Light Across Time: An Artsy Evening Cruise on the Star Ferry

Description

For over 100 years, riding aboard the Star Ferry has been a part of Hongkongers’ daily life. Crossing Victoria Harbour still provides us a moment for self-reflection and remains a vehicle that links the city’s past and present. Surely, that warrants a celebration in itself? Yes, we think so too.

Co-organised by Reese Chang and Caroline Chu, Light Across Time transforms the iconic vessel into a site-specific exhibition space where history, culture and memory intertwine. The show features four Hong Kong artists — Angela Yuen, Daphné Mandel, Justin Hui and Simon Liu — each presenting a distinctive approach to remembrance.

Contemporary visual artist Angela Yuen channels urban culture and the theme “Neighbourhood” through video installation, turning found, manufactured objects into an artistic language that recalls the human warmth of a rapidly changing city. Responding to Hong Kong’s fast-paced urban development and its ever-evolving physical and social environment, Yuen collects everyday objects to rediscover the sense of human warmth she experienced growing up in the city, as seen in works like “The Utopia.”

Known for co-directing Cha Guo (alongside Guy Bertrand) — the 2024 short documentary that captures the vanishing traditions and quiet resilience of Kwu Tung — did you know that Daphné Mandel is also an artist? In this show, she explores Hong Kong’s ever-changing landscapes, combining digital techniques with painting and collage. Notably, her moving-image work “Postcards from the Ferry: A Cabinet of Ephemeral Memories” celebrates the city’s dynamic interplay between tradition and modernity.

Justin Hui, an artist and architect, works across model-making, photography, film and installation to reconstruct fragmented or imagined spaces, examining how physical environments hold and reshape collective memory. His ongoing work includes “New Territories 界,” which examines Hong Kong’s evolving northern landscapes and notions of territory, development and historical legacies.

Simon Liu‘s practice encompasses film, installation and performance. In works like “Star Ferry” and “Harbour City,” he rethinks moving images in space, shifting from cinematic viewing toward immersive, time-based experiences that layer documentary elements with abstract visuals to create non-linear narratives of memory and perception.

In an era of constant flux, Light Across Time asks how Hong Kong’s cultural memory continues to shape and spark new possibilities for our collective future. On 19 September only, there are two ticketed sailings at 20:30 and 21:45.