"I felt a pressure, as if being a minority student meant you 'had to' create work on themes like diasporism, immigration, loss of homeland, exile, or return. White students weren't asked to explore these issues, so I always resisted incorporating them into my work." — Gordon Cheung
Some resigned from their official posts and returned to their hometowns, while others rushed to take the imperial examinations late into the night. Just as tens of thousands of Hong Kong people were emigrating to the UK to start new lives, contemporary artist Gordon Cheung chose to move from England to Hong Kong. In addition to relocating, he collaborated with the local gallery gdm, establishing a studio in Wong Chuk Hang. His work was recently featured in a group exhibition at Tai Kwun Museum of Contemporary Art, and his early large-scale works have been acquired by M+, giving significant momentum to his career in Hong Kong.
"It's heartwarming to receive such hospitality when I first arrive in Hong Kong," Gordon said.
I first met Gordon more than a decade ago. Art Basel had just launched in Hong Kong, and the British gallery representing Gordon's work was exhibiting there. He had come along as well. At the time, I was working for an English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, and we happened to meet. We even shared a taxi to the Universal Building in Central.
Back then, he was a passionate young artist, full of curiosity about Hong Kong. This is understandable. Although he was born and raised in England and had never lived in Hong Kong, and although we had always spoken in English, he considered Hong Kong his home and his roots. His parents were immigrants from Hong Kong, giving him a deep familial connection to the city.
Move to Hong Kong and Set His Sights on the International Stage
Many years later, Gordon moved to Hong Kong. The initial reason was family. His parents, who had operated a Chinese restaurant in England, retired and relocated to Hong Kong about twenty years ago. Gordon had originally planned to join them within two or three years, but his mother's recent knee surgery accelerated those plans.
Earlier this year, Gordon officially moved to Hong Kong before returning to the UK mid-year to prepare for his retrospective exhibition, Many Worlds, One Mind. Held at Close Gallery in Somerset, southwest England, the exhibition presented approximately twenty-eight works spanning the past two decades, including paintings, sculptures, prints, and etchings. I made the two-hour train journey from London to visit the charming countryside gallery and reconnect with the artist.
As an artist, Gordon not only holds himself to high standards but also expects a great deal from his audience. If you're simply looking for an attractive backdrop for a selfie, his work is probably not for you.
His practice is complex and layered, demonstrating meticulous attention to material, form, and concept. Through his work, he continually investigates the profound effects of geopolitics, financial systems, technology, and globalization on both human civilization and the natural world. Whether using Financial Times stock listings as the foundation for his paintings, transforming newspapers into his Scholar Rock sculptures, or creating sculptural paintings through 3D printing, Cheung examines global capitalism and the social, economic, and political myths it has produced amid contemporary international conflict.
His work offers an unflinching critique of contemporary society. One example is Trembling Sunrise (2011), recently acquired by M+. Standing before his works, viewers are inevitably prompted to question the crises of the present moment.
Gordon was educated in the United Kingdom, graduating from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. His transmedia practice merges Eastern and Western visual traditions, a hybridity deeply informed by his diasporic background and his experience growing up as an ethnic minority in Britain.
"I didn't really think about these issues in my early years, and for a long time, I lacked the ability to clearly express my thoughts on 'diaspora,'" the artist explained. "It wasn't until I entered art school that I had to confront questions of identity. I felt a pressure, as if being a minority student meant you 'had to' create work on themes like diasporism, immigration, loss of homeland, exile, or return. White students weren't asked to explore these issues, so I always resisted incorporating them into my work."
Looking back, however, he realized these experiences had already permeated his practice.
"Because I am indeed a member of the diaspora, the psychological condition of existing in an 'in-between' state unconsciously emerged in my work. I've learned to understand that condition as a strength—the ability to build bridges between cultures, to belong to a global community, and to observe the world through that perspective."
Gordon's perspective reflects a sensitivity often cultivated by those who grow up navigating multiple cultural worlds, allowing him to perceive hidden structures and overlooked patterns. His New Order series, for example, appears to algorithmically reconstruct seventeenth-century Dutch still-life paintings of flower bouquets, but beneath the surface it functions as a layered critique of colonial history and contemporary society.
A New Order of Power and Corruption
Cheung explains that the title New Order refers not only to the new visual order created through pixel-based reconstruction but also to systems of power, corruption, and deception. Power, Corruption & Lies was the title of the British band New Order's 1983 album, itself inspired by graffiti made by German artist Gerhard Richter on an exhibition wall in Cologne in 1981. While New Order's album cover reproduced a nineteenth-century floral still life by Henri Fantin-Latour, Cheung instead draws from Dutch Golden Age flower paintings.
He traces this body of work back to the 2008 global financial crisis, which inspired him to study earlier financial collapses. His research led him to the Dutch Golden Age, when history's first recorded speculative bubble—the tulip mania—emerged alongside the rise of early capitalism.
"That era is widely considered the beginning of capitalism. At the same time, Britain formally established the East India Company, which later became the most valuable company of its era."
He argues that traditional art history often overlooks the mechanisms by which such wealth was accumulated.
"That wealth came through colonialism, the slave trade, and other forms of exploitation. These works ask questions that have often been left out of the conversation."
As the son of Hong Kong immigrants and an artist born in Britain's former colonial power, geopolitics remains central to Cheung's practice, particularly the neglected histories of Hong Kong's colonial past. In recent years, he has spent considerable time in Hong Kong researching his family's genealogy. He recently discovered that he is the twenty-ninth-generation descendant of the Zhang family in the New Territories, with his maternal lineage extending back to the Song dynasty nearly eight centuries ago.
These discoveries have directly informed his recent work. In his solo exhibition New Territories at gdm Gallery, he recreated the gate of a historic New Territories village using Financial Times stock listings in a work titled The Gatekeeper. During the Six-Day War of 1899, British forces attempted to enter Ji Hing Wai, the fortified village of his maternal ancestors. Unable to capture it, they dismantled the village gate. Britain eventually returned the gate in 1925.
"Britain finally returned that gate, but I want to ask whether the people who came through it were friends or invaders. How do we understand Hong Kong as a former British colony but not part of Britain itself? What does it mean when countries invade and take what does not belong to them?"
His questions resonate strongly with broader contemporary conversations surrounding decolonization.
Although Gordon is now based in Hong Kong, he continues to exhibit internationally. In addition to the exhibition at Close Gallery through August 15, he will present a solo exhibition at Kavi Gupta in Chicago this September. During Frieze London in October, he will also open another exhibition at Close Gallery's London space, making for an exceptionally busy season.
Before leaving, I smiled and asked, "Gordon, we've always spoken English together, but I've never asked—how's your Cantonese?" He laughed.
"Very bad."
I knew he was simply being modest, and I have no doubt that the next time we meet, we'll be speaking in Cantonese.
Written by Vivienne Chow
Vivienne Chow is a London-based art and culture journalist and critic. She previously served as a senior reporter for the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and as London correspondent for Artnet News. Her writing has appeared in numerous international publications, including BBC Culture, the Financial Times, The Art Newspaper, and Variety.
Image: Hannah Goldsmith (@goldsmith_studio).
