Fung Ho-yin

Fung Ho-yin (馮浩然) is a Hong Kong printmaker, photographer, and arts administrator whose practice investigates the boundary between alternative photographic process — cyanotype, gum bichromate, photogravure — and traditional fine-art printmaking. He completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Photography and Advertising at the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London) between 1987 and 1989, returning to Hong Kong with the technical foundation in alternative photographic process that has since defined his print practice.

In 2000 Fung co-founded the Hong Kong Open Printshop (HKOP) with several fellow imagemakers. HKOP is the only non-profit professional printmaking organisation in Hong Kong and operates two principal facilities — the Print Art Contemporary gallery space at the PMQ heritage complex in Central, dedicated to Hong Kong's print heritage with educational displays and antique equipment, and the 4,000-square-foot Print Lab at the Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre (JCCAC) in Shek Kip Mei, where artists undertake residencies and run open-press programmes. Fung serves as Executive Director of HKOP and has been the principal force behind the studio's annual exhibition calendar, residency programme, and signature series including the 'Hong Kong Graphic Art Fiestas,' 'Together We Stride,' 'Pop Up Press,' and 'The Legendary Pulp.' In parallel, he holds a Visiting Lecturer position at the School of Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Fung's own practice combines analogue and contemporary photographic process with the iterative material qualities of fine-art print. His cyanotype series '11 Auspicious Creatures Set' (2013), held in the collection of the Hong Kong Museum of Art, applies the 19th-century cyanotype process to a Chinese-traditional iconographic register — combining the light-sensitive iron-salt blueprint with imagery derived from the eleven auspicious-creature group of Chinese folk symbology. The dialectic between Western alternative photographic process and Chinese motif is the principal axis of his practice and aligns him with the broader HKOP project of locating Hong Kong's print identity at the intersection of multiple traditions.

The 2024 Print Art Contemporary exhibition 'A Trip through Virtuality and Physicality' presented two cyanotype-and-hand-colouring works (33.5 × 51 cm) — 'A Trip through Virtuality & Physicality with an Orange' (與一個橙穿越虛擬與現實之間) and 'A Trip through Virtuality & Physicality with a Lemon' (與一個檸檬穿越虛擬與現實之間). The bilingual titles signal the bicultural orientation of HKOP's contemporary scene; the cyanotype technique places a single piece of citrus fruit at the centre of the composition, with the hand-coloured layer adding a second register of intervention to the photographic substrate.

Fung's prints have been exhibited internationally in Macau, mainland China, Japan, Thailand, Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and have been acquired by museums in Hong Kong and mainland China. His 25-year tenure as a co-founder and Executive Director of HKOP places him among the senior generation of working Hong Kong printmakers — alongside Lee Mei-kuen, Cheung Chung-chu, and others — who came up through the 1990s photography-and-print circuit and built the institutional infrastructure that has nurtured the younger HKOP cohort including Jay Lau Ka-chun, Julie May, and Enna Cheung.