2021
Archival pigment print on fine art paper
Each print is hand-signed and individually numbered by the artist

From colours down to plant pots, the Lucky Buildings print series encapsulate celebration.
The works bring together two visual languages—the auspicious potted plants traditionally gifted during the Lunar New Year and the geometry of familiar Hong Kong buildings—integrating architectural and cultural references with a playful twist.

The Hope Well print shows the distinctive curved form of Hopewell Centre rising through a mass of mandarin oranges growing in a ceramic pot adorned with traditional good fortune motifs. Initially created as a Lunar New Year gift, the print exemplifies Julie Progin’s exploration of the symbiotic relationship between nature and the built environment within the city.
Julie Progin explains that she was drawn to the way the building connects two different worlds, “You can enter from the busy street level, but also from the hillside. The tower acts as a bridge between city and nature which echoes the print’s own logic of bringing unlike things together—the fundamental geometric shape of the tower and the organic abundance of the fruit.”

Furthering her exploration of the relationship between nature and the built environment Julie Progin documents plants growing out of facades as well as the beautiful systems of bamboo scaffolds that clad buildings during construction. She explains, “In the back of my mind, I always had this ludicrous thought that one could grow scaffolding by planting bamboo shoots in pots at street level and carefully bend them to conform to the architecture much like lucky bamboos are shaped to impart good luck. This is how I developed the idea for the print titled Imagination Forever Cheers that combines the IFC building with lucky bamboo wrapping.”