Art exposes Hong Kong’s poor

A sobering exhibition chronicling the lives of some of Hong Kong's poorest people is being displayed in the affluent city.

As part of Hong Kong's annual art charity event ArtWalk 2009, the Schoeni Gallery, which normally deals with high-end Chinese contemporary works, is devoting its space to a rusty iron cage or "cage home".

The idea is to raise awareness of the city's yawning wealth gap and social underbelly amid the financial crisis.

Split into three tiny bunks with grimy blankets and pillows, the "cage home" was taken from one of Hong Kong's cramped, old tenement flats where about 1,000 men are estimated to live in often squalid conditions.

ArtWalk organizer John Batton said that cage men were a relatively hidden segment of society.

"A cage home is exactly what it is, it's a small area — the size of bed which is locked up when you go out. So, it has a cage around it, and all your possessions are inside," he said.

ArtWalk donates its proceeds to Hong Kong's Society for Community Organization (SoCO) which works with the city's disadvantaged.

The cages, which resemble livestock coops, are stacked on top of each other, several blocks to a room, and are barely big enough for a bed.

Cage home residents were on hand to describe their lives to the well-heeled crowds surging through the gallery and signing petitions calling for the government to do more to alleviate poverty and aid those still left with inadequate housing.

"The highest bunk is the cheapest," Chow Kam-chuen, one of the cage men, told several Hong Kong women in high-heels who were sipping wine.

"Rent is around $167.6US a month, but you hit your head on the ceiling and it's uncomfortable," he said.

He added that he couldn't afford rents elsewhere and was unwilling to wait years for public housing in far-flung districts.

A financial hub of multi-millionaires, luxury cars, swanky malls and hilltop mansions and apartments, Hong Kong is also home to an estimated 420,000 working poor, living on less than $800 a month in some of its grittier neighbourhoods and sprawling public housing estates.

Around 2,000 people attended this year's ArtWalk 2009, a growing annual charity event, when an assortment of art galleries and antiques stores clustered in the hills above the city's financial district open their doors until midnight for an evening of wine, art, fun and reflection.