Hong Kong the backdrop for outdoor sculpture show beside Victoria Harbour

Twenty-one outdoor sculptures have been unveiled along a stretch of Victoria Harbour’s shore in a major celebration of public art in Hong Kong.

Works by art world superstars such as Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley and Yayoi Kusama feature in the Harbour Arts Sculpture Park, which opened on Thursday, alongside the creations of five Hong Kong artists: Ho Kwun-ting, Matthew Tsang Man-fu, Kacey Wong Kwok-Choi, Morgan Wong Wing-fat, Wong Chi-yung.

They adorn the stretch of open space from Tamar Park next to the city government headquarters in Admiralty to the Hong Kong Arts Centre in Wan Chai.

One of the show’s curators, Tim Marlow, artistic director of the Royal Academy in London, said the 19 participating artists were invited to respond to the city and their choices interact with the dramatic and inspiring backdrop of Hong Kong Island in different ways.

Rasheed Araeen’s Hong Kong Blues (2018) is a minimalist response to the geometry of the Bank of China in the background. Emin picked Roman Standard (2013) – a reinterpretation of the traditional and masculine symbols of power – as a tribute to her late Hong Kong friend David Tang.

Presented by the Hong Kong Arts Centre, the works were selected by Marlow and Fumio Nanjo, director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, and will be on show until April 11.

An app with multilingual audio tours will be launched at the end of February. Come back to SCMP.com this weekend for a full review of the show.