With Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Richard Hambleton was a pioneer of New York’s street art scene. His darkly humorous works star in new Hong Kong exhibition
- The late Canadian artist Richard Hambleton made his name through an art series that saw him travel to cities and paint fake chalk outlines of murder scenes
- An exhibition of his works at Soho House is representative of the unrestrained street art scene in New York during the 1980s, including the excessive drug use
Art can offer lessons from an artist’s life that the audience can then apply to their own.
“The Last Shadows” is an exhibition of works by the late Richard Hambleton (1952-2017), at Soho House in Sheung Wan. Showcasing the life of the Canadian artist, it is representative of the unrestrained, lively street art scene in New York during the 1980s, including the excessive drug use.
Hambleton is often grouped with giants of modern art such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Compared with his contemporaries, he lived a long life (65 years) – Haring having died aged 31 from Aids and Basquiat at 27 of a heroin overdose.
Hambleton’s career was marked with distinct phases, and “The Last Shadows” captures the essence of each of them – how he progressed from a promising, charming, twenty-something student to a wheelchair-ridden, heroin-addicted 65-year-old, whose face had collapsed from a cancer for which he’d refused to get treatment.
It is co-curated by Edward Straka and Alasdair Pitt – an American and Briton, respectively, who spent time living in Hong Kong, and had personal ties with Hambleton during his final years – and Hong Kong non-profit arts organisation HKwalls.