions stories and books by Herman Melville and Philip K. Dick, and references the 1986 Derek Jarman film Caravaggio. The title of a 2008 piece, In the Penal Colony, which showed at 1a space, is a nod to the Franz Kafka short story.

Currently, his thematic preoccupations have shifted, centring on psychology and science. “Science in an aesthetic way,” he clarifies. “For example, I love all these anatomical drawings and illustrations in textbooks.”

When asked about our city’s relationship to contemporary art, he says, “It would be great if more people in Hong Kong talked about art like they talk about last night’s television program; that is, if art could become more engrained in our day-to-day existence.”

The artists:
Tozer Pak Sheung-chuen
Lee Kit
Doris Wong
Leung Chi-wo
Adrian Wong
Nadim Abbas
Tsang Kin-wah