Freeman Lau: Home

Born in 1958, Hong Kong-based graphic designer and artist Lau Siu Hong Freeman graduated from the Hong Kong Polytechnic (now Hong Kong Polytechnic University) in 1979. He joined SS Design & Production in 1981 and would begin an over thirty-year collaboration with graphic design and artist Kan Tai-keung. Lau stayed on as SS transitioned into Kan Tai-keung Design & Associates Ltd. and was made Partner in 1996, prompting the firm to be renamed as Kan & Lau Design Consultants (now KL&K Creative Strategies). His diverse design portfolio reflects the cultural and commercial development in Hong Kong and mainland China from the 1980s to the early twenty-first century, including his early graphic design work for Hong Kong arts and culture organisations and programmes like Zuni Icosahedron and the Festival of Asian Arts; packaging design for local corporations like Watsons Water and Wing Wah; and branding strategy for mainland Chinese companies with ambitions to expand beyond the national market. Apart from his own design practice, Lau has also been active in promoting Hong Kong design through his involvements with Hong Kong Design Centre, Hong Kong Federation of Design Association, and Design Alliance Asia, fostering exchanges and building connections with regional and international designers and design associations.

Lau has also developed a parallel artistic practice since the 1990s and is most known for his use of chair as the main medium, especially the ‘Chairplay’ series. The form, scale, quantity, arrangement, and material of the chairs vary each time depending on which aspects of human relationships he seeks to explore, and have appeared across both two-dimensional and three-dimensional works. He has created works of public art at home and abroad, including ‘Message Case I, II, III’ (1994) for the Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition, ‘Miracle Horse’ for Sun Hung Kai Property (2008), and ‘Sui Sui Ping An’ (2017) for Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office at San Francisco to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong Special Administration Region. He has also curated several key projects since the early 2010s, such as ‘Ingenuity Follows Nature’ for Taipei World Design Expo (2011); ‘Rethinking Bamboo’ for the first Beijing International Design Triennial (2011); and ‘Tian Tian Xiang Shang Finale Exhibition’ at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre (2012).