10 Chancery Lane Gallery celebrates the 15th edition of HKFOREWORD - New Art from Hong Kong. This exhibition celebrates emerging Hong Kong talents working across diverse media who have graduated from local and international universities. Initiated at a time when Hong Kong's art ecosystem was still developing, the exhibition has been serving as a space for experimentation and conception that is integral to the development of the artists' practice. Curated by Yoyo Yu, this year we have selected 13 artists, works including installation, painting, photography, sculpture and video. HKFOREWORD26 offers a fresh perspective on artistic development in Hong Kong, continuing to navigate artistic possibilities and confront our collective technological lobotomy. The participating artists are Kelvin Au, Joy Chan, Emily Cheung, Natalie Chu, Jing, Tansy Kan, Janice Leung, Karl Ng, Tanya Shah, Anya Tong, Wong King Yu (Ah Yu), Kitman Yeung, and Zhuo Hui.
The year 2026 has been overly saturated with automated contents. In a world dominated by artificial intelligence, the selected works trace the rhythms of daily life. Condensation tracing windows in the rainy season, discarded traditional materials left behind by rapid modern development and the quiet repetition of hand-sewing, these cyclical human experiences become metaphors. Through careful transformation, the artists convert them into new forms that speak to continuity, loss, and renewal. This year's exhibition also captures a material shift where most artists have turned toward tangible materials, from found objects to industrial elements traditionally used in construction and building. While their final forms vary widely, the works share a unified intent: to return to the tactile experience and reimagine purpose.
Together, the artworks establish a cycle of making, erasing, breaking, and rebuilding. These transformations guide viewers back to a grounded awareness of time, space, and materiality. HKFOREWORD26 anchors viewers in their physical surroundings, inviting them to revisit history and examine the foundational pillars shaping the current generation.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Kelvin Au (b.1966, Hong Kong) holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and MA in English Studies and MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Hong Kong, and recently received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from RMIT University / Hong Kong Art School. Au tells personal stories with mixed media and installations. He was the primary caregiver to his parents for about twenty years until both passed away recently. His work "Common Ground" uses collected walking sticks from other caregivers across Hong Kong to highlight imperfect support and unseen labour. Visitors are welcome to interact with the work and set it in motion.
Joy Chan (b.2002, Hong Kong) recently received her Bachelor of Arts from the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her practice explores the light, bodily interaction, and space, embracing fluidity and experimentation. "When the Dust Settles" is a performance video and installation that questions who has the power to define ownership of a space. Chan grinds the architectural waste collected in Tai Kok Tsui into dust and drag the bag up a hill: the trace of dust slowly disappears and blend into the surroundings as the wind blows. Visitors are invited into an immersive work to consider how space shapes sensation, cognition, and action.
Emily Cheung (b. 2000, Hong Kong) holds a Master of Fine Arts in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (2026) and a Bachelor of Arts in Environment and Interior Design from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2022). Cheung explores how personal narratives interweave with collective memory within spatial environments. Her work transforms and reinterprets everyday objects, connecting individual stories of migration, loss, and (non-)belonging to broader geopolitical frameworks. "My Souvenir Collection" utilizes blurring, serial replication, and material decay to trace the process of "forgetting" in rapidly changing surroundings. Spanning sculpture, performance, and public art intervention, her practice treats the fragmentary, ephemeral, and mundane as sources of resistance and reflection, fostering critical dialogue on memory, identity, and the built environment.
Natalie Chu (b. 1999, Hong Kong) graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2022. With a strong interest in ancient East Asian art history, commemorative rituals, and craftsmanship, she developed a quasi-archaeological, research-based approach to cultural heritage conservation, focusing on revitalizing historical objects through sentimental connections. Her work "Replica of Ruins: Deserted City" integrates stone pillar ruins with modern materials such as cement, steel, and glass, encouraging audiences to fill in the historical gaps with their own interpretations. The work questions how we position ourselves between the weight of history and the present. Chu has been exhibited at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Art Central, and HART Hong Kong, among others. She has received awards including the Friends of the Art Museum Prize and the HART Award.
Jing (b. 2002, Philippines) recently received her Bachelor of Arts in Art History and English Studies from the University of Hong Kong. A mixed media artist and writer based in Manila and Hong Kong, her work centres on reconstruction and memory, exploring what remains and what is lost. "Eyes I-VI" addresses the instability and deconstruction of home through photographic transfers on discarded capiz shells found in Manila from a broken colonial-style window. Jing has exhibited across the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan, including the UP Parola Gallery, Underground Gallery, Kaida Contemporary, Format, White Walls Gallery, Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, YOD Gallery, and has participated in Art in the Park.
Tansy Kan (b. 2004, Hong Kong) recently received her Bachelor of Arts from the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University. Working in photography and mixed-media installation, she explores complex, unspoken states within relationships. The work "When the southern rains return" translates abstract emotional connections into visual and spatial expressions. Grief is suggested through the thick, wet air of the rainy season; water droplets leave washed traces on a cyanotype curtain, gradually erasing sentimental memories. Kan invites viewers to reflect on their own inner sentiments and to accept those raw, unspoken moments as part of love.
Janice Leung (b. 2004, Hong Kong) recently graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her practice observes space as a fluid container - from physical structures to digital environments - and examines how different spaces shape emotions and create systems and boundaries. Her paintings address "placelessness," where unique spaces become uniform for efficiency, leaving people disconnected from their surroundings and creating a sense of psychological homelessness even at home. Leung continues to explore the overlooked connections and emotions in her upcoming residency at HART Haus.
Karl Ng (b. 1994, Hong Kong) recently received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Media from City University of Hong Kong. A multidisciplinary artist working in installation, video, and generative art, he uses light and spatial experience to consider how individual parts sustain larger systems. In his work "Line Within", Ng translates familiar technical functions into spatial and visual compositions through modular assembly, repeated movement and live image processing. By applying visual treatments on live-streamed crosswalk footages from different cities, the work blurs space and time, exploring how technology affects human interaction. His work has been exhibited in Hong Kong, Macau, Taipei and Vienna.
Tanya Shah (b. 1997, Mumbai, India) received her MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA in Computer Science and Studio Art with High Honors from Dartmouth College. Shah is a visual artist working primarily in photography and lens-based media. Raised in Hong Kong, and based across the US for a decade, Shah finds solace in photographing forests in the different geographic regions she has lived in. The landscapes serve as psychological self-portraits that remember and honour her experience with bipolar disorder. Making the work allows her to mourn years lost to illness while acknowledging the peace she has found since. "ground beneath me" reflects the evolution of her relationship with her past and her present mental state. Shah's work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Jaffe-Friede Gallery (New Hampshire, US), Praxis Gallery (Minnesota, US), and The Holy Art Gallery (London, UK). In May 2026, she was hand-selected by a curator for a solo exhibition at the Inspiration Gallery at an Ascension Brothers Hospital in Chicago. She completed a residency at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild in the Hudson Valley, New York and is currently an Adjunct Professor of Art at the City Colleges of Chicago.
Anya Tong (b. 1999, Hong Kong) is a multidisciplinary visual artist who holds a Bachelor of Design from the University of Melbourne (2020) and a Master of Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London (2024), and is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Expressive Arts Therapy at The University of Hong Kong. Working across video, sound, performance, photographic media, and sculptural installation, Tong explores psychoanalysis, the unconscious mind, and the ephemerality of time. Her interactive work "Take a Rain Check" confronts uncertainty by inviting viewers to set or change an alarm while waiting for it to go off without knowing when.
Wong King Yu (Ah Yu) (b. 2001, Hong Kong) recently received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from RMIT University / Hong Kong Art School. Her practice begins with family and interpersonal relationships and uses installation as its main medium. "Puncture" is a nearly three-metre-long curtain made of threads and rice. The quiet, repetitive act of sewing through a small everyday object highlights unseen labour in society. By working with the vulnerability and instability of materials, she expresses repressed emotions, violence, and contradictions within contemporary families and social structures.
Kitman Yeung (b. 1999, Hong Kong; raised in Australia) received their MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (2025) following a BSc in Neuroscience from the University of Melbourne. An interdisciplinary artist, Yeung explores the gap between lived reality and imposed narratives of mobility. With an interest in socio-spatial research, they examine how air, volume, and inflation are used to construct authority - from corporate mascots to psychological spectacles. "Four-Fingered Faith", a ladder made of rubber gloves, looks at "inflation" as both a physical process and an ideological state, analysing how buoyant icons hover above grounded human experience. Yeung also co-founded the research collective groundtable, which uses collaborative, food-based interventions to examine cultural identity and shared memory. Their work has been shown in Hong Kong, Germany, Australia, and broader Europe.
Zhuo Hui (b. 1995, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province) holds an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Arts (2019) and a BA in Communication & Visual Arts from Hong Kong Baptist University. She lives and works in Guangzhou. Her paintings explore the abstract forms of the mental landscape and are closely related to music, often featuring multi-layered rhythmic brushstrokes. "The Rain" is inspired by the humid Canton weather, she draws parallels between the violent rainy season and the feminine cycle, emotional intensity before bleeding and calm afterwards. Zhuo Hui sees painting as a way of wandering through consciousness, similar to the overlapping sound spaces created by different instruments in a symphony.
ABOUT 10 CHANCERY LANE GALLERY
Established in 2001, when Hong Kong's art scene was burgeoning, Katie de Tilly started 10 Chancery Lane Gallery. Along the back wall of the, then running, Victoria Prison, now the buzzing Tai Kwun Heritage and Cultural site, the little walking lane opened into a gallery specializing in contemporary art from the Asia-Pacific. Over the past 25 years, 10 Chancery Lane has worked with some of the region's great artists, curators, and museums.
