On the verge of getting a world-class visual arts museum and famed for being an art auction powerhouse, Hong Kong should better recognise – finally – the amazing talent already in its midst. Edmund Lee gives a shout-out to 22 of our city’s best artists. Photography by Calvin Sit.

Describe your work in the briefest way possible.
Extraordinary imaginations. I bring out another dimension to the everyday life.

How did it begin?
The dividing line is July 2003, when I started to publish my artworks in Ming Pao. As I had to consider the readers’ interest and, at the same time, find ideas from something close to myself (so that I could produce that huge amount of works), my practice began to shift towards the everyday life.

I gather you’ve worked in most media?
Rather than something like photography or painting, I’d say I do literally create through the ‘media’: newspapers, magazines, publishing, Facebook, websites and television programmes.

Why do you pick Guangzhou’s Vitamin Creative Space to represent you?
Not many people know how to sell my works (or maybe there’s hardly any selling point about them), but Vitamin understands me very well.

What are you bringing to the project Mobile M+: Yau Ma Tei (May 15-Jun 10)?
It’s a community-based project that includes various elements: there will be lessons for the public, a group of products that we can sell, as well as collaborations with several shops in the area which we’ll turn into exhibition sites. They’re all based on ideas that I jot down in my sketchbooks.

What kind of products will you be selling?
The ‘products’ are not necessarily objects, but they may be services and attitudes as well. Take for an example: I’ve noticed that all the statues of deities we see on Temple Street are facing the front; we never have any statue that has its back on us. So I’m going to develop a religion in which you pray with your back to the statue. Swindler alert!

So in general, what’s the message that this project seeks to deliver?
This is a very ambiguous project. It’s called L. I’m trying not to explain what it means. Anyway, I’m hoping to promote a life attitude – a [different] way to see things – which people can achieve through art.

www.oneeyeman.com

Images:
1) Pak Sheung-chuen
2) Measuring the Size of the Sea Storing in a Library (performance art, 2008)
3) A Travel without Visual Experience (photography, Oct 7-11, 2008)
4) A Present to the Central Government (newspaper, 2005)

| Wilson Shieh | Leung Chi-wo | Ho Sin-tung | Wong Wai-yin | Kwan Sheung-chi | Adrian Wong | Magdalen Wong | Kacey Wong | Chow Chun-fai | Joey Leung Ka-yin | Nadim Abbas | Lee Kit | Stephanie Sin | Stanley Wong aka anothermountainman | Simon Birch | Lam Tung-pang | Ivy Ma | Samson Young | Au Hoi-lam | Pak Sheung-chuen | Tang Kwok-hin | Tsang Kin-wah |