A Touch of Gold
Ora-Ora presents a new solo show by acclaimed Hong Kong artist Nina Pryde, titled A Touch of Gold. Opening on August 2, it will run until September 6 at Ora-Ora in Tai Kwun, Central.
This show follows swiftly on the breaking news announced in June that the gallery will represent the artist on a worldwide basis.
A Touch of Gold presents emblematic landscapes of compelling variety, interpreted through photography, ink and collage. Several paintings will be exhibited for the first time. As well as early landmarks of innovation from her multi-decade career, the show accentuates newer artworks which impart captivating adventures in colour.
The show is the first since Ora-Ora recently announced its exclusive global representation of the artist. Nina Pryde is celebrated for her mesmerizing ink and photo collage techniques.
Nina Pryde’s increasing use of colour underlines the centrality of innovation in her artistic raison-d’être. Indeed, revered pioneer ink artist and proponent of the New Ink Movement Wucius Wong was one of the first to appreciate the ingenuity of Nina Pryde’s talent and her potential.
Core to Nina Pryde’s creativity is her use of photography and mixed media. She combines this modern innovation with classical ink techniques, juxtaposing classical landscapes with modern details. The blending of eternal and contemporary is a harmonious dichotomy, and the seamless mix of the two draws the viewer in to assimilate the unexpected information. Paintings such as A Touch of Gold (2025) offer unexpected hues and vital flows of energy, where the rich, warming rays of the sun bathe the hilly landscape around us in accrued, wistful wisdom.
The artist has built a stellar reputation in the Asian arts world for her ability to handle the traditional aspects of ink and translate them into a contemporary context. She employs natural landscape features such as mountains, rivers, trees, rocks, hazy clouds and mist arranged in a multi-layered composition. The intermittent interjection of modern buildings or human or animal figures creates moments which cut across the centuries, and which mix humour with the sense of mystery and poetry of the classic shan shui vista. Her love of landscape is reinforced by her passion for hiking and the outdoors, making her paintings a reflection of her own subtle search for serenity and inner peace.
Her versatility is a leitmotif of her career, with paintings such as Transcendence (2022) marrying gently ascending, vertical pastels with azure skies to create a landscape which is part abstraction, part documentation, part human construction, part divine intervention.
As CEO and Co-founder of Ora-Ora, Dr. Henrietta Tsui-Leung said, “Nina Pryde is a Hong Kong great, who mesmerizes all who encounter her work. A Touch Of Gold is a snapshot of innovation, vision and creativity, imbued with warmth, wit and wisdom.”
Nina Pryde is a Member of the Hong Kong Union of Visual Artists and Chinese Ink Painting Institute, as well as Honorary President of the Hong Kong Modern Ink Painting Society. The artist has long-established, deep roots in the city of her birth. However, this will be the last exhibition by Nina Pryde in Hong Kong before her imminent relocation to New Zealand. This occasion marks a farewell as well as new beginning.
