Key's Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, is part of Arrivals and Departures: New Art Perceptions of Hong Kong, which opened at the Urbis gallery in Manchester last week. Billed as the first major exhibition on Hong Kong in Britain and timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the handover, the show features works from 10 Chinese artists, half from Britain and half from Hong Kong.

The show, which runs until March 11, features a wide range of works in formats including photographs, paintings, sketches, sound and video.

The exhibition aims to be an 'in-depth exploration and investigation of Hong Kong', its curators say. The artists have explored topics such as the changing relationship of Hongkongers to Britain since the handover. Using both British-born and Hong Kong-born artists presents a dual perspective.

'We wanted to remind the British public of its relationship with Hong Kong,' says co-curator Sally Lai. 'And how the consequences are still being lived out, through Chinatown and the second and third generations now in the UK.'

Many of the artists featured are relatively young and unknown. 'We didn't want to do a show of stuff from the past 10 years,' Lai says. 'We wanted people that were new and fresh. We really wanted not just to show established Hong Kong artists.'

Lai and co-curator Ling Yuen-fong came up with the idea for the show 21/2 years ago, then took the unusual step of taking five British-Chinese artists to Hong Kong on a research trip. Lai and Ling, both British-born, also enlisted the help of two Hong Kong-based curators: Howard Chan, co-founder of the Community Museum Project, and Siu King-chung, an assistant professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Key contributes two other thought-provoking works, apart from his tinfoil tower. Free Delivery II is a table top-sized map of Britain covered with flags representing the numbers and location of Chinese takeout restaurants in the country. The tallest flags are in London and Manchester and other urban centres, but there are red flags scattered across the country - some as remote as the Outer Hebrides off Scotland. There are 8,764 flags in all, representing something of a roadmap of Chinese immigration.

Key's bok gwai is a life-size kitchen built from 3,500 takeaway containers and wood strips. With most of Britain's 250,000-strong Chinese community in the restaurant and catering industry, Key says the kitchen is a symbol of their struggle to fit in. Like other immigrants, the Chinese have found that so-called food colonisation can lead to acceptance. 'Once ingested, it's no longer dangerous,' Key says. Food is only one aspect the artists have explored. Other works include Leung Mee-ping's Made in Shenzhen, a series of intentionally kitschy paintings of typical Hong Kong scenes favoured by mainland tourists such as the Big Buddha, Disneyland and subtitled movie stills featuring Bruce Lee, Chow Yun-fat and Jackie Chan.

It's an attempt to simulate Hong Kong through the eyes of mainland tourists. 'It's not painting as art. These are replicas that are painted very quickly in different sizes that the customer wants,' says Siu.

Manchester-based Kwong Lee contributes Mr Francis, Mrs Lee and Me, a video installation with two screens, one showing his interview with the elderly Mrs Lee as she recounts her life in Hong Kong and subsequent move to Britain. On the opposite screen, the artist interviews his former gym teacher, a Welshman who has since moved to Hong Kong to teach.

London-based Mayling To's The Land Behind is an 18-minute video documentary of her father talking about his turbulent family history, set to video images of the Pearl River Delta.

Tam Wai-ping's Floating Land comprises a block of melting ice - frozen British water - inside which is suspended sand from a Hong Kong beach that was originally imported from the mainland. It's a metaphor, he says, for Hong Kong's two competing influences. 'Nothing is from Hong Kong. The sand is from China, the water is British,' the Hongkonger says.

One of the most striking works is by Gordon Cheung, a rising star on Britain's art scene. Milgram's Progress is a giant tableau filled with metaphors for China's transformation into a superpower. Using stock tables from the pink-paged Financial Times as a base, he has created a future netherworld using ink and acrylic, oil and spray paint. In one corner, ominous black skyscrapers rise, with images of Monkey from Journey to the West pursued by a demon mimicking his shape. A spike rises in the centre: it could be a bolt of energy, a stock chart or a skyscraper. In another corner, workers from an old communist propaganda poster are reversed in colour and look like zombies. They tug on a rope attached to a scene depicting experiments by psychologist Stanley Milgram, who studied the willingness of people to obey authority.

It's a comment on China's transition from socialism to capitalism, and how consumerism turns people into zombies, Cheung says. 'I wanted to capture a sense of how China is becoming a new superpower ... and the new world order in flux.'

Arrivals and Departures: New Art Perspectives of Hong Kong, Urbis in Manchester, England. Ends March 11