Chu Hing Wah: Bare Life

Press Release Interview Highlights About the Artist

Chu Hing Wah: Bare Life

Press Release Interview Highlights About the Artist

Artist’s Reception on Mid-Autumn Festival

9/10/2022 SATURDAY 1-4pm

Exhibition Period

9/10 – 5/11/2022

Hanart TZ Gallery

2/F, Mai On Ind. Bldg., 17-21 Kung Yip St., Kwai Chun

Chu Hing Wah: Bare Life

Hanart TZ Gallery is pleased to present “Chu Hing Wah: Bare Life”, opening on 10 September 2022, featuring over 20 pieces of new work. Apart from Chu’s acclaimed “Cityscape” and “Floral” series, this exhibition highlights on a series of “Nude”, a new body of work attached to the artist’s deep feeling of the love of life.

Although deeply interested in painting in his youth, Chu Hing-Wah chose to train as a psychiatric nurse. From this time on, his professional career and his art-making developed side by side. Chu’s style and technique have the innocent quality of the primitive painter, but at its core, his art is infused with a sophisticated understanding. The emotional tenor of his works is free of the sense of crass urbanity even as his imagery is drawn from scenes of urban Hong Kong life. With his keen sensitivity to the fragility of the human psyche, Chu understands that for ordinary people in the city, life’s true pleasure is still found in the bonds of community and family. These are the strengths that enable us to withstand the corrosive quality of this commercialised age. They are the starting points from which we form a bond with our world.

Born in Guangdong Province in 1935, Chu Hing Wah moved to Hong Kong with his family in 1950. Although deeply interested in painting in his youth, Chu Hing Wah chose to train as a psychiatric nurse, pursuing his degree at Maudsley Hospital in London from 1960 to 1965. From this time on, his professional career and his art- making developed side by side. After his return to Hong Kong he worked in the field of psychiatric care for over 22 years, at the Castle Peak Psychiatric Hospital and Siu Lam Hospital for the Mentally Retarded, respectively.

During his years of study abroad, Chu frequently visited art galleries and museums, an experience that inspired his life-long interest in art. In 1972, he completed the certificate course in Art and Design from the Extra-Mural Studies of University of Hong Kong. With his main interest in painting, he became an active participant in various art groups and held many exhibitions throughout Hong Kong. He was also selected a number of times over the years for inclusion in the ‘Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition’ presented by the Urban Council and ‘The Visual Arts Society Annual Exhibition’. In 1992, Chu Hang Wah retired from the nursing profession and has been working as a full-time professional artist ever since.

Recent exhibitions include Hong Kong: Here and Beyond (M+, 2021); Ink City (Tai Kwun, 2021); Hong Kong Experience / Hong Kong Experiment (HKMoA, 2019); Wan Chai Grammatica (Hong Kong Arts Centre, 2018); Living in Compassion: The Art of Chu Hing Wah (Hanart TZ Gallery, 2017); Reunion (Exchange Square, 2017); 22nd Artmatch Annual Exhibition, (JCCAC, 2017); Reappear: Chu Hing Wah Charity Exhibition (Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, 2015); Three Elders: Gaylord Chan, Chu Hing Wah and Luis Chan (Hanart TZ Gallery, 2014); West Kowloon Bamboo Theatre Opening Exhibition (West Kowloon Cultural District, 2011) and Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Works by Chu Hing Wah (The University Museum and Art Gallery of the University of Hong Kong, 2011).