Just 30 centimetres high and oozing attitude, these figurines encapsulate all the icons of hip-hop: colourful, oversized shirts, baggy jeans worn at the hip, namebrand skateboards and manifest cynicism. From their savvy faces to their miniature clothes and shoes, they are the intricate work of award-winning painter Michael Lau Kin-man. Which begs the question: why would an ostensibly serious artist, named 'most promising' at the 11th Philippe Charriol Foundation Modern Art Competition in 1996, devote a whole year to making toys, present them at a commercial exhibition and announce he would spend the foreseeable future in a similar fashion? But Lau, 29, doesn't expect to be understood. He knows most people are intolerant of unconventional behaviour. He calls his 102 figures by the collective name Gardener, taken from his 1996 exhibition, Water Garden, which featured 16 mixed-medium portrayals of himself swimming under water, eyes closed, oblivious to the outside world. Artists are similar to gardeners, he says: both enjoy the hours they spend working, although others may feel they are fools wasting time on useless things.
He was introduced to hip-hop a few years ago by local graffiti artists and skateboarders and fell in love with the culture. He is fascinated by everything from the easily identifiable hip-hop attire to the attitude, which he says is not as laid back as it appears but hides a cynicism that is revealed in graffiti and music. It is a misunderstood group, he says, not unlike the gardeners in art.
Gardener started with Maxx, a sullen, goateed skateboarder who made his debut a year ago in a comic strip in the weekly magazine East Touch. In a series of full-page, colour drawings, Lau developed a whole world around his hero. Inspired, he made the first set of 10 figurines, including Maxx, his kindergarten-teacher girlfriend Miss, his dog BB, who was given a human head because people treat their pets like people, and his friends, the lantern-jawed Square, the bald and tattooed Tattoo, and the scooter freak Billy.
The figurines, which were displayed at the 1998 Toy Show, were made with parts from real action figures so they appeared to be mass-produced; in fact, it took two days and about $600 to make each one. Besides variations on the original characters - younger versions, or with wakeboards or snowboards - Lau invented new characters. These included the bad guys, Lazys, likenesses of Lau's real-life friends from local rock band Lazymuthafuka; the Four Guilty Gardeners, incarnations of the sins of the subculture who get caught so often their heads are permanently covered by paper bags; and Lau's tribute to hip-hop art, eight graffiti artists named after spray paints with nozzles for heads.
The cliched struggle between artistic integrity and commercialism has never been a concern to Lau. He sees going commercial as a way to bring him closer to his wish of making Gardener an imaginary world that young people can identify with and participate in. Already he is close to reaching deals with street-fashion labels and toy manufacturers in Japan and the United States. He has even made a figurine of the creative director of New York-based, hip-hop clothing brand Alphanumeric, Alyasha J.
Owerka-Moore. So expect to see these street-gang versions of Action Men in a toy shop near you soon.
