“ALL ART ARE TOYS, ALL TOYS ARE ART!”
— Michael Lau
Stemming from Michael Lau's renowned Gardener Series that began as a comic column in 1998, the current work is one of the artist's figurine designs that gained a cult following in Hong kong. Inspired by vintage G.I. Joe action figures, street culture and his community of friends, each figurine lives within Lau's own imaginative utopia.
Unlike other commercial action figures, each Gardener model, such as the present work, was handcrafted by the artist, encouraging viewers to appreciate each figurine as art objects instead of toys. As a pioneer of the vinyl art toy movement, Lau’s debut exhibition of a series of 99 original 12-inch Gardener figures at the Hong Kong Art Centre in 1999 overturned public conceptions of toys as a mass-produced, low-cost, low-quality product, and instead positioned them as limited-edition art objects.
