COLOURS OF HOPE
Art Exhibition
Julie Progin
Julie was born and raised in Hong Kong by her Swiss parents before heading to Paris to study textile design at Duperré, and then to New York to explore product design at Parsons. After a few years working in New York, she came back to her Hong Kong roots to launch Latitude 22N and Julie & Jesse with her husband Jesse Mc Lin.
Spending most of her life in Hong Kong has not only taught Julie how to perfectly dodge passers-by on the sidewalk, it has also given her a taste for the eclectic, for patchwork and for the bits and pieces that make up this incredible city. She finds inspiration in cultural crossovers to collate and collect the colors and patterns that fuel her thoughts.
About the work
To draw the intricate and excessive Obsessions series Julie Progin brought together diverse references including the excessively meticulous traditional Chinese patterns known as wan hua dui (ten thousand flowers piled up or Mille Fleurs) that can be found painted on the surface of porcelain vessels, as well as designs and systems present in Hong Kong’s landscape.
In this series of three drawings, Pipe Dreams, No. 568 & 1309 and Watermelon, Julie Progin was inspired by objects that are an essential part of Hong Kong’s history and landscape.
PVC pipes are a common sight in Hong Kong where trees growing on facades find nutrients through leaky PVC pipes that are external to old building. You also see them sold in hardware shops, floating in large clusters suspended from the ceiling.
The two iconic red, blue, and white plastic watering cans, No. 568 and No. 1309 were designed by Star A Industrial for their Red A brand and are still produced in their San Po Kong factory.
The Red A brand is most famous for their plastic basins, pails, and colanders, as well as its popular red plastic lampshade found in every wet market in Hong Kong. These two watering cans can be found in most traditional hardware, flower shop and neighbourhood homeware shops in Hong Kong, hanging from the ceiling, in beautiful bouquet-like arrangements.
The watermelon ball, now part of the M+ collection, is a wink and a nod to Hong Kong’s industrial past when it was one of the world’s leading plastic toy manufacturers. Modern versions of the ball can still be found at many local shops bundled up in nets suspended from the ceilings.
“I’ve always been fascinated by traditional shops in Hong Kong where owners find creative solutions to display as much commodities as they can in their tiny ground floor spaces. The art of stacking, hanging, strapping objects together as a space-saving technique produces beautiful patterns and systems that inspire my illustrations.”
