A lingering remnant of the Biennale reminds us we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone, writes Mary Agnew

As the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale comes to a close at the end of this month, the multitude of installations and exhibitions will be boxed up and inevitably broken down, returning the West Kowloon district to its pre-Christmas state of development. The only part of the 2009 biennale not located on the West Kowloon site, and the singular work that will continue after the biennale has finished, is a subtle and easily overlooked installation called ‘Excavation / Regeneration’ by architects and designers Kingsley Ng, Syren Johnstone and Daniel Patzold in Hong Kong’s oldest market on Gage Street, Central.

As part of a two-stage plan, the trio of designers approached Mrs Chow Yuk-yee, a flower merchant, who’s family have been present in the market her whole life. They asked if she would allow them to remove the 30-year-old, bottle green, corroded booth she used to store her blossoming goods to the West Kowloon biennale site and replace it with a new, visually similar but inherently different version on the market road. She cautiously acquiesced.

What now stands on Gage Street could easily be mistaken for the former occupant gussied up with a new paint job. The “regenerated” booth hides an improved ventilation system that will prevent the summer heat wilting Chow’s ephemeral wares. The ghostly markings of the graffiti of its predecessor are etched into its sides, using reflective paint that is only visible at night when the artificial light of a torch or a camera flash is shone directly on it. The effect is both ethereal and benevolent.

The project works to highlight how common staples of our urban landscape seem to exist in a perpetual state of fading, slowly disappearing and being replaced. This disintegration is often so gradual that, before we notice its absence, a once-familiar aspect of everyday life his all but disappeared, only to live on in sentimental collective memory.

As careful and contemplative as the efforts have been to assimilate the new booth into the surroundings, the fact remains that the people using the new stall recognise its pariah status. The unveiling of the booth drew sideways glances from other market residents, regarding the object with equal measures of bewilderment and suspicion. But what is most important is the conversation that the project can hopefully ignite. The creators have not presented the stall as a superior replacement to its rusted, retired comrade; it is merely a canny nod to another transient, traditional aesthetic that Hong Kong is in danger of losing.