When British artist Arthur Hacker arrived in Hong Kong in December 1967, a few bombs were still going off as the pro-communist riots tapered off.
The painter and illustrator, who had studied at the Royal College of Art in England, was fascinated by Hong Kong. The people in particular provided fodder for a series of pop art drawings he drew in the early 1970s.
Those pen and ink drawings are on show at an exhibition until Saturday called 'Hong Kong: The Swinging '70s' - Hacker's take on an era when Hong Kong was economically taking off but, in part, was 'a refugee society'.
Hacker has written and illustrated several books on his observations in his adopted home.
The pop-art drawings of the 1970s eventually became a book called Hacker's Hong Kong.
'Pop art is basically a culture rather than an art. When I was at the royal college, it was one of the schools of painting. Pop art is consumer art. A whole lot of buildings, signs, popular things like Mickey Mouse T-shirts. In this case it is the street life of Hong Kong, but some pop artists just did collages. People think of Andy Warhol, but Andy Warhol was a latecomer. Pop art always has a touch of irony to it.'
Using street life with road signs and architecture that were inherent in the wide scope of pop art, Hacker garnishes his drawings with curlicues to show local Hong Kong's young Chinese with Beatles haircuts, and young women in flowery jeans.
