'The present collection was motivated by a number of events, but can largely be taken as the outcome of several years of discussion by members of the Hong Kong section of the International Association of Art Critics... While this collection contains but a handful of texts, it is significant that all of the writers have been engaged with the development of art in Hong Kong over a long period, in some cases for upwards of thirty years. As such, it is perhaps not surprising that several of the texts are reflective and retrospective, serving to see the present circumstances of Hong Kong as the consequence of processes that have occupied the past half century. Certainly, the most significant of these has been the winding down of the colonial administration and the new dynamics of being a separate system - and perhaps a separate identity or culture - within China.' - extracted from foreword by Eric Wear.