The ‘By Chance. By Luck’ exhibition takes photography and food in new directions at Hong Kong’s Side Space
Chef David Lai and artist David Leung dish up a unique cross-disciplinary experience at the Tsim Sha Tsui art residency
Taking its name from the handwritten plaques advertising rare finds in Hong Kong’s wet markets, the idea for “By Chance. By Luck” was hatched when Side Space founders Matt Chung and Alex Chan approached Leung – best known for his pareidolic images, where faces are found in otherwise mundane objects – to create a series based on his collection of metal stool artworks featuring mirrored photos printed onto the quintessential folding seats found in dai pai dong and barbecue sites across the city.
Comparing the process to “a visual documentary”, Leung followed Lai from morning to night, from an early wet market visit to find the day’s best catch, to an alfresco barbecue in the evening.
“I wasn’t just photographing food,” says Leung, “but searching for abstract patterns in the lights and shadows of the seafood, the texture and the glow of the charcoal.”
The resulting artworks feature details from fresh seafood, alongside charcoal embers abstracted into symmetrical compositions and printed onto six metal stools.
Leung has also created a special double-width stool that features a pareidolic image of a grilled fish fin, inviting two individuals to sit side by side to realise the exhibition’s intention of inviting serendipity.