From small beginnings

Dominic Chan Yun-wai is leaning back in his chair and eyeing his cat, a black and white rescue sitting on his work table. He says he's busy, rising rents are forcing him to move from his studio and office in Ngau Tau Kok to a new shared space a few streets over, but he seems relaxed. He speaks slowly, wearing slippers and a pair of lived-in pyjama pants, and pauses often to gather his thoughts and stroke his beard.

Quiet and measured, you would never guess that Chan is one of Hong Kong's premier guerilla artists and founding member of the loose collective of street artists known as Start From Zero. His lack of a formal art education hasn't seemed to hinder him either.

After secondary school, Chan helped his father in his dry goods store "selling eggs, rice, oil, things like that". But, he says, he hated it; his interests already lay elsewhere.

Street art can be hard to define and often people confuse it with graffiti. Chan explains: "Graffiti is street art but not all street art is graffiti." For Start From Zero, street art can be anything created for display on the street. "Everything can be street art. If you take a s*** on the street it can be street art."

Street artists tend to work in mediums that are fast to put up, to avoid police and suspicious passers-by, and difficult to remove. They use stencils and spray paint, stickers, or posters plastered on walls with wheat paste.

When Chan was in his teens, he saw his first street art: stickers and a poster pasted on a wall near Times Square in Causeway Bay. Intrigued, he began exploring the internet. The art and lifestyle he found online spoke to him. "It's illegal and it's exciting and I can do what I want. I don't need someone telling me how to do it. I do it myself."

When his father retired from the dry goods business six years ago, Chan took the opportunity to try his hand at designing T-shirts. He started meeting other artists with similar tastes and eventually partnered with a friend, Katol, who had a good eye for design and - more importantly - knew how to use computer design software. As their posters and stickers began appearing around Hong Kong on walls, signs and bridges, interest in their collective began to build.

So what is Start From Zero? For Chan, Start From Zero has many meanings. It is a literal description of his experience in street art - he started with no experience or training - and it is also his philosophy: "I want to encourage people, if they're unhappy or something like that, to start from zero. Don't worry about anything, just start again."