A collection of bags from 60s-90s Hong Kong

Hong Kong On A Bag is a project that started off as part of the Shared Campus Summer School exchange programme hosted by Hong Kong Baptist University in 2019. We continued with expanding the collection after the summer school not only in the hope of showcasing the artistic design of various bags, but also encapsulating the visual material history of Hong Kong.

This project was eventually put into place after four years in 2023.

We are now turn this digital archive under the same title on Instagram into a catalogue serves as an extension of this project. We endeavour to keep collecting a broad range of bags and hold different exhibitions in the future.

The striking graphic images printed on the bags manifest the timeline of Hong Kong’s history as well as the city’s ever-changing visual material culture. We, as the project curators, wish that more people would appreciate this often-overlooked part of our heritage and that they could regard this catalogue as one of the local graphic archives.

Since the beginning of this project, we have been deeply attracted to the unique design of each bag, from the layout of visual elements to the methods of production. We see a “human touch” in these bags for they act as quotidian, practical objects for many, and most importantly, they stand as a witness of the memory from a long-forgotten era of Hong Kong.

This catalogue is still on progress, please stay turned.︎












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