The University Museum and Art Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of paintings by the pioneering Hong Kong artist David Lam Chun-fai.

David Lam was born in Hong Kong in 1932 and has been an active artist in Canada since he emigrated there in 1965. Prior to that, he had been an artist and arts administrator in Hong Kong during the development of a distinct Hong Kong art that acknowledged Abstract Expressionism, as well as other western art movements, in a Chinese idiom. He spent his formative years training with the Hong Kong master artist Lee Byng. He also worked as a curator’s assistant at the Hong Kong City Hall Museum and Art Gallery, the precursor to the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

This retrospective exhibition marks David’s eightieth year, and will include paintings from as early as the 1960s when he was a young artist in Hong Kong and a founding member of the influential Circle Art Group. The earlier paintings depict aspects of Hong Kong in detailed watercolours, and contrast with the artist’s mature monumental and expansive landscapes of his adopted home. These works often fill the surface of the canvas in dense opaque colours, suggesting man’s humble place in the world. Many of the works have never been exhibited in Hong Kong before.