HONG KONG - TOP fashion brand Chanel unveiled a global art exhibition in Hong Kong on Tuesday, choosing the distinctly unglamourous setting of a car park roof.

The show, featuring works based on Chanel's emblematic quilted handbags, opens to the public on Wednesday and is housed in a giant, UFO-like 'mobile art pavilion.'

Chanel commissioned around 20 artists, including Yoko Ono and the Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, to produce works for the show loosely based on its famous bag.

The artists were taken to Coco Chanel's Paris apartment and shown how the bags were made. The resulting works include sound installations, sculpture and video.

The moving art gallery, designed by the award-winning British architect Zaha Hadid, who is designing London's Olympic Aquatics Centre, is currently parked on a rooftop next to Hong Kong's famous harbour.

But it will be painstakingly taken apart and rebuilt in a few weeks' time, when the exhibition, which ends April 5, moves to Tokyo on the second leg of a two-year world tour that will take it to New York, London, Moscow and Paris.

The 180-tonne pavilion was built in Yorkshire in northern England. It was shipped to Hong Kong - piece by piece - in more than 50 cargo containers.

A team of builders spent four weeks rebuilding the pavilion in its new harbourside location, and it will take another 20 days to ship the 700 individual pieces that make up the building from Hong Kong to Tokyo.