The Collector | Exhibition celebrates late Hong Kong artist Ha Bik-chuen

I often walk through the mess of Aberdeen Square on my way home, but I have never paid much attention to the sculpture in the middle of the sitting out area that is, more often than not, obscured by festive lights and community banners.

Now that I know more about the artwork, I feel like parting the waves of diners that spill from the fast-food joints around the faux-traditional garden, squeezing through chattering old folk at the water fountain that’s rarely turned on, wading through the shallow pond and giving the sculpture’s pair of brown sails a reverential rub.

Sailing in the Sun (1979) was made by Ha Bik-chuen, an artist best remembered for his substantial contribution to Hong Kong’s art scene from the 1960s up to his death, in 2009. The sculpture doesn’t just represent the self-taught artist, who worked in a wide range of media, including relief prints, photography and paintings. It is also a testament to a time when art was more grass roots and access­ible, and creativity poured out of the dour industrial buildings of nearby Wong Chuk Hang, long before the term “creative economy” was coined.

Art critic John Batten and a team of researchers have pulled these strands together in an exhibition called “John Batten x Ha Bik Chuen Archive” at Spring Workshop, a non-profit art space in Wong Chuk Hang that is spending its final months exploring Hong Kong’s modern history through artists’ eyes.

A short film explains how Sailing in the Sun was Ha’s big break as an artist. In 1978, Hutchison Whampoa organised a competi­tion to design a sculpture for the public square in the middle of Aberdeen Centre, its new residential development. At that time, Ha was not well known in the arts scene, earning his living from making paper flowers, greeting cards and decorative relief paper prints, but he was determined to be recognised as a serious artist.

He entered the contest – and won the top prize of HK$12,000. His abstract design featuring sails under a red sun was put in place the following year, perhaps to compen­sate for how the new buildings blocked any view of the sea.