It was the year UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher visited China for the first time and talked with Deng Xiaoping about the handover of the British colony.
Local artist Leung Chi-wo explores this remarkable moment in Hong Kong's history in his third solo exhibition, Past-Future Tense, now showing at Blindspot Gallery.
"It's all about how I would imagine the future but in the past tense, how I see different things in retrospect," Leung said.
To him, it is always interesting to go back in time and ponder the myriad possibilities that might and could have unfolded.
"For example, what if North Korea won the Korean War? What if the Communists in Russia didn't make the revolution? What if the Berlin wall didn't fall?" he said.
"There are a lot of what ifs in history."
One "what if" raised by Thatcher was featured in one of his paintings, which shows her writing down the sentence: "And if they are not obtainable?"
It was a comment Thatcher made shortly before her meeting with Deng in 1982, indicating her doubts about maintaining control over Hong Kong after the handover in 1997.
It is not the only remark by Thatcher in 1982 that caught Leung's attention.
The artist said he spent a considerable amount of time at the National Archives in London during the pandemic, poring over documents from around 1982.
He came across another remark made by her - a simple "Excellent"- scribbled on an official document in which the handover of Hong Kong was the subject.
Leung said: "Does it mean she's happy about the handover or just happy to have a discussion? No one could tell."
So he explored the idea and created several collages with tabloids published on the same day as Thatcher made the comment, July 29, 1982.
In the collage, Excellent Sun, you can find iconic images of Princess Diana with newborn Prince William, the Chinese Women's Volleyball team, and an Atari video game "China Syndrome."
"When you pose different artifacts together, they could tell the stories by themselves," he explained.
A similar story is told through the unmissable sculpture, Gather the Tears.
Through it, he spins a tale derived from his experience of reading the official memoir of Thatcher.
"The book was so thick but only contained a few pages on the subject of Hong Kong - though you feel like there should be much more," he said.
So he cut out every sentence in the book that referred to Hong Kong and stacked them on top of the book creating lengthy, uninterrupted strips.
A crown made of six craft knives and adorned with two tiers of glass drops is embedded within the pages of the memoir to symbolize the tears shed during the handover.
He hopes the works can intrigue people to reconsider the past and imagine the future from a different perspective.
"We're again faced with a time of confusion and uncertainties, so I wish to bring people back to 50 years ago, and to think about what the future and uncertainties mean to people back then."
Dive into the history of the city half a century ago with Past-Future Tense, running at the Blindspot Gallery in Wong Chuk Hang until July 1.
