Japan after Hiroshima, Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge – abstract artist in Hong Kong distils a lifetime in Asia
- Brian Tilbrook’s first Hong Kong art show was in the 1960s. As he puts the finishing touches to works for a new one, he reflects on a lucky life spent in Asia
Brian Tilbrook – artist, set designer, former teacher and long-term Hong Kong resident – turns 90 on February 18, which is also the day an 11-week exhibition of his work was due to open at the University Museum and Art Gallery at the University of Hong Kong. The gallery is currently closed because of Covid-19 restrictions but Tilbrook is confident it will, eventually, open.
“It doesn’t bother me in the slightest if it’s six weeks or five weeks,” he says. Clamouring for space is not an unknown concept for Tilbrook: “I’ll even settle for two weeks.”
In the old days – before the Hong Kong Museum of Art, or M+ – there was never enough space for Hong Kong exhibitions. A lottery would be held for the brief, prime slots at City Hall.
The genial, fresh-faced Tilbrook recalls “the manager drawing my name out of the bag and saying, ‘Oh, Brian! You’ve got the plum week’”. Here, the artist gives a tiny frown and murmurs, “He shouldn’t have said that, he should have said, ‘Mr Tilbrook’ … That was the best allocation at the time. I’d have hated other artists standing around to think I’d been given preferential treatment and I don’t think I had.”
