A new neon installation will blink into public view from the sunset on 6 February 2024.
Designed by YARD Architecture Studio, the public artwork Memoir in Neon was selected by an expert panel as the winning entry among an impressive field of submissions from Hong Kong artists, designers and architects who took part in the open call Tai Kwun Neon Connection.
Inspired by the overwhelming public response to Tai Kwun’s summer exhibition Vital Signs, the challenge of Tai Kwun Neon Connection was to use the medium of neon light to create a large-scale public art work which links and activates the Tai Kwun Lane - the main pedestrian artery connecting the vibrant and welcoming Parade Ground with the peaceful and introspective Prison Yard.
Mapping the 55 metres and 59 steps of Tai Kwun Lane into three distinct zones, Memoir in Neon was conceived and designed by the Hong Kong creative team of Kenneth Wong and Kei Ngan – founding partners of YARD Architecture Studio. Memoir in Neon leads the visitor through an imagined streetscape of 19th and 20th Century Hong Kong by celebrating some distinctly Hong Kong visual motifs such as local made red plastic chairs and lampshades, concertina shopfront grilles, local designed ubiquitous red-white-blue canvas bags and Victorian Italianate archways and treating them to minimalist repetition and interpreting them in the visual language neon light tubes. The realization of YARD’s ambitious artistic concept relies heavily on the deep experience and artistry of revered Hong Kong neon masters, including Ellen Man and Chung Kin Pui, whose knowhow, accumulated through several decades of making neon advertising and signage in the commercial sector, now inspire and enable a new generation of Hong Kong talent to extend their creative practice into the medium of neon.
Memoir in Neon illuminates Tai Kwun Lane every day and evening from 6:30pm on 6 February 2024, then daily from 11am. By downloading the free Bloomberg Connects app visitors can let the artists Kenneth and Kei guide them through the artwork as it links the Parade Ground and the Prison Yard – the two cherished oases in the heart of hectic Central.