UpCycling Hong Kong: creative practices of reuse in contemporary jewellery

For centuries, jewellery makers and goldsmiths have reshaped precious metal objects and remounted valuable gemstones. In recent times, they have increasingly engaged with creative practices of reuse to create circular economies within the ever-changing material culture of the city of Hong Kong. Turning a lotus pod into a ring, glass shards into pins and a broken jade bangle into an elaborate bracelet, Hong Kong jewellery artists transform traditional elements of local material culture into new and unconventional jewellery pieces. Exhibiting materials of the past and the present, the exhibition presents insights into a vibrant scene of ecologically aware creative practitioners from different generations and cultural backgrounds engaged with the transformation and upcycling of Hong Kong material culture.