Reframing Strangeness; Ha Bik Chuen’s Motherboards and Collagraphs

“Reframing Strangeness: Ha Bik Chuen’s Motherboards and Collagraphs” is an unique exhibition that highlights his rarely seen printmaking practice. Curated by Michelle Wong, the show reintroduces Ha Bik Chuen (1925–2009) as a visionary artist by revealing Ha’s obsessive record-keeping, his fascination with materials, and his unique blend of modernist abstraction and cultural symbolism. The exhibition focusses on his “motherboards” a term he coined for his handmade collagraph plates and the over 3,000 collagraph prints they produced, predominantly in the 1970s and 1980s.

In close collaboration with the curators, SKY YUTAKA developed a layout incorporating modular display and a bespoke framing system using transparent acrylic pieces. This allows each motherboard to be displayed as a three-dimensional object with minimal intervention. Rather than focussing on the front surface, the display system enables the viewer to see all sides of the motherboard. This arrangement encourages viewers exploration of the artist’s unique artistic practice including his record-keeping methods, craft techniques and the signs of the motherboard’s physical transformations from re-working over time.