dialogue
Kristy Chan | Artist
January 2026
6 min read
Walking and running are quiet constants that shape how Kristy Chan observes the world. Paths traced along Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong now echo in weekly routes beside the Thames, with water remaining a steady presence in a practice drawn to flux and passage.
Her work unfolds as a layering of lived moments: overlapping thoughts, fleeting sensations, fragments from books, walks, conversations, and the social climate that surrounds her. Painting becomes a record of how these experiences collide, accumulate, and ask questions about what we choose to hold onto, and what we leave unseen.
Now based in London, Chan approaches the studio with greater patience and discipline, punctuated by bursts of urgency that bring works into focus. Embracing mystery and the unknown, her paintings balance instinct and reflection, grounding abstraction in the texture of everyday human experience.
Kristy Chan. Photo courtesy of The Beecher Residency.
Are there particular memories, sights or habits from Hong Kong that continue to anchor your work, even as you develop your practice within London’s art scene?
”The desire to walk along bodies of water. I’ve noticed my work are forever drawn to movements and transitions in nature. I’ve always enjoyed walking or running along Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong, and that has definitely translated to running along Thames at least once a week, or going for a trail run in the countryside.”
Installation view: Kristy Chan, (left) Pythagoras Cup, (right) Aqua Regia, Tabula Rasa Gallery, 2024. Photo courtesy of Tabula Rasa Gallery.
Your work is so layered. When someone asks, “What is your practice about?”, where do you begin?
“I think I always start with “you know how (insert a specific experience) feels like”? It’s very much about the human experience of having various thoughts simultaneously, all jumping at each other, one screaming louder in your head for an hour then onto the next one. Perhaps it’s like the movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once”. The books we read, sentences that struck deep, that one brilliant coffee you got from an independent cafe, a beautiful looking tree, a weird but funky coloured looking duck on a park walk. It’s a documentation of how I’m reacting to the current social climate in relation to my immediate environment. It’s also an inquiry, looking back to how people have responded to their surroundings across the millennia. What things we choose to ponder upon and things we choose to sweep under the rug. What’s under the rug and what do we choose to place on top of the rug? And why?”
Installation view: Kristy Chan, Woodland Almanac, PLASTER, 2025. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Has anything shifted in your work once London became the place where you built your day-to-day life as an artist?
”It’s definitely more nuanced in terms of the scope of what I want to encapsulate. As I age (gracefully, haha), I find myself approaching my work with more discipline and patience. Then there’s maybe a day or two where the frantic kid rushes me to the studio and brings the work to its final form. I step back for a moment, looking at what’s been done then recalibrate.”
Kristy Chan, A supposedly fun thing I’ll definitely do again (detail), Oil on sewn linen, 90 x 180 cm, 2025. Photo by Jack Elliot Edwards, courtesy of Pipeline Contemporary.
What feels like the biggest shift in your practice over the last few years?
“I’m asking a lot more questions now. Asking myself, others… Just in search of more thoughts and ideas that allow me to grow as a painter and as a person. There’s also a lot more appreciation for mystery, in praise of the unknown. The works are more laboured while in search of freshness. Just how does one envision or describe the experience of different occurrences dotted across time? I don’t think anyone’s got an answer but who needs an answer?“
Installation view: Kristy Chan, Apricity, Soho Revue, 2025, Photography by Tom Carter, Courtesy of Soho Revue.
How do your non-studio interests, daily routines, relationships, travels, feed into the way you work?
“Painting itself is a reflection of my studio practice, and the titles reveal my non-studio existence. The act of painting, in gesture, colour, intensity, mark-making… they’re still informed by a collection of considered and impulsive decisions, and that’s strictly experiment and muscle memory in painting. I try to manage my relationship with a significant other or friends or family the same way I manage my relationship with the studio, so it’s all interconnected like the TFL map. It often starts with a conversation, or a quote I read, those poems on the Underground, or an incident that launches myself into excitement to start a new work. Followed by a lot of meandering for the next of 2-3 months if not more, figuring out a way to resolve the painting. I then circle back to my notes, which is a collection of manufactured sentences responding to a moment in time that I found fascinating. The painting’s the star, and the title’s the rock that grounds it to the human experience.“
Installation view: Kristy Chan, (left) Things Left Behind Can Burn So Bright, (right) Small Talk About the Weather, Simon Lee Gallery, 2022. Photo by Prudence Cumming Associates, Courtesy of Simon Lee Gallery and The Artist Room.
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