About

Join us this Friday 6 March, 6–8pm, as 4A LAB launches HAYMARKET 2050, a multidisciplinary creative placemaking project bringing together an immersive exhibition and a Chinatown AR experience.

Commissioned by 4A and led by artists Gene Leung and Dan Tse of INJURY and REAL PARENT, the project draws on Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream and asks: is Haymarket the city we inhabit, or the memory it carries?

Blending late 1990s Cantonese culture with speculative 2050 spaces, the work reimagines Hong Kong cinema, Mahjong tables and Bauhinia blossoms within a digitally suspended world inspired by The Matrix. Lion gates rise into sky gardens. Tai Chi moves through animated blossoms. A fantastical mascot circulates through gachapon capsules as a symbol of qi and collective luck. Here, memory becomes a generative force, and the future stays in conversation with the past, a dream we continue to inhabit, play and transform.

Alongside the exhibition, the experience extends into Chinatown. The artworks are experienced through an AR platform developed by Melanie Huang Buntine, with digital infrastructure support from Culture Vault enabling the project’s interactive and asset-claiming framework.The journey unlocks a customised gachapon experience where you can collect a series of limited edition characters and step between reality and dream.

HAYMARKET 2050 is proudly supported by the NSW Government, City of Sydney, and Haymarket Alliance.

📌 Artists:

INJURY

REAL PARENT

📌 HAYMARKET 2050

6 March – 29 March 2026

Wednesday to Sunday, 11:00am – 5:00pm

Image: INJURY and REAL PARENT, HAYMARKET 2050, 2026. Commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Courtesy of the artists.

Location

Get directions

4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
181-187 Hay Street, Haymarket NSW 2000

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