Wah Fu Housing Estate sits on the West coast of Hong Kong Island, a public rental housing project on a hillside sloping down to Waterfall Bay. It comprises 18 blocks of “Old Slab” and “Twin Tower” typologies built between 1967 and 1978.  It is currently under renewal, the residents due to be decanted to an adjacent site, and the estate land redeveloped.

The idea of a painting was born on a visit in 2023, to the background clang of piling rigs of the redevelopment to the North of the old estate. I was struck at Wah Fu by the patterns of the architecture and its accretions, the multi-level pedestrian and spatial networks, planning as infrastructure; the landscape of "Traffic in Towns", and the way people might lead a life in this context.

The gridded composition refers directly to the framed buildings of the estate; a late twentieth century obsession with hierarchy: light and shade, solid and void, served and servant, frame and framed. In Wah Fu the concrete frame is usually off-white, with infils of different colours and materials, often painted in pastel shades. Lit by the dull humid Hong Kong sky, the effect is post-modern; somehow where it seems contemporary architecture in Hong Kong has always wanted to be. Where nature exists it is strictly composed - this is not the natural world.

Painted in acrylic with silver, grey and black Uni lining, on canvas 76cm x 76cm. Exhibited at Stockport Art Gallery 2025.