Yeung Tong Lung has been a respected figure in Hong Kong art for four decades, celebrated for his nuanced portraits of daily life and the less visible sides of his city. His canvases depict housing estates, migrant workers and neighbourhood eccentrics in streets, stores, kitchens and flats with detail, wit and a vivid realism, using fluid pictorial planes that permit the inclusion of multiple viewpoints. These trademark perspectival shifts provide expansive context for Yeung’s depiction of Hong Kong, increasing the paintings’ visual and spatial possibilities.

360°+ 2021–23 is an ambitious 18-panel painting based on views from Yeung’s studio in Kennedy Town, at the western end of Hong Kong Island. It centres on four continuous panoramas joined in a long, scroll-like format, along with 14 vignettes of an unusually quiet city. Glimpses of face masks are reminders that the work was made largely during periods of COVID-19 lockdown. Yet its haunting qualities are softened by sights like pigeons at roost, a rooftop garden, a pandemic-era balcony haircut and two young people taking in a sunset – moments of genuine humanity and levity.