Drawing on the Inside: Kowloon Walled City 1985 by null

Drawing on the Inside: Kowloon Walled City 1985 Reviews

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  KD1972

  This beautifully produced volume offers a wealth of exceptional and distinctive insights into the unique urban phenomenon which was the Kowloon Walled City, an autonomous, idiosyncratic enclave on the mainland peninsula of Hong Kong, which existed for decades, operating above and beyond the British territory’s colonial rules and regulations. It was finally demolished in 1994.
  
  Almost a decade earlier, in 1985, intrepid Belfast born artist Fiona Hawthorne ventured into the Walled City, notorious back then for its makeshift buildings, menacing alleyways and brazen lawlessness, armed only with her pens, paints and a simple SLR camera.
  
  The results, elegantly curated here by Hawthorne’s son, Benjamin Salmon, have now been brought together by Blacksmith Books. The publishers have a keen eye for spotting Asian, or specifically Hong Kong, themed content which successfully transcends any perceived political, geographic or historic context or limitation.
  
  Hawthorne’s monochrome sketches, delicate water colours and candid camera shots are seamlessly edited, as if to take any hesitant readers by the hand and lead them cautiously down the dingy backstreets and along the dark and narrow, densely populated thoroughfares of the Walled City of the mid 1980s.
  
  Along the way, we get to meet the cast of very varied characters who inhabited these vibrant precincts back then. You can practically hear the syncopated slam of the mahjong tiles, the clatter of chopsticks on rice bowls and the raucous cries of the street food vendors.
  
  It is an intriguing, exhilarating and thought provoking journey, one which also provides an invaluable historical document.
  
  Artist and activist Hawthorne, who grew up in Hong Kong but is now West London based, also exhibits an assured turn of phrase in her introduction to the project. In highly evocative, flowing prose, she explains her motivation, and also the many challenges of the project, in an autobiographical essay which left this reader eager to read of her writings and to see of her art.