As a non-fiction cartoonist and live sketcher, Dan Archer draws as a means of remaining present and to connect with his surroundings. The majority of the comics and sketchbook pages featured in this exhibition were drawn directly from life rather than from photo references, emphasising the diversity of this beautiful, crazy city. It ranges from the bustling markets of Wan Chai and North Point to the martial arts clubs of Sham Shui Po or the Dragon Festival in Tai Hang.
Dan believes that drawing on-site allows one to directly capture the essence of a person or location more effectively and expressively compared to a smartphone or camera. When an interview is conducted, all speech balloons are direct quotes that the artist include as he sketches his subject’s portrait in tandem, allowing him to preserve the authenticity and impact of an interview, plus preserve their anonymity (if need be). The two main concepts behind this exhibition are; First, the unique advantages of hand-drawn narrative reportage in an era of AI slop, digital wormholes and doomscrolling. Second is to showcase the development from Dan’s original sketchbook pages to the completed hand-drawn comics pages, demonstrating how one informs the other.
Dan Archer (Daniel Archer) is a British graphic artist and author currently based in Hong Kong. For over 15 years, Archer has used cartooning and on-the-spot sketching to bring true stories to life on the page, from Colombia to South Korea and many other locations. His debut graphic novel, Voices from Nepal , was published by University of Toronto Press in 2024. When he is not drawing, Archer runs Empathetic Media, an XR studio working with clients worldwide, as well as conducting academic research on biological signals and perspective-taking inside immersive narrative scenarios.