Photographer Belinda Bath’s Hong Kong home is her gallery
The Australian’s Choi Hung apartment is a carefully controlled riot of colour, filled with her signature photomontages and curios
Photographer Belinda Bath’s Choi Hung apartment is so engaging, it’s hard to know where to lay your gaze. Her signature colour-themed photomontages of Hong Kong adorn the walls, and intriguing objects – a bowl of mooncake moulds, intricately painted ceramic pots, vintage letterboxes – cover almost every surface. And yet, she says, this isn’t how she would ordinarily choose to decorate her home.
“My preferred style is mid-century and modernist with limited clutter. However, being a photographic stylist by trade, acquiring clutter comes with the territory,” Bath says. “There’s no way I would have all my work on show either – I’m just not that sort of person. But my home acts as my gallery space. It’s the only place people can come and see everything displayed. While the website is great, it is only 2D and doesn’t offer the same impact as the canvasses and prints actually hanging on the walls.”
I think in colour. People are often scared of using bold colour in their homes but you have to be brave and work with shades that you love.
Colour is clearly what Bath does best. While some people might balk at the multitude of shades and tones in a relatively small space, Bath has a curator’s eye for what works well. Her collections of curios, which she finds in little shops and markets in Hong Kong, the mainland and beyond are arranged according to shade so not only do they look good as a group but they also echo the montages that hang above them. Thus a white shelving cabinet in the dining area boasts a collection of objects in all shades of green to highlight a delicate print of patterned ceramic spoons, while a canvas of pale gold and grey images in the entrance is complemented by bronze pots, copper jugs and warm wood tones.
“I think in colour,” Bath says. “People are often scared of using bold colour in their homes but you have to be brave and work with shades that you love. We live in a society of disposable fashion so you can afford to play with home accessories and change them when trends or your tastes change.”
Bath also enjoys finding treasures to bring back from holidays so, alongside the Hong Kong bric-a-brac are a side table from Turkey, a leather pouffe from Morocco, a vintage chair from Portugal (“Not a cheap option because of the shipping but we fell in love with it”) and a woven reed bull’s head from Spain. Her cupboards, she confesses, are filled with all sorts of weird and wonderful items, to the extent that she thinks she could probably host a mini flea market.