Tommy Li retrospective fills the ArtisTree

Filling the ArtisTree's 20,000 sq ft space with a single person's work would seem a monumental task. Not so for designer Tommy Li, who has over 20 years worth of commercial and personal projects behind him, and the able and dedicated help of a 15-person team.

At the Hong Kong opening of his touring design and art retrospective last Friday, Visual Dialogue, the bespectacled and erudite Li (left) credited both his home city and his team for the prolific body of work occupying the Taikoo Place venue this month.

'From the time I first started designing in the era of hairspray and shoulder pads to today, the city has seen its share of change; for that, I have had so much material to work with in my career,' he says. 'I'm an irritatingly stubborn person to work with, and I have to thank my staff for sticking with me, many of them for over 10 years now. I'm a strong believer that fate, not fame or money, brought my little community together.'

'Little', however, might have been a modest word choice, as almost a thousand of Li's industry friends and clients showed up over four hours to check out the exhibition of branding projects, posters, logo designs and a dark-humoured collection of Mao Zedong imagery.