(Exhibition from 19 December 2025 to 20 February 2026)

There are many graduation shows hosted by Departments or Schools of Art and Design. They celebrate ending of the education process as graduates from the programmes demonstrating what they have learned in four years. Matriculation show, in contrast, is seldom heard of as it celebrates the beginning of the education process. What is worth celebrating at the start?

We mount this exhibition with an attempt to explore the answers, as we believe the end results need to be explained in some way with the trace of ideas back to their origin. With our annual intake of 40 students for the BA-AD as well as BA-CCI programmes, we witness the transformation of these young talents at the end of their education at HSUHK. But what were they like when they first enrolled in our programmes, and whether their latent talents were already apparent before they began?

In this exhibition, we have assembled a few of our BA students' work from their pre-university portfolio, shown at the same time with their achievements from the assignments in the Year 1 studio curriculum. We do not follow strictly a one-to-one mapping of individual's work, but rather a collective display of their representative oeuvre. Thus, the array of objects, models, ink and oil paintings may not be comprehensively reflected by the First Tem assignments of drawings and wearable art, but they nevertheless speak elegantly about the temperaments and characters of the authors.

We are glad that the exhibition is held concurrently with the opening of the permanent exhibition of the Foundation Gallery on the university collections from donations, complementing these "objects of desire" with our students' primitive creations, commenting perhaps on the teaching "Never forget your original aspiration and your mission will be accomplished" (Huayan Sutra).

「不忘初心，方得始終」《 華嚴經》