The government’s Art Promotion Office frequently creates projects designed to connect art with the public. Their venues in Oil Street, North Point and the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre on Kennedy Road focus on the community and provide art training programmes. Their latest public art project, along the Tuen Mun river, highlights the neighbourhood’s history and its public space.

For visual artists like Monet, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Vermeer and many more, the quality of light is central to their work. Some travelled great distances to find that perfect light. And light is also the subject that artist Bouie Choi is exploring in her third solo exhibition at Grotto Fine Arts, a continuation of her interest in urban landscape: “borrowed space, borrowed time”. The phrase has often been used to describe Hong Kong’s pre-Handover reality, including by writers on the territory such as Richard Hughes and Christopher Dewolf. Choi though, sees it differently. For her, rather than being a place of transience, Hong Kong is a “precious” place, and a permanent home.

Hong Kong-born vocalist Denquar Chupak’s father is Thai and her mother, British. She says she sees this mix of cultures, combined with her father’s vocation as a musician, as a huge part of her identity. She first came on our show in 2017 to take part in our Christmas Special. Right now, she has returned to Hong Kong from London, the place she now calls home, and is here to tell us about how the pandemic has affected her musically.