tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80639262624546826602024-03-13T10:57:52.677-07:00an art teacher in ChinaMusings about China and Chinese art An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comBlogger228125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-7269383800809512722023-02-21T18:08:00.001-08:002023-12-19T16:20:52.006-08:00Beyond the Ordinary: Guan Wei at Vermilion Art<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6z2k6PqeozND3c6GIKamJYdc_hUS-Zfq0rzDV1mEy5VmKYTWlrkFtYzrv3O3ncer7rEYsWGGH00wfLb74fLRRJJULaRXY_PUmOe27FPFNZfnWobksjtFxPndwWDlKvamohKhiDjjn8KaMztGs_BFVOwgF36SDcakxX_KCml_2wmtl-4FYcrrLDe5g/s5374/Guan%20Wei,%20Apparition,%202023,%20acrylic%20on%20canvas,%2010%20panels,%20180x254%20cm.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4006" data-original-width="5374" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6z2k6PqeozND3c6GIKamJYdc_hUS-Zfq0rzDV1mEy5VmKYTWlrkFtYzrv3O3ncer7rEYsWGGH00wfLb74fLRRJJULaRXY_PUmOe27FPFNZfnWobksjtFxPndwWDlKvamohKhiDjjn8KaMztGs_BFVOwgF36SDcakxX_KCml_2wmtl-4FYcrrLDe5g/w400-h299/Guan%20Wei,%20Apparition,%202023,%20acrylic%20on%20canvas,%2010%20panels,%20180x254%20cm.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guan Wei, <i>Apparition</i>, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 10 panels, 180x254 cm. Image courtesy Vermilion Art<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Out of
the Ordinary</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> is the
title of Guan Wei’s solo exhibition at Sydney’s Vermilion Art, a description that
also fits the man himself. From his early years in Beijing’s post-Cultural
Revolution contemporary art scene, to his arrival in Hobart in 1989 and
emergence as the most prominent of the so-called ‘post-Tiananmen’ generation of
Chinese artists in Australia, Guan Wei developed an art practice that merges
two worlds. His visual language as painter, ceramicist and sculptor juxtaposes
Chinese traditional motifs with Australian colonial imagery, and with continuing
references to the indigenous history that intrigued him from his earliest days
in Tasmania. The result is a surreal parallel universe, a place of imagined,
alternative histories.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Covering twelve
years of the artist’s work<i>, Out of the Ordinary</i> is a collaboration
between Guan Wei’s long-time
gallery, Martin Browne Fine Art, and Vermilion Art, Sydney’s only commercial
gallery specialising in contemporary Chinese art. It reveals distinct phases in
his practice over that time, and a variety of influences ranging from his
fascination with Australian beach culture to appropriations of the Chinoiserie
that was so fashionable in Britain and Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Prevented from
returning to his Beijing studio for three years due to Covid-19 border closures,
Guan Wei’s recent work examines the global pandemic as a kind of spiritual
malaise. We humans may need an extra-terrestrial intervention, he suggests,
whether that be from angels or aliens.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Guan Wei
once said that he likes to work in ‘the space between imagination and reality’:
he is a storyteller, a myth-maker – an artist with a strong sense of social
justice and moral conviction. His blend of real and imaginary histories creates
a world in which his characteristically faceless, pale figures interact
with silhouettes of animals and people that resemble paper-cuts. His paintings
are populated by Indigenous Australian, European and Chinese characters who wander in exotic landscapes or sail across painted oceans. Described poetically by
Alex Burchmore as ‘adrift in dense spaces of iconographic collision’<a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Downloads/Guan%20Wei%20for%20Vermilion%2021.2.23.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>,
Guan Wei’s eclectic imagery suggests stories of empire, invasion, exploration, and
migration – and often evokes a
contemporary political paranoia over ‘sovereign borders’. Together with his
distinctive iconography of Chinese clouds, swirling waves, map coordinates, navigational charts, and astrological diagrams they
create a floating world of ambiguous transnational narratives.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXeA7bdke-aUWSbnTYnKYwHsnWRx6_AcSg-vvcmtDTxnuMdOW8TM3y3dUx7fACEccRBPIxjLOy8zI5-BAdUn0hXbgXfT8hSEgjCSZsoVcdF4cA8VnHoY3zp1v8VdbPLAHUAp4OQQWdHc2TKVCB95Z5-axJqS84qg-xxngCKNLerzybPaPsaPrgITYQ/s1142/Guan%20Wei,%20Play%20on%20the%20Beach%20No.2,%202010,%20acrylic%20on%20canvas,%20diptych,%20130x106%20cm.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1142" data-original-width="918" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXeA7bdke-aUWSbnTYnKYwHsnWRx6_AcSg-vvcmtDTxnuMdOW8TM3y3dUx7fACEccRBPIxjLOy8zI5-BAdUn0hXbgXfT8hSEgjCSZsoVcdF4cA8VnHoY3zp1v8VdbPLAHUAp4OQQWdHc2TKVCB95Z5-axJqS84qg-xxngCKNLerzybPaPsaPrgITYQ/w321-h400/Guan%20Wei,%20Play%20on%20the%20Beach%20No.2,%202010,%20acrylic%20on%20canvas,%20diptych,%20130x106%20cm.JPG" width="321" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guan Wei,<i> Play on the Beach No.2,</i> 2010, acrylic on canvas, diptych, 130x106 cm. <br />Image courtesy Vermilion Art</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The earliest
work in the exhibition</span>, <i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Play on the Beach 2</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">, dates from 2010. Part of a series created on Guan Wei’s return from
China in 2008, the diptych suggests the simple, hedonistic Australian pleasures
of sun and surf, with curly Chinese clouds floating above a blue ocean. Yet
there is a hint of something darker. In the foreground, an emu
buries its head in the sand while a fleshy pink figure runs towards the ocean,
arms outstretched and mouth agape. In the background, tiny figures appear at
first glance to be frolicking happily in the ocean. On closer inspection,
however, we wonder whether perhaps they are not waving, but drowning. <span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Notions of
navigation – the crossing of oceans, the art of the cartographer, the study of
constellations – are significant in Guan Wei’s work. The exhibition features paintings
from two important series,<i> Reflections</i> and <i>Time Tunnel</i>, that were
inspired by a residency in England. Guan visited stately homes and historical museums
and became fascinated by the exploits of the British navy in the eighteenth
century. He studied maps and historical engravings and was inspired by
collections of textiles and porcelain with the Chinoiserie motifs so beloved of
the period. Contrasting a Rousseau-esque ideal of a Utopia in the Pacific with
the horrors of a brutal penal colony and the violence of the Frontier Wars,
Guan Wei developed new imagery to re-imagine these histories. He reflects on
the universal theme of the journey, on specific historical voyages, and on his
own journeys of migration and return. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbIxjuvXAh5u5ak0xRvmhxsprhiDQxyXqls_ToBFA_dl2VPs9_t3f2uvLNmoJBvO6I5oeTDvN6iUTqy1HxANR25uSTmf-JitKiaxljoSybMk7uRY75Scx6Rcv7ytmwH53d_FS0DFb1Qjb7FDi01MX3UvuGcQMrnujFk10eBvNsGsqifTBZDwHZ9d-g/s1418/Guan%20Wei,%20Reflection%2012,%202016,%20acrylic%20on%20canvas,%20triptych,%20130x162%20cm.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1138" data-original-width="1418" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbIxjuvXAh5u5ak0xRvmhxsprhiDQxyXqls_ToBFA_dl2VPs9_t3f2uvLNmoJBvO6I5oeTDvN6iUTqy1HxANR25uSTmf-JitKiaxljoSybMk7uRY75Scx6Rcv7ytmwH53d_FS0DFb1Qjb7FDi01MX3UvuGcQMrnujFk10eBvNsGsqifTBZDwHZ9d-g/w400-h321/Guan%20Wei,%20Reflection%2012,%202016,%20acrylic%20on%20canvas,%20triptych,%20130x162%20cm.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guan Wei, <i>Reflection 12</i>, 2016, acrylic on canvas, triptych, 130x162 cm. Image courtesy Vermilion Art</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">When the
series was first exhibited Guan Wei described them as ‘floating between true
and false, dark and light’. </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Reflection 12</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> (2016), for example, depicts
what at first seems a bucolic idyll. In the blue tones typical of export
porcelain or </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">toile </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">textiles, enclosed in an ornate frame, the foreground
shows the silhouette of a woman and child feeding chickens. Cows and sheep
stand in a small stream that runs beneath a curved stone bridge. A silhouetted
figure playing a pipe recalls Arcadian landscapes by Watteau. In the background,
indigenous figures are strongly reminiscent of the paintings of early
nineteenth-century Tasmanian artist John Glover, no doubt encountered during
Guan Wei’s time in Hobart. Glover’s paintings of Aboriginal ceremonies ignored
inconvenient truths, presenting instead </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">of dispossession and disease an imagined
pastoral ideal of coexistence. In </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Reflection 12 </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the faint image of a
sailing ship in the background, and the black silhouettes of an angel fighting
a demon outside the framed landscape, allude to darker truths of our history. A
four-panelled folding screen, </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Remarkable World 3</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> (2019) continues this
interest in the intersections between colonial European, Chinese and indigenous
histories, filtered through the artist’s imagination.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The most
recent painting in <i>Out of the Ordinary </i>is<i> The Apparition </i>(2023),
an ambitious ten-panelled contemporary version of a medieval altarpiece that distils
Guan Wei’s response to the ruptures of the global pandemic. The lower five
panels depict an ocean dotted with islands. The island peaks and swirling waves
recall the mountain and water imagery of <i>shan shui</i> ink painting. Yet
here, rather than lonely scholars or Immortals wandering in the mountains we
see the biblical story of Noah’s Ark (with an abandoned panda looking on plaintively from the waves). Dinosaurs coexist with Chinese dragons and dolphins, and the sea is
filled with capsizing boatloads of anguished human figures. Above, angels appropriated from Renaissance
paintings appear to offer hope and salvation. Guan Wei says, ‘A terrifying flood submerged the
world. People were struggling in the water. Noah's Ark appeared from afar and
magical forces descended from the sky. Human beings who had been troubled by
the pandemic for three years were, at long last, rescued. There is always
hope.’ Yet, the tiny silhouettes of a submarine and hovering UFOs suggest that
humanity is not out of the woods just yet. Guan Wei’s work always balances despair with hope, tragedy with humour, and the ordinary with the mystical.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Out of
the Ordinary</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">
continues at Vermilion Art until 23 March 2023</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div><!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
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<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Downloads/Guan%20Wei%20for%20Vermilion%2021.2.23.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Alex Burchmore, ‘Guan Wei’s “Australerie” ceramics and the binary bind of
identity politics’. Index Journal issue no. 4 <a href="https://index-journal.org/issues/identity/guan-wei-australerie-ceramics-and-the-binary-bind-of-identity-politics-by-alex-burchmore">https://index-journal.org/issues/identity/guan-wei-australerie-ceramics-and-the-binary-bind-of-identity-politics-by-alex-burchmore</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>
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<br /> </p>An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-33888380834950553242022-05-16T20:34:00.021-07:002022-05-16T22:14:07.476-07:00"Sweet Dreams Are Made of This": Dorveille at Vermilion Art<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUVBwKgfsQYaZqAHURkdtZnAA604LsmHcHX3FMNb2X1z-NbNYtkg6eOoTD9dZkYvoh4P1uIh0CuxC193Z8X4HgKUWPfxwEPfKMNydLizw0VfWSN4t8UrddZBwsowvTg7FUdKoDD98QW3H8qNSLioBbxU6pkrJhnAgTjLZWyFilFimKSrkoamdGnrlH/s7900/Qin%20Han,%20Dream%20your%20dreams,%202021,%20soft%20pastel,%20watercolor,%20mineral%20pigments%20on%20paper,%2070x100cm,%20%EF%BF%BD8,200,%20Vermilion%20Art.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5608" data-original-width="7900" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUVBwKgfsQYaZqAHURkdtZnAA604LsmHcHX3FMNb2X1z-NbNYtkg6eOoTD9dZkYvoh4P1uIh0CuxC193Z8X4HgKUWPfxwEPfKMNydLizw0VfWSN4t8UrddZBwsowvTg7FUdKoDD98QW3H8qNSLioBbxU6pkrJhnAgTjLZWyFilFimKSrkoamdGnrlH/w400-h284/Qin%20Han,%20Dream%20your%20dreams,%202021,%20soft%20pastel,%20watercolor,%20mineral%20pigments%20on%20paper,%2070x100cm,%20%EF%BF%BD8,200,%20Vermilion%20Art.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Qin Han, <i>Dream your dreams</i>, 2021, soft pastel, watercolor, mineral pigments on paper, 70x100cm, image courtesy the artist and Vermilion Art</td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">In this time of "Know my Name" and the restoration of hidden women to the artistic canon (and to the art market) the current exhibition at Sydney's </span><a href="https://vermilionart.com.au/exhibition/" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">Vermilion Ar</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">t hits the zeitgeist. Curators Man Luo and Tianyue Li, with curatorial assistant Jiawen Li, have created an interesting show in which works by 5 young women artists are not (at least primarily) linked by their gender. Instead, this exhibition centres around a common thread: that dreamy state between sleep and wakefulness once known as "dorveille". With apologies to Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics: "Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">The exhibition catalogue references a medieval poem by Jean Froissart:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"First described in medieval France, Dorveille is ‘a psychic, physical and spiritual condition’ <span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span></span>experienced by artists and poets. It is a dreamlike semi-conscious state in which there is no distinction <span> </span>between the fantastic and the familiar, from which words, images and ideas emerge."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">But it is not just artists and poets who experience this condition. Many of us are all too familiar with the phenomenon of hours of semi-wakefulness in the middle reaches of the night. But perhaps what we call "broken" sleep is actually not broken at all, but ... normal? Rather than tossing and turning, seeking elusive oblivion, could it be instead a productive time of thoughts and decisions, a time to reflect? Two years of a global pandemic and weeks of lockdowns put paid to so-called "normal" sleep for many. Working at home from the couch (or the bed), zooming into meetings in pyjamas, hours of Netflix bingeing, eating at odd times (I hope this is not just me...) Has all this created new neural pathways and habits that mean we can't go back to how things were in the before times?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">In fact, in the pre-industrial West, segmented sleep was completely normal. People slept in two blocks, with a time of wakeful sleepiness or sleepy wakefulness in the middle. As Jesse Baron wrote in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-segmented-sleep.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">"Back when segmented sleep was common, this period between “first” and “second” sleep inspired reverence. The French called it </span><em class="css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #363636; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">dorveille</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">, or wakesleep, a hypnotic state." Uses of this time differed. Some wrote poetry, or interpreted their dreams. Some had visions, or wrote in diaries. Some, more pragmatically perhaps, just had sex. As long as we don't use these unencumbered hours to answer emails or doomscroll through newsmedia, they can be a gift. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">But these hours can also be dark and disturbing, filled with half-remembered dreams, with regrets and sorrows, with presentiments of the uncanny. Mothers breastfeeding their babies in the hours towards dawn know this. So too, these are the hours when the old and sick are most likely to slide from life into death.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">I was interested to see how artists Qin Han, Ruth Ju-Shih Li, Angie Pai, Rose Wong and xinxin responded to the hypnotic allure and dreamy reverie of "wakesleep".</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaVtOFNfY-kmUItAwcqDJsOyRuvf6wmPmZO1inHAqEI8h3drwTPKEpcghNFCe3ndjROTgjl0nSphztHsveTGGl1kfdBoObVCuANKsRHaF2vLYW6wc0vAW6hqILDM9CRY0NrMQ2ceQyvDgOKIgUoEd8ejKhbRn8M1QG-sVPHnsvQq2hst7uQ-6NtR4W/s1916/Qin%20Han,%20Human%20pretzels,%202021,%20soft%20pastel,%20watercolor,%20mineral%20pigments%20on%20paper,%2020x14cm,%2041x32cm%20with%20frame,%20Vermilion%20Art.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1916" data-original-width="1416" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaVtOFNfY-kmUItAwcqDJsOyRuvf6wmPmZO1inHAqEI8h3drwTPKEpcghNFCe3ndjROTgjl0nSphztHsveTGGl1kfdBoObVCuANKsRHaF2vLYW6wc0vAW6hqILDM9CRY0NrMQ2ceQyvDgOKIgUoEd8ejKhbRn8M1QG-sVPHnsvQq2hst7uQ-6NtR4W/w295-h400/Qin%20Han,%20Human%20pretzels,%202021,%20soft%20pastel,%20watercolor,%20mineral%20pigments%20on%20paper,%2020x14cm,%2041x32cm%20with%20frame,%20Vermilion%20Art.jpg" width="295" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Qin Han, <i>Human pretzels,</i> 2021, soft pastel, watercolor, mineral pigments on paper, 20x14cm, 41x32cm with frame, image courtesy the artist and Vermilion Art</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">Qin Han was trained at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Her playful, Surrealist vocabulary of (very pink) naked women floating in strange landscapes owes a little to Matisse and Picasso, a little to Niki de Saint Phalle's joyfully voluptuous naked ladies, and something to Hieronymus Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights", yet is in the end entirely, idiosyncratically her own. <i>Dream your Dreams</i> (2021), for example, depicts six pink nudes arranged around a large, floating mass, an amorphous shape filled with beautiful linear patterns and colour. Her figures recall the artfully arranged poses of art historical nudes or nudie pinups, yet they are smiling cheerfully, legs awkwardly placed and boobs akimbo. It is as if they have dreamed a gorgeously coloured world into being. In <i>Everyone has an Island</i> (2021) more pink ladies disport themselves in yoga or dance-like poses on brightly coloured shapes that resemble clouds. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">Other excursions into this theme take us to darker places.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXYEfmoWpUYYfzoc8Ft3blT5Br_BL_pBKzOt_Ryfy_6rzTA0iptw-OAGJkhXUhtiSNWIzXKQh5zLSmc79_cBj_aZ3qXmrRew0pF4ZXE-I0LJjnCt4taeoXfTZlcTOLYb7F_XclHwMNWPcgfMBmky-p0wCeYCYDFNE0oHov1LfgCO0XnJNv0WJttITJ/s4194/Ruth%20Ju-Shih%20Li,%20Midnight,%202019,%20Jingdezhen%20porcelain,%20gold,%2022%20x%2016%20x%207%20cm,%20Vermilion%20Art.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4194" data-original-width="3145" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXYEfmoWpUYYfzoc8Ft3blT5Br_BL_pBKzOt_Ryfy_6rzTA0iptw-OAGJkhXUhtiSNWIzXKQh5zLSmc79_cBj_aZ3qXmrRew0pF4ZXE-I0LJjnCt4taeoXfTZlcTOLYb7F_XclHwMNWPcgfMBmky-p0wCeYCYDFNE0oHov1LfgCO0XnJNv0WJttITJ/w300-h400/Ruth%20Ju-Shih%20Li,%20Midnight,%202019,%20Jingdezhen%20porcelain,%20gold,%2022%20x%2016%20x%207%20cm,%20Vermilion%20Art.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ruth Ju-Shih Li, <i>Midnight</i>, 2019, Jingdezhen porcelain, gold, 22 x 16 x 7 cm, image courtesy the artist and Vermilion Art</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">Ruth Ju-Shih Li, originally from Taiwan, trained in Ceramics at the National Art School in Sydney and now divides her time between Taipei, Sydney and the ancient Chinese porcelain city of Jingdezhen where she maintains a studio. Her work is gaining international attention - she has exhibited widely in Australia, Taiwan, Mainland China, Korea and Thailand, and was awarded the Special Prize at the Taiwan Ceramics Biennale International in 2020. Alluding to fairy-tales, myths and legends, juxtaposing Western and Eastern influences, her fragile porcelain installations evoke ideas about the ephemeral nature of existence. At first appearing simply beautiful and decorative, a closer examination reveals a darker exploration of death and decay signified through Vanitas-like drooping petals and birds' wings.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinBmBn0gfEjSWXleZ-l2lVSSsZUoIExxAVMKHwbaMplZJXeGhXxPVM_B4OC6g7xoKITHboJUiXsybKa7-ZNdvGZ-ZvesPjaJ5ji0iw85nzfq4bZPg1_cRiznI9SUlBoV8l8ehWziIbDCcbue6IcP-5vWo7lhw-MT-ILbSbw5nizuOHVOgdh8czquPc/s5713/Rose%20Wong,%20The%20Bible%20of%20Female%20Saints%20-%20Lin%20Daiyu,%20mixed%20media,%202021,%2042x30cm,%20Vermilion%20Art.JPG"><img border="0" data-original-height="5713" data-original-width="4105" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinBmBn0gfEjSWXleZ-l2lVSSsZUoIExxAVMKHwbaMplZJXeGhXxPVM_B4OC6g7xoKITHboJUiXsybKa7-ZNdvGZ-ZvesPjaJ5ji0iw85nzfq4bZPg1_cRiznI9SUlBoV8l8ehWziIbDCcbue6IcP-5vWo7lhw-MT-ILbSbw5nizuOHVOgdh8czquPc/w288-h400/Rose%20Wong,%20The%20Bible%20of%20Female%20Saints%20-%20Lin%20Daiyu,%20mixed%20media,%202021,%2042x30cm,%20Vermilion%20Art.JPG" width="288" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #363636;">Rose Wong, <i>The Bible of Female Saints - Lin Daiyu</i>, mixed media, 2021, 42x30cm, Image courtesy the artist and Vermilion Art</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #363636;"><span style="background-color: white;">Multidisciplinary artist Rose Wong was born and grew up in Hong Kong. </span>She was trained firstly at the University of Hong Kong and received the Master of </span><span style="color: #363636;">Artist Teaching & Contemporary Art Practice from Goldsmiths, University of London. Now based in Beijing, her practice blurs boundaries between painting and sculpture, as well as digital media and performance art. She is drawn to subjects from classical Chinese literature, mythology and folk-tales, including concubines, goddesses and immortals. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">The Bible of Female Saints - Lin Daiyu</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">, for example, depicts a central character from the classic Chinese novel ''Dream of the Red Chamber". A melancholy figure, Daiyu had been reincarnated from a previous existence as a flower, thus she represents the world of illusion, immortality and dreams. </span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPVznn0c3xyyUybCzUX2_SKdPcolEL1rp9uAtculBcj52lFFrxtgIZjJY84vFGxxy47B0iALxmDowzZ_nLSrOmnYhJM_82mgp4BwCqq3mRphzNg_FROoNr8HK0JcFwOv1rRQhJ9IFmfHG78Ec9wT2uN0ZMpSoP9pbCoScDefHXgksQ7RHEkY2WOipe/s2560/Angie-Pai-Aha-2021-acrylic-and-sand-render-on-wood-150-x-113-x-4cm-scaled.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1840" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPVznn0c3xyyUybCzUX2_SKdPcolEL1rp9uAtculBcj52lFFrxtgIZjJY84vFGxxy47B0iALxmDowzZ_nLSrOmnYhJM_82mgp4BwCqq3mRphzNg_FROoNr8HK0JcFwOv1rRQhJ9IFmfHG78Ec9wT2uN0ZMpSoP9pbCoScDefHXgksQ7RHEkY2WOipe/w461-h640/Angie-Pai-Aha-2021-acrylic-and-sand-render-on-wood-150-x-113-x-4cm-scaled.jpg" width="461" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Angie Pai, <i>Aha,</i> 2021, acrylic and sand render on wood, 150 x 113 cm, Image courtesy the artist and Vermilion Art<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Born in Taichung, Taiwan, currently based in Melbourne, Angie Pai graduated from RMIT and is now studying psychology at the University of Melbourne. Pai says she <span style="text-align: center;">examines the compromises that come with living on the cusp of East and West. Influenced by Daoist and Buddhist teachings, and by aspects of Confucianism, Pai makes work that explores complex issues of identity in subtle, often ambiguous ways that suggest a meditative form of minimalism. Interviewed - most appropriately - for <a href="https://www.liminalmag.com/interviews/angie-pai" target="_blank">"Liminal"</a>, Pai told James Robinson that being Asian in Australia means "l</span><span style="text-align: center;">earning to harness the multifaceted aspects of my intercultural upbringing in a pragmatic manner."</span></span></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5XxUVWQR4f-FomCJxDW1WKjUoB9oKbKj9nL6hHdRKkP5p0UGt7LBRwLUnB-tuLFCKiougGtm46ZxKssDdIN-xE_YhUrBb74I2Re43GnBW0K--jpK_iYwLAmbWbva6ItIyX6EcZMYdN2Ty-iyno6M9kcsDC0sDC6-_GKrrhUcFKx6-BwZxcpJ-IUY6/s3568/xinxin,%20The%20Cure,%202021,%20oil%20on%20canvas,%2070x50cm,%20Vermilion%20Art.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3568" data-original-width="2546" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5XxUVWQR4f-FomCJxDW1WKjUoB9oKbKj9nL6hHdRKkP5p0UGt7LBRwLUnB-tuLFCKiougGtm46ZxKssDdIN-xE_YhUrBb74I2Re43GnBW0K--jpK_iYwLAmbWbva6ItIyX6EcZMYdN2Ty-iyno6M9kcsDC0sDC6-_GKrrhUcFKx6-BwZxcpJ-IUY6/w285-h400/xinxin,%20The%20Cure,%202021,%20oil%20on%20canvas,%2070x50cm,%20Vermilion%20Art.jpg" width="285" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">xinxin, The Cure, 2021, oil on canvas, 70x50cm, Vermilion Art</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">Multidisciplinary artist xinxin trained at the art academy in Chongqing (which has a strong history of producing extraordinary expressionist and surrealist figurative painters) and at UNSW Art & Design. Like Qin Han, she too is influenced by northern Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch, creating a Surrealist imaginary. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">Her works are mysterious, uncanny, suggesting the grotesque and nightmarish. Alice has definitely travelled through the looking glass in these works, entering a hallucinogenic and unsettling world where nothing is what it seems.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">"Dorveille" takes us into the personal imaginaries of each artist. Individually they explore their dreams, desires and fears, and the exhibition as a whole, beautifully installed in the gallery space, suggests the exposure of otherwise elusive, hidden worlds. But perhaps there is also another kind of 'dorveille'. In some ways the experience of diaspora mirrors that liminal zone between sleep and wakefulness. Living on the cusp of East and West, often moving across borders and between cultures, exhibiting internationally, wondering where is home, the artists in 'Dorveille' have each developed a visual language of material, image and form that examine the connections and disconnections of the diasporic experience. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #363636;"><span style="background-color: white;">"Dorveille" continues at <a href="https://vermilionart.com.au/exhibition/" target="_blank">Vermilion Art</a> through 4 June 2022</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;"><br /></span></span></p>An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-68953605563947242342022-04-02T01:06:00.015-07:002022-04-04T05:24:37.673-07:00 三 界: The Three Realms of Ah Xian<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWaMJYExLzBWHHalrdyvFDpYZsU9kcomdt0MEyrbPTK-8k4tSekxBC24PJgvNhAi6PMxjgYOTbOIR-tnftGgwEPuXI3Jm79BxG9I97pA7E5YqPGqKGJjNoVEPNFgo_FKyDDGs3sdqC3cGllwCuOGrIayYoTuXdFQIRTG2QcLkeS8XMwcs_JokwBzU1/s4000/Ah%20Xian,%20Fledging%20No.9,%202022,%20giclee%20and%20ink%20on%20Xuan%20paper,%20v.e.%20of%2030,%20140x70cm,%20bright.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="2109" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWaMJYExLzBWHHalrdyvFDpYZsU9kcomdt0MEyrbPTK-8k4tSekxBC24PJgvNhAi6PMxjgYOTbOIR-tnftGgwEPuXI3Jm79BxG9I97pA7E5YqPGqKGJjNoVEPNFgo_FKyDDGs3sdqC3cGllwCuOGrIayYoTuXdFQIRTG2QcLkeS8XMwcs_JokwBzU1/w211-h400/Ah%20Xian,%20Fledging%20No.9,%202022,%20giclee%20and%20ink%20on%20Xuan%20paper,%20v.e.%20of%2030,%20140x70cm,%20bright.JPG" width="211" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ah Xian, <i>Fledging No.9</i>, 2022, giclee and ink on Xuan paper, 140 x 70 cm<br />signed, inscribed and marked with seals of the artist<br />Image courtesy the artist and Vermilion Art<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>I had the privilege and pleasure of being invited to <a href="https://www.vermilionart.com.au/exhibitions-current.html" target="_blank">Vermilion Art</a> earlier this month to be "in conversation" with Chinese Australian artist Ah Xian on the occasion of his exhibition "Fledging". Surrounded by his works, and with a small audience - acknowledgement of the spiking Covid-19 case numbers in Sydney - we spoke about how two years of a global pandemic changed his practice.
Prevented by Australia's closed borders from returning to his sculpture studio in Beijing, or to the porcelain city of Jingdezhen where he has found much inspiration in the past, he wondered what he could do. The result of his period of contemplation is revealed in this exhibition, and it represents a distinct change in his practice, perhaps best expressed in the poem he wrote for this beautiful, ambiguously gendered, viridian green figure with a bird perched upon its head:<div><br /><div><div><i>Freely thinking soars up high</i></div><div><i>Peace can perch and also fly</i></div><div><i>Where there’s truth and righteous men</i></div><div><i>There I make their hometown mine</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Wandering through the exhibition of his new works alone, on a rainy Sunday afternoon prior to my conversation with the artist, I was reminded that in ancient China, painting, poetry and calligraphy were not considered as separate artforms. They were the "<i>san jue</i>": the "three perfections". In the isolation of his locked down Australian studio, Ah Xian found a new direction. Using photographs of selected sculptural busts and figures, juxtaposing their reproduced images with his own poetry (written with very beautiful calligraphy in traditional Chinese characters) and seal carving, he created a suite of works on <i>xuan</i> paper, reactivating his figurative sculptures in a new form.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ah Xian is at once an absolutely contemporary artist, yet also grounded in Chinese traditional art forms; highly cosmopolitan and global in his outlook, yet profoundly influenced by his own and China's histories. Before arriving in Australia, firstly in 1989 as a <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">visiting scholar at the University of Tasmania’s Tasmanian School of Art and settling in Sydney in 1990, Ah Xian</span></span> was a member of Beijing's avant-garde artistic circles. He became a self-taught painter during a period poetically described by writer Linda Jaivin as "that time when everything seemed hopeful". <div><br /></div><div>Since the 1990s and his transition from painting to sculpture, the artist (who was born Liu Ji Xian but took the name "Ah Xian" in the early 1980s) has been internationally known for figurative sculptures cast from human bodies. The first series, <i>China China,</i> consisted of 40 hand-painted porcelain body casts. The best-known of these are a set of busts, cast by Ah Xian from the bodies of family and friends before being made and fired in the kilns at Jingdezhen and hand-painted by local artisans. Often painted with the cobalt blue glaze for which Jingdezhen (the "city of blue and white") is so famous, the figures appear melancholy, their closed eyes suggesting they are lost in a private reverie. There is a faint echo of the death masks that once memorialised people in a pre-photographic age. Decorative patterns across their heads and torsos partially cover their mouths, suggesting that they cannot, or will not, speak. Asked about possible interpretations of their closed eyes - apart from the obvious one that it is required by the casting process - Ah Xian was reticent; he prefers audiences to make up their own minds. I have a sense, though, that a certain melancholy silence attends the work of many, if not all, Chinese artists of his generation. Sadness, too, is a part of the diasporic experience, a sense of loss and longing for an irretrievable past life. The poem written for <i>Fledging No. 4</i> suggests both the joy found in familiar cultural rituals and the sorrow in remembering:</div><div><div><br /></div><div><i>This auspicious day</i></div><div><i>Crowded lion dance</i></div><div><i>Red silk and red belts</i></div><div><i>Jade faces, jade folk</i></div></div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5H11gK0PpwQLconJsBGP4-uyDRyMKVfWShC7ZB5JV-NoFYYBW05ATGJIAnZoIBmaMpVrHWmTxVPnbcrCjirrlyC-bMBvqg7mnXUGMBSXIowHCeUzihrkO9K_y9AIvH4npSCtmARwBnNAXM-uj_etwUgrMIF_2xSBu-Ix-rjGDKkBEs9S-23dtIGt7/s4000/Ah%20Xian,%20Fledging%20No.4,%202022,%20giclee%20and%20ink%20on%20Xuan%20paper,%20v.e.%20of%2030,%20146x76cm,%20bright.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="2109" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5H11gK0PpwQLconJsBGP4-uyDRyMKVfWShC7ZB5JV-NoFYYBW05ATGJIAnZoIBmaMpVrHWmTxVPnbcrCjirrlyC-bMBvqg7mnXUGMBSXIowHCeUzihrkO9K_y9AIvH4npSCtmARwBnNAXM-uj_etwUgrMIF_2xSBu-Ix-rjGDKkBEs9S-23dtIGt7/w211-h400/Ah%20Xian,%20Fledging%20No.4,%202022,%20giclee%20and%20ink%20on%20Xuan%20paper,%20v.e.%20of%2030,%20146x76cm,%20bright.JPG" width="211" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ah Xian, <i>Fledging No.4</i>, 2022, giclee and ink on Xuan paper, 140 x 70 cm<br />signed, inscribed and marked with seals of the artist<br />Image courtesy the artist and Vermilion Art<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>For me, one of the most interesting aspects of the <i>China China</i> series, and of later busts made from other sculptural materials including concrete, resin-fibreglass, cinnabar, cloisonné, jade, bronze, and latex, is the very intentional cultural hybridity of Ah Xian's visual language. The portrait bust is a Western form, deriving from classical Greece and Rome, while the motifs that proliferate across these figures are purely Chinese, referencing traditions of <i>shan shui</i> landscape painting, bird and flower painting, and porcelain painting. Ah Xian points out in conversation, though, that notions of east and west are not so easily defined by simple binaries: we must not forget the carved figurative sculptural forms of Buddha, and of various deities and Immortals, found in temples across China. </div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY05ELDEP_qmkXr9AAOH3wbMltakhsMhtuweqXz9wto1em95VAeNrJMeii_GqLFkw0L0lwH6WTEG03-L4q3oFGYyaDjHjkGg0ayIqkN01Vr5c9Yr7oSnjJkmz539RD0BiO9h1yvoJmlqA0BFShYuFfTsqWA9f3Gz52AXhIKdDRBFMiDbMROMDrk-br/s4000/Ah%20Xian,%20Fledging%20No.2,%202022,%20giclee%20and%20ink%20on%20Xuan%20paper,%20v.e.%20of%2030,%20140x70cm,%20bright.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="2109" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY05ELDEP_qmkXr9AAOH3wbMltakhsMhtuweqXz9wto1em95VAeNrJMeii_GqLFkw0L0lwH6WTEG03-L4q3oFGYyaDjHjkGg0ayIqkN01Vr5c9Yr7oSnjJkmz539RD0BiO9h1yvoJmlqA0BFShYuFfTsqWA9f3Gz52AXhIKdDRBFMiDbMROMDrk-br/w211-h400/Ah%20Xian,%20Fledging%20No.2,%202022,%20giclee%20and%20ink%20on%20Xuan%20paper,%20v.e.%20of%2030,%20140x70cm,%20bright.JPG" width="211" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ah Xian, <i>Fledging No.2</i>, 2022, giclee and ink on Xuan paper, 140 x 70 cm<br />signed, inscribed and marked with seals of the artist<br />Image courtesy the artist and Vermilion Art<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>Ah Xian's first series of busts represented a ten-year period in which he oscillated between Australia and China, seeking a way to bring aspects of his Chinese background into his work as a contemporary conceptual artist. The series has been described by QAGOMA curator Reuben Keehan as "an equilibrium finally struck between Chinese and European modes of making". </div><div><br /></div><div>Each of the nine works selected for this exhibition represents a distinct phase of his practice, including the standing female nude, now in the collection of the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, made of <a href="https://collection.qagoma.qld.gov.au/objects/13313" target="_blank">beaten copper and cloisonne enamel</a>. It reveals the influence of Western art history; the nude figure is not a part of traditional Chinese iconography, although there was certainly plenty of spicy erotica in both art and literature. Ah Xian's poem for this work references that history, and the evocative encoded language commonly used in classical poetry and the lyrics of Chinese opera: <div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Lotus ladies stand </i></div><div><i>Dense mists float, sly scent </i></div><div><i>Whispers: You… </i></div><div><i>Why not
Join me in my bower? </i><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNN9-gdWOJ_87i9PB3oRHWk7Bf3wk3MHCOgcbFdNyMa-73xjKvfiw5lDSc5Y3PwP3DwjUSZyzJZIviuNrlCXkm9wX3IRgm7b90j652qvj0tK9ipGTqp8eTJd3AnCPqb6CMdAFIXMKK9kBImJYQYm6lfaG-g02o_f2g5SmvBkWs7t7LWfEU86H0BOIB/s4000/Ah%20Xian,%20Fledging%20No.1,%202022,%20giclee%20and%20ink%20on%20Xuan%20paper,%20v.e.%20of%2030,%20146x76cm,%20bright.JPG" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="2109" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNN9-gdWOJ_87i9PB3oRHWk7Bf3wk3MHCOgcbFdNyMa-73xjKvfiw5lDSc5Y3PwP3DwjUSZyzJZIviuNrlCXkm9wX3IRgm7b90j652qvj0tK9ipGTqp8eTJd3AnCPqb6CMdAFIXMKK9kBImJYQYm6lfaG-g02o_f2g5SmvBkWs7t7LWfEU86H0BOIB/s400/Ah%20Xian,%20Fledging%20No.1,%202022,%20giclee%20and%20ink%20on%20Xuan%20paper,%20v.e.%20of%2030,%20146x76cm,%20bright.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ah Xian, <i>Fledging No.1</i> 2022, giclee and ink on Xuan paper, 146 x 76 cm<br />signed, inscribed and marked with seals of the artist<br />Image courtesy the artist and Vermilion Art</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>
Interestingly, none of the nine sculptures selected for the works in this show feature the blue and white glazes of the <i>China China</i> series. Instead, they range from celadon to cinnabar, and from cloisonne to concrete. The term "fledging" refers to the point at which young birds have grown the adult feathers that will allow them to fly. Ah Xian says that his sculptures are heavy, solid, singular, three dimensional forms - earthbound if you like - whereas these two dimensional works on <i>xuan </i>paper are light, airy and editioned as multiples (although the calligraphy on each piece is unique, the work of the artist's hand). His work is "taking flight" in a new direction. </div></div></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk9K3gREVPy8MJC2rpmCscPb5edBmCLgJXx-CS0y7crgat8kcCAQJtZwu_mRQsq7ugHjYm5D4XN649kUY7OjpsTBm7rn3UjpsMX2hFSWS33jF5J5euHXEiQjnM-N8Ao6D46M0oCxRpRIvRcyDpAdcXJgIqOtw5rMKTiVRZnqg7A9SOUX720ZhEXVJ3/s4000/Ah%20Xian,%20Fledging%20No.5,%202022,%20giclee%20and%20ink%20on%20Xuan%20paper,%20v.e.%20of%2030,%20140x70cm,%20bright.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="2109" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk9K3gREVPy8MJC2rpmCscPb5edBmCLgJXx-CS0y7crgat8kcCAQJtZwu_mRQsq7ugHjYm5D4XN649kUY7OjpsTBm7rn3UjpsMX2hFSWS33jF5J5euHXEiQjnM-N8Ao6D46M0oCxRpRIvRcyDpAdcXJgIqOtw5rMKTiVRZnqg7A9SOUX720ZhEXVJ3/w211-h400/Ah%20Xian,%20Fledging%20No.5,%202022,%20giclee%20and%20ink%20on%20Xuan%20paper,%20v.e.%20of%2030,%20140x70cm,%20bright.JPG" width="211" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ah Xian, <i>Fledging No.5</i>, 2022, giclee and ink on Xuan paper, 140 x 70 cm<br />signed, inscribed and marked with seals of the artist<br />Image courtesy the artist and Vermilion Art</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><div>Above all, Ah Xian wanted these works to be beautiful - a solace, he says, for difficult times - and they absolutely are. But there is darkness here, as well as a Buddhist-influenced sense of acceptance. His poem for <i>Fledging No. 5</i>, a solid concrete figure that, adorned with leaves, appears to be sleepwalking into a new reality, is disturbingly apt for our time of war and plague:</div><div><div><br /></div><div><i>One day, perhaps</i></div><div><i>Beyond aeons, when new civilisations shine</i></div><div><i>We are already enclosed by tree rings that were once green</i></div><div><i>Turned human fossil upon fossil</i></div><div><i>Concrete dolls</i></div></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Ah Xian's original poems have been beautifully translated for the exhibition texts by Archibald McKenzie. </i><i>The exhibition continues at Vermilion Art, Sydney. See more on the gallery website: <a href="https://www.vermilionart.com.au/">https://www.vermilionart.com.au/</a> </i></div><div><br /></div></div></div></div>An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-77513444475450192042021-12-27T20:23:00.008-08:002021-12-28T01:33:06.280-08:00Cartographies of Memory: a Year (or two) of Living Dangerously<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh6-K3lvz-P5yIev8eId5E7_XaKhql8gMcwljjd-9cZhD-yVY06s82s71m-moptviY3TTf4JiMcclPGgjnc9gE8Em2rPgSwchuctAItDm-TUpEsX7tIDyBLSMuACQZgKkcv2156t186g-b9e_4HVVjGMH-s3vG_PeJQWzxwt1W5-GvhzweGvM2dpcJ9=s3008" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1948" data-original-width="3008" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh6-K3lvz-P5yIev8eId5E7_XaKhql8gMcwljjd-9cZhD-yVY06s82s71m-moptviY3TTf4JiMcclPGgjnc9gE8Em2rPgSwchuctAItDm-TUpEsX7tIDyBLSMuACQZgKkcv2156t186g-b9e_4HVVjGMH-s3vG_PeJQWzxwt1W5-GvhzweGvM2dpcJ9=w400-h259" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tony Scott, <i>New Health Plan</i>, 2007, image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><br />In pre-pandemic days it was my habit at this weirdly liminal time to reflect on the year's experiences of exhibitions, visits to artists' studios and inspiring (or at least interesting or strange) encounters in the artworld. Needless to say, 2021 has been another year of living (with great trepidation) dangerously, thanks to Covid-19. It presented sadly few opportunities for encountering art or artists beyond the window of my computer screen. </p><p>Nevertheless, despite the pandemic, the lockdowns, and the general malaise, I have managed to meet and write about a number of interesting artists as well as (almost, almost, so close!) completing a PhD thesis. And teaching keen postgraduate students, most of whom were in their Chinese hometowns rather than studying in Sydney as they had hoped to do. </p><p>In a brief hiatus between lockdowns it was wonderful to actually <i>see</i> the <a href="https://www.sullivanstrumpf.com/artists/yang-yongliang/exhibitions" target="_blank">Yang Yongliang exhibition</a> at Sullivan & Strumpf for which I had written an essay, and to speak about his work to invited viewers in the gallery. Unable to travel to China, I have nonetheless continued to interview artists and publish articles, including my conversations with <a href="https://www.cobosocial.com/dossiers/interview-with-charwei-tsai-2021/" target="_blank">Charwei Tsai</a>, <a href="https://www.cobosocial.com/dossiers/in-conversation-with-tianli-zu/" target="_blank">Tianli Zu</a>, <a href="https://www.cobosocial.com/dossiers/art/conversation-with-louise-zhang-artist/" target="_blank">Louise Zhang</a> and <a href="https://www.cobosocial.com/dossiers/art/between-mountain-and-water-cindy-yuen-zhe-chens-embodied-listening/" target="_blank">Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen</a> in <a href="https://www.cobosocial.com/" target="_blank">COBO SOCIAL</a> and an essay for Cao Yu's solo show at Urs Meile Gallery Beijing (which you can read <a href="https://www.galerieursmeile.com/application/files/2016/2211/2488/LuiseGuest_CaoYu_2021_E.pdf" target="_blank">HERE</a>). I had hoped to be able to travel to Norway in May 2022 for the opening of a major exhibition of women artists from China at Lillehammer Museum called <a href="https://eng.lillehammerkunstmuseum.no/exhibitions/stepping-out" target="_blank">'Stepping Out'</a>. I was honoured to be invited to join an academic reference group for this important project, and to write an essay for the catalogue, but it seems unlikely that I can be there for the opening. Maybe in 2023 when the exhibition travels to the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg...</p><p>One great pleasure in these dispiriting times was writing an essay for my dear friend Tony Scott's survey show at Glen Eira City Gallery. 'Back from China' reflected on an extraordinary life's journey from Melbourne to Beijing, to Hong Kong and back again. Thinking about Tony's work prompted memories of shared China adventures. It is due to Tony's generous spirit that I was able to meet wonderful artists such as Gao Ping, Hu Qinwu, Huang Xu and Dai Dandan on my first trip to China in 2010. Within hours of arriving in Beijing as a completely bamboozled first-timer (Beijing is ... a lot) I found myself eating dumplings with Tony, then attending a gallery opening in Caochangdi, and then joining an artist's dinner at famous Yunnan restaurant, Middle 8th, thinking to myself all the time, 'Dorothy, you're not in Kansas any more!' </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgoEz06ybcyPH6j5O0YZ2WJSsI9KrnUquu3XoFLcNnJh6ld5v2wa2llaXU_3vvIrS-hI_Oh-G9r5N610FELcokRWoF3R5WyYSEifJUIOlOJ_Q5rZzWzSeBdBKl1F_USfTrHi6IdkFkL8PjQzcHS4-kLMRhDD4pcvhALmDRz6Gu0--zqu-w0udaFE7kT=s744" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="571" data-original-width="744" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgoEz06ybcyPH6j5O0YZ2WJSsI9KrnUquu3XoFLcNnJh6ld5v2wa2llaXU_3vvIrS-hI_Oh-G9r5N610FELcokRWoF3R5WyYSEifJUIOlOJ_Q5rZzWzSeBdBKl1F_USfTrHi6IdkFkL8PjQzcHS4-kLMRhDD4pcvhALmDRz6Gu0--zqu-w0udaFE7kT=w400-h308" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tony Scott, <i>1 Cloud in Gold Landscape</i>, 2021 Chinese Paper, Oil Paint, Pigment on Canvas<br />35 cm x 45 cm, image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Other memories include Tony's residency in Chengdu in 2013, when he persuaded me to make a speech at the exhibition opening. I had arrived on a flight from Beijing (on Sichuan Air, where the flight attendants bring pots of chilli sauce up the aisle and ladle it onto your food) having no idea that this was going to happen. I wrote the speech on a borrowed laptop in about an hour and then joined a line-up of Party officials and the Australian consul general, where I was introduced as 'a famous art critic from Australia'. As my speech was translated into Chinese, line by excruciating line, I felt that my life was slipping away even as I spoke - it seemed to go on for hours. Writing the essay, then, was something of an exercise in nostalgia for China, and Tony's work is wonderful, so I share it here with his permission.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjnQmwY9ce6ejnkfbqDCpWbA61pc8_3BgixvjWviB-aMJ6rBSNTeqIiUWys3By4kDMvG8Cwm240WAVnFRtvCEs9aGnP6l703-sNPFIyBZNLZ7_brY4RmfpCExbezu3cZTlQOMB_jcog3n_buO2V-f4A0qZdzO-3tc4u4DyRAmHVqFvefIFrRccDrtOw=s1295" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1295" data-original-width="1160" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjnQmwY9ce6ejnkfbqDCpWbA61pc8_3BgixvjWviB-aMJ6rBSNTeqIiUWys3By4kDMvG8Cwm240WAVnFRtvCEs9aGnP6l703-sNPFIyBZNLZ7_brY4RmfpCExbezu3cZTlQOMB_jcog3n_buO2V-f4A0qZdzO-3tc4u4DyRAmHVqFvefIFrRccDrtOw=w359-h400" width="359" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tony Scott, <i>Shelter 1</i>, 2019, Oil Paint, Almanac Pages on Board 24 x 22 cm, image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Cartographies
of Memory: the work of Tony Scott</span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="background: #F4F4F3; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: .7pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“I’ve
come back—return journeys</span></i><i><span style="color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: .7pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br />
<span style="background: #F4F4F3;">Always take longer than wrong turnings—</span><br />
<span style="background: #F4F4F3;">Longer than a lifetime …</span></span></i><i><span style="color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: .7pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />
<span style="background: #F4F4F3;">Crossing the black map</span><br />
<span style="background: #F4F4F3;">Ushering you like a windstorm into flight …</span></span></i><i><span style="background: #F4F4F3; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: .7pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="background: #F4F4F3; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: .7pt; line-height: 107%;">I’ve come back—there are always</span></i><i><span style="color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: .7pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />
<span style="background: #F4F4F3;">Fewer reunions than partings</span><br />
<span style="background: #F4F4F3;">But only by one.”</span></span></i><i><span style="background: #F4F4F3; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: .7pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: #F4F4F3; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: .7pt; line-height: 107%;">Excerpted from ‘Black Map’ by Bei Dao
(2008), translated from the Chinese by Tao Naikan and Simon Patton</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mountain
peaks beneath big skies, sweeping storm clouds, and the shapes of traditional
‘scholar rocks’ are a constant presence in Tony Scott’s works, juxtaposed with
references to medicine, the body, and human frailty. These themes of human
beings in dynamic relationship with the natural world, cosmologies of an
interconnected universe, seem very Chinese. Unsurprisingly – Scott lived and
worked in China for many years. His body of work resembles a diary of outward journeys
and homecomings, a map of memory. Shaped by the artist’s long experience of a
country he first visited in 1994, the emphasis in his paintings, mixed media works,
and installations is on the importance of landscape, the visceral physicality
of paint, and the nostalgic associations embodied in objects found in Chinese
flea markets. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJihEXRKdpgQcckdMoRC4I7ENvycGsB-t7EcPssBeGxdaRLnHjxLwRTwlBrsq4hKdphfebqb6oa99ZO-3-8tXSTShi2aQVl1bSg-A7WgJul52HO3PnojCOYG_w26xy91gRaz2KZ8QEirpNjc3XVQHQMru_QW8xMt3FHA3E8Nmv1zCc91Zmc7vQWzF1=s739" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="739" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJihEXRKdpgQcckdMoRC4I7ENvycGsB-t7EcPssBeGxdaRLnHjxLwRTwlBrsq4hKdphfebqb6oa99ZO-3-8tXSTShi2aQVl1bSg-A7WgJul52HO3PnojCOYG_w26xy91gRaz2KZ8QEirpNjc3XVQHQMru_QW8xMt3FHA3E8Nmv1zCc91Zmc7vQWzF1=w400-h304" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tony Scott. <i>Silver Cloud 4</i>, oil paint and pigment on joss paper, image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Although
Scott now lives and works in Melbourne, painting in a suburban garden studio rather
than in the ramshackle artist villages on the outskirts of Beijing, China is
ever present in his work. Recurring images of mountains, clouds and human body
parts evoke the Daoist/Confucian cosmology of </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">tian di ren heyi</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, in which
everything under heaven (</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">tian</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">) exists in a mutually reciprocal and
interdependent relationship. In Daoist/Confucian and Buddhist belief, the
mountains are the home of the Immortals, and the earth contains the ancestors.</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Cartographies%20of%20Memory_Tony%20Scott_Luise%20Guest%2011.9.21.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="font-size: 12pt;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[i]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
Dramatic peaks wreathed in clouds were the favourite subjects of the literati </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">shan
shui</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> (mountain and water) painters,</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Cartographies%20of%20Memory_Tony%20Scott_Luise%20Guest%2011.9.21.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="font-size: 12pt;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[ii]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
and mountains beneath cloud-filled skies are a constant theme in Scott’s works
too.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Scott
describes his first visit to China as intoxicating and transformative – he
worked on an exhibition installed in a pavilion in Beijing’s Temple of the Sun
Park (<i>ritan gongyuan</i>) and witnessed the city’s demolition and
reconstruction in an optimistic and relatively liberal time of dynamic change.
Like many first-time travellers to the Middle Kingdom, he was hooked. Returning
again and again over the next several years, Scott settled in Beijing in 2004,
where he lived until he moved to Hong Kong in 2013. In 2016, sensing the winds
of change that have now so dramatically altered Hong Kong, he made the
momentous decision to return to Australia. In his Melbourne studio Scott’s work
has taken on a new energy; he has been feverishly prolific. It is as if
imagery, colour, form, and painterly surfaces have been simmering and
strengthening since his homecoming. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Scott’s survey
exhibition reveals a consistently experimental, tactile, eclectic approach to
materials and to the expressive possibilities of paint applied to richly
layered surfaces. A close look often reveals glimpses of underlying,
Schwitters-like collage materials including<i> </i>gold or silver funerary joss
paper, Japanese wallpaper, and assorted paper ephemera collected on his
travels. These materials embody the artist’s investigation of his passage
through the world and through time. Installed together, Scott’s landscapes,
installations of found objects, and the occasional figurative painting make up
a multi-faceted autobiography. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A series of re-worked
painted heads, for example, suggests a shifting, fluid identity. <i>Self
Portrait – Red</i> (2000-2020) depicts the artist as a blank, featureless
silhouette, a tabula rasa to be over-written with new experiences. In <i>Self
Portrait with a Pyramid</i> (2000-2020) Scott represents himself as a yellow
outline. The hint of a face, or possibly a second presence, emerges through
scumbled layers of paint and glaze. Drips of pigment and solvent render it
evanescent, ghost-like. It suggests the layered, complex identity of the
transcultural traveller, a selfhood in a continual process of reconstruction. The
faint pyramid seen in this painting prefigures the later <i>Shelter</i> series
and also echoes the repeated forms of mountains that appear in so many works. Hints
of Scott’s earliest Chinese sojourns emerge here too; the grey tones evoke the
beautifully bare bones of northern Chinese winter landscapes and the grey
courtyard walls of Beijing’s traditional hutong neighbourhoods. A hint of red
appears through mist, evoking an urban landscape of grey air, grey walls, and red
courtyard doors.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Beijing is physically
present in installations utilising objects and materials found at the extraordinary
Panjiayuan ‘Dirt Market’, the source of treasures ranging from antiques (mostly
fake) to Chinese furniture, old letterpress blocks, books and paper ephemera, and
porcelain shards. It was Panjiayuan that provided wooden acupuncture figures –
dummies covered with tiny holes for the needles and marked with the ‘<i>qi</i>’
meridians of traditional Chinese medicine – for two major installations. In <i>New
Health Plan</i> (2006) the figure is connected with wires to instruments for
measuring electric current. Recalling Dr Frankenstein’s monster brought to life
with arcing jolts of electricity, this work was produced after the grim years
of the SARS epidemic and reflects on human frailty with wry humour. It seems
more than ever prescient now, as we wonder whether a ‘new health plan’ for
humanity will emerge from these last terrible years of a global pandemic. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Another work
featuring an acupuncture figure, <i>Blood Pressure</i> (2021), reveals Scott’s
fascination with the gruesome illustrations in ‘Gray’s Anatomy’. Flanked by anatomical
illustrations of human hearts beneath layers of paint, above the figure a gaudy
LED sign reads ‘high blood pressure’ in Chinese characters. The work confronts
us with the ephemeral nature of human existence. It also suggests a different,
non-physical ailment – the vulnerability and heartache of love. In a similar
vein, <i>Measuring the Heart</i> (2021) demonstrates Scott’s witty use of found
objects. Two slide rules are mounted on Chinese silk within a Chinese picture
frame, a neat bit of double coding that represents two kinds of crisis: the
stress test of the electrocardiogram, and the panicked moments of romantic
doubt and desire which most of us have experienced at one time or another. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzNTmr4hTDRUbjnl-sBzYjLMYWoCEdfdITPNdBZsSQv3dgK52W81irFityj_yYyewWLmCtbljnKgIPQ7Uw5D3Df8YOiIrZhTtU4RJ3mTbooo0hTOeKW3svpR7pf4FW2qSa9qF2ip3RWKVf4xWZjYrXo6Go5YhwnXyNA8GAJF5rq-Robwr_EX4tPa-P=s2498" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1946" data-original-width="2498" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzNTmr4hTDRUbjnl-sBzYjLMYWoCEdfdITPNdBZsSQv3dgK52W81irFityj_yYyewWLmCtbljnKgIPQ7Uw5D3Df8YOiIrZhTtU4RJ3mTbooo0hTOeKW3svpR7pf4FW2qSa9qF2ip3RWKVf4xWZjYrXo6Go5YhwnXyNA8GAJF5rq-Robwr_EX4tPa-P=w400-h311" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tony Scott, <i>Mooncake Balance</i>, 2021, mooncake mould, brass plumb bobs, brass hangers</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mooncake
Balance</span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (2021) continues
this theme of measurement with brass plumb bob weights suspended beneath an
antique mooncake mould. It’s an elegantly minimalist juxtaposition of
apparently unrelated objects that plays with ideas about how things – and
people – are weighed and measured, literally and metaphorically. The moulds, of
course, are empty, and the plumb bobs establish a vertical line that leads
nowhere. There are art historical references here to Surrealist objects, to Man
Ray, and to Marcel Duchamp’s Dada ready-mades. Man Ray’s sly humour in works
such as <i>Indestructible Object</i> (1923, remade in 1933) – the famous
metronome to which he attached a photograph of an eye – or his <i>Cadeau</i>
(‘Gift’) of 1921 – an iron with a row of nails facing outwards down its centre
– are artistic ancestors of the wit Tony Scott brings to melancholy subjects. These
essentially obsolete objects have an absurd yet poetic presence; they possess a
significance beyond the logic of the everyday.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The constant
theme in Scott’s work, though, is the landscape – Australian and Chinese. These
ancient landscapes of rolling mountains, dry as a bone, are often painted over
found surfaces such as Chinese almanac pages, or funerary paper. While based in
Beijing, and later in Hong Kong, Scott travelled frequently between Chinese
cities, exhibiting in Shanghai, Chengdu and Xiamen. Many works depict sensuous
mountain forms and blurry glimpses of landscape as if seen from the window of a
fast train. Scott’s transcultural painterly idiom of space and form is
inflected by both Chinese and Western art histories. There is awareness, too, of
‘material art’ (<i>caizhi yishu</i>) practices whereby contemporary Chinese artists
use culturally encoded materials such as xuan paper, ink, silk, old books and
even tea and gunpowder.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Cartographies%20of%20Memory_Tony%20Scott_Luise%20Guest%2011.9.21.docx#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Scott, moving between outsider/insider identities after so long in China, has
found his almanacs and printed books, and his ‘dirt market’ finds such as
mooncake moulds and acupuncture figures, to be evocative visual metaphors. They
are powerfully nostalgic, yet avoid any hint of slick Chinoiserie, a difficult
feat for an artist working between eastern and western cultures, but one that
Scott navigates adroitly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">40 Days
in Xiamen 1 and 2</span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (2019),
for example, are installed as panels resembling vertical scrolls, supported by
mooncake moulds serving as plinths. Soft tones of warm red in subtle washes painted
over Chinese almanac pages create the illusion of distance, revealing the
influence of literati <i>shan shui</i> ink painters and their nuanced
gradations of every possible shade of ink wash. Almanac pages emerging from
beneath layers of pigment suggest a narrative of the artist measuring out time
on his visits to the coastal city. We are left to imagine what happened in
Xiamen, but the vertical drips of paint create a melancholy sense of loss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">On the Li
River</span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (2020), is
painted over acupuncture manual pages. The dramatic forms of southern China’s
karst mountain landscapes, so beloved of Song Dynasty <i>shan shui</i> masters,
emerge through richly scumbled layers of oil paint, pigment and wax, like an
almost forgotten record of a voyage long ago. In <i>By The Great Wall 1</i> and
<i>2</i> (2021), painted on Chinese joss paper on aluminium, Scott evokes the
bleak beauty of the mountains north of Beijing. In winter this landscape seems
an unrelieved vista of grey – the ancient grey wall against grey earth and grey
sky – yet in spring it is transformed to a sea of pinks and mauves with
blossoming trees. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEga0-DT3_v4G7KVCmn27MxrLAppHyfTaekGao6ABLUiUfYOVep4viKhSbDXWUY9r5h-3NwtJV6b_nUCojoJs0Wfc_UUWSB5LeUeHkRnnf13VrhJ2vavQryREdsuH2pzs697pw1YYpoCeGjAebWYZaLn2rBKP48xUVxfMKRNgoePeZjoivAlS_siM3Bm=s744" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="744" data-original-width="669" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEga0-DT3_v4G7KVCmn27MxrLAppHyfTaekGao6ABLUiUfYOVep4viKhSbDXWUY9r5h-3NwtJV6b_nUCojoJs0Wfc_UUWSB5LeUeHkRnnf13VrhJ2vavQryREdsuH2pzs697pw1YYpoCeGjAebWYZaLn2rBKP48xUVxfMKRNgoePeZjoivAlS_siM3Bm=w360-h400" width="360" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tony Scott, <i>Dust 1</i>, 2021
Acrylic, Oil Paint, Pigment on Canvas
image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Often, as
with the <i>Storm Approaching </i>series,<i> </i>there is a sense of foreboding
in these paintings. White clouds partially conceal mysterious calligraphic
marks that hover over the mountain range below or resemble sinuous river
systems seen from above. In the <i>Geometric Landscape</i> and <i>Dust </i>series
we can almost smell and taste the brown dust from the Gobi Desert that so often
blankets Beijing. <i>Dust 2</i> (2021), for instance, hints at Scott’s earlier,
quite formalist, abstract visual language based on a Mondrian-like grid. It
evokes the repeated architectural forms and map of Beijing’s streetscape,
designed on an axis of the four compass points that symbolised the emperor’s
‘mandate of heaven’. Divided into unequal vertical halves and bisected by a red
horizontal, <i>Dust 2</i> is a minimalist poem of deep burgundy, maroon and
dusty pink, overpainted and scraped back like the weathered surface of a hutong
wall. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjlanUaEPNeOuPj5N9h_DlTNlKjwg97_FuQKFcDs1-pWMQdFIlXF66nZA8DIxUu9_MNG46Awc6RFOd9if2-A41PXxhPMilMIElH0skD1dPr3dVIKi4mb_pXB1vgiZj0HcM2sShrXuFsiirzilOibX6glwlF5nMy21WrBR6psxQDmYmuvmnXiPl3PRiJ=s767" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="767" data-original-width="579" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjlanUaEPNeOuPj5N9h_DlTNlKjwg97_FuQKFcDs1-pWMQdFIlXF66nZA8DIxUu9_MNG46Awc6RFOd9if2-A41PXxhPMilMIElH0skD1dPr3dVIKi4mb_pXB1vgiZj0HcM2sShrXuFsiirzilOibX6glwlF5nMy21WrBR6psxQDmYmuvmnXiPl3PRiJ=w484-h640" width="484" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tony Scott, <i>Silver Cloud 1</i>, 2021, oil paint and pigment on Chinese paper, image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Clouds are
ever present in these paintings, floating above the kind of mountain scenery in
which you might expect to see a lonely monk or scholar contemplating nature in
a literati ink painting. <i>Five Mountains 1</i> (2020) is luminous in shades
of magenta, orange and red, with lyrically gestural clouds floating in the
heavens above. <i>Three Black Mountains</i> (2021), in contrast, is the most
foreboding of Scott’s mountain landscapes; layers of acrylic, oil paint, and
wax on paper are scraped, scored and sgraffitoed with mysterious markings. A
sliver of light over the humped forms of mountains beneath heavy clouds lit by
flashes of lightning suggests the unpredictable power of nature. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWY2M24Z2HXKu3McXJXqOQ8vVzXURQp_Fl_kwShWeX7NdYv6J7tCAJdeSLCFMkT7UT2E-uNt9s6M-Tpq3o7i4lDgQX0NhtZUHEeTEcGcnrRu05IPg1_8lIsGXLU_Z1GG1BBGmiFnCt385hnwz4paOqwIwf-IxWuC0lUuzZYg6R6pxNtufQFSqEoD59=s2333" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2298" data-original-width="2333" height="394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWY2M24Z2HXKu3McXJXqOQ8vVzXURQp_Fl_kwShWeX7NdYv6J7tCAJdeSLCFMkT7UT2E-uNt9s6M-Tpq3o7i4lDgQX0NhtZUHEeTEcGcnrRu05IPg1_8lIsGXLU_Z1GG1BBGmiFnCt385hnwz4paOqwIwf-IxWuC0lUuzZYg6R6pxNtufQFSqEoD59=w400-h394" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tony Scott, <i>Flying Home 3</i>, 2020, Collage, Oil Paint, Pigment on Board, 20 cm x 20 cm</td></tr></tbody></table></p><div style="text-align: center;"> image courtesy the artist</div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Scott’s
painterly mountains have recently metamorphosed with the addition of 3-D
printed mountain forms arranged on shelves in front of paintings under glass
domes, or on petri dishes. It is as if they have been brought into being through
some alchemical experiment. These forms in turn relate to a series depicting
rocks arrayed in a landscape. They reference the Chinese fondness for the ‘scholar
rocks’ (<i>gongshi</i>) whose twisted, fantastical forms are found in every
Chinese park and formal garden. Pitted and perforated – either by natural
forces of water, wind and weather, or artificially enhanced to be more
aesthetically appealing – they were admired from the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE).
Believed to symbolise the mountain peaks inhabited by the Immortals,
representing the transformational, mutually reciprocal relationships between <i>yin
</i>and <i>yang </i>in Daoist cosmology, they were collected by connoisseurs,
displayed in gardens, and painted by artists. Small, ornamental versions were
prized objects in a scholar’s study. In Scott’s works they are somewhat
ambiguous, sometimes taking the form of human organs. In <i>13 Rocks on a
Horizon</i> (2021) they are painted over ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ illustrations of
veinous eyeballs and other body parts, becoming a hybrid mountain range in
which human and the natural world are one, beneath an ominous sky. </span><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Floating</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> (2021) depicts a row of scholar
rocks that have become detached from the earth and hover weightlessly in an
amorphous grey space, suggesting the Daoist non-action, or effortless harmony,
called <i>wu wei</i>. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjtola4EveUeJUoedzk-NnlicAmJ0m7gCKrYUJesV1E9PrUU7A85na-W64O3xSCSOgs0fRab_MjUA9Q1sYV-vMMsiXOvx0EN5-qq0J5sH8ewK_28-Dk5G3W7trwY0mD4aQt55YRqGhb-6ZAGV9D2gkqmU79_2yz9XaWCQkXY7m7Qa-4yqmxkaqlWwVt=s845" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="627" data-original-width="845" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjtola4EveUeJUoedzk-NnlicAmJ0m7gCKrYUJesV1E9PrUU7A85na-W64O3xSCSOgs0fRab_MjUA9Q1sYV-vMMsiXOvx0EN5-qq0J5sH8ewK_28-Dk5G3W7trwY0mD4aQt55YRqGhb-6ZAGV9D2gkqmU79_2yz9XaWCQkXY7m7Qa-4yqmxkaqlWwVt=w400-h296" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tony Scott,<i> Gardening in Caulfield 4</i>, 2021, Collage, Oil Paint on Paper
28 cm x 35 cm<br />image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">After so many years of navigating the often-labyrinthine,
even Kafka-esque, Chinese art ecology – not to mention negotiating the
exhausting pace of day-to-day living in a city like Beijing – is it possible that
Scott has found peace at home in Melbourne, painting in his garden studio?
Looking at the </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Gardening in Caulfield</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> series it would seem so: in </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Gardening
in Caulfield 5</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> (2021), painted on Japanese wallpaper, the familiar forms of
scholar rocks and mountains appear to recede into a misty distance while rich
earth and burgeoning plant forms occupy the foreground. </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Gardening in
Caulfield with Trellis</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> (2021) reveals a row of cypress or pine trees emerging
from darkness. A suburban garden trellis replaces the Great Wall of China. A
curved form of purplish soil resembles the mountain ranges of earlier works,
suggesting the slow turning of the earth on its orbit around the sun and the
rhythms of a human life. It’s a smaller landscape, a peaceful and domestic
space. Yet in Scott’s richly layered paintings it is as eventful and filled
with energy as those he remembers from China.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="background: #F4F4F3; color: black; letter-spacing: .7pt;">“I’ve come back—there are always</span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: .7pt;"><br />
<span style="background: #F4F4F3;">Fewer reunions than partings</span><br />
<span style="background: #F4F4F3;">But only by one.”</span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjk41wa24ygeVMu301ai7r39BDhQGs3c_qRgaZ-L0s3sRU9vCPK_38SXnHZaF2EbgeJdNrP57v_ZNYkayx8Dg7JKV8oQH8r6iwjozQZ9Pu4e7zZdWCf7ahR9CHIrLVd8H5Eibmzy00hukwyzrKxM8dyUkOh7dyCaxfRdzRh_TrJ7I_Dz9zIZPCQfV02=s1080" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="810" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjk41wa24ygeVMu301ai7r39BDhQGs3c_qRgaZ-L0s3sRU9vCPK_38SXnHZaF2EbgeJdNrP57v_ZNYkayx8Dg7JKV8oQH8r6iwjozQZ9Pu4e7zZdWCf7ahR9CHIrLVd8H5Eibmzy00hukwyzrKxM8dyUkOh7dyCaxfRdzRh_TrJ7I_Dz9zIZPCQfV02=w480-h640" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tony Scott, <i>Gardening in Caulfield 5</i>, 2021
Japanese Wallpaper, Oil Paint on Canvas Board
<br />40 cm x 30 cm, image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Cartographies%20of%20Memory_Tony%20Scott_Luise%20Guest%2011.9.21.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> <i>Tian di ren heyi</i> or <i>tian ren heyi</i> (</span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="color: black; font-family: SimSun; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-themecolor: text1;">天人合一</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">) refers to the unity between humanity and
the natural world.</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Cartographies%20of%20Memory_Tony%20Scott_Luise%20Guest%2011.9.21.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> <i>Shan Shui</i> (</span><a href="https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-english-pinyin-dictionary.php?define=%E5%B1%B1"><span lang="ZH-CN" style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: windowtext; font-family: SimSun; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-fareast; padding: 0cm; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">山</span></a><a href="https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-english-pinyin-dictionary.php?define=%E6%B0%B4"><span lang="ZH-CN" style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: windowtext; font-family: SimSun; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-fareast; padding: 0cm; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">水</span></a><span style="color: #2a3235; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">), </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">literally translated,
means ‘mountain and water’, and refers to imagery of landscape in Chinese ink
painting.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Cartographies%20of%20Memory_Tony%20Scott_Luise%20Guest%2011.9.21.docx#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> Art historian Wu Hung’s theory of the significance of
materiality in the work of Chinese contemporary artists underpinned his
curation of ‘Allure: The Art of Matter’ shown at the Smart Museum of Art, University
of Chicago, in 2019. Examples of this ‘material’ approach include Liang
Shaoji’s installations featuring the thread-like filaments wound by silkworms;
Cai Guo-Qiang’s use of gunpowder; Wang Lei’s use of old books; Xu Bing’s giant
phoenixes made with building site debris; Zhu Jinshi’s enormous installations
made from <i>xuan</i> paper, and Gu Wenda’s use of human hair. There is a
relationship between the cultural meanings embodied in these works and Scott’s
use of Chinese found materials such as acupuncture figures.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
</div><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-56608455132512523982021-06-25T00:00:00.000-07:002021-06-25T00:00:22.308-07:00Mountains and Seas: Yang Yongliang's Digital Dystopia<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRcRE-IvQBwmgUf2KvCXqrLCwnkloYLFnA8XOMa_UVSDQ1HDD3glTioOffSUhyD-cqU0FHSi-asUcisH81505FlNGMTVWwZo5aJWm3ui0e4uLwzrDDSx72pY1y4tkj2e5UWdx6bbQ-9cI/s2048/%25EF%25BC%2588%25E7%258E%2584%25EF%25BC%2589%25E5%25AE%258B+%25E4%25BD%259A%25E5%2590%258D+%25E9%259D%2592%25E5%25B1%25B1%25E7%2599%25BD%25E4%25BA%2591%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%25BB%25A2%25E6%259C%25AC22.9x23.9%25E4%25BA%258C%25E7%258E%2584%25E7%25A4%25BE-edit.jpg" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRcRE-IvQBwmgUf2KvCXqrLCwnkloYLFnA8XOMa_UVSDQ1HDD3glTioOffSUhyD-cqU0FHSi-asUcisH81505FlNGMTVWwZo5aJWm3ui0e4uLwzrDDSx72pY1y4tkj2e5UWdx6bbQ-9cI/w400-h400/%25EF%25BC%2588%25E7%258E%2584%25EF%25BC%2589%25E5%25AE%258B+%25E4%25BD%259A%25E5%2590%258D+%25E9%259D%2592%25E5%25B1%25B1%25E7%2599%25BD%25E4%25BA%2591%25E5%259B%25BE%25E7%25BB%25A2%25E6%259C%25AC22.9x23.9%25E4%25BA%258C%25E7%258E%2584%25E7%25A4%25BE-edit.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yang Yongliang, Doe, 2021, giclee print, image courtesy the artist and Sullivan & Strumpf<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
</div>When <a href="https://www.sullivanstrumpf.com/exhibitions/yang-yonglian/yang-yongliang-2/art/works" target="_blank">Sullivan & Strumpf</a> asked me to write an essay for his solo exhibition in Sydney this month, I was delighted to be back in contact with Yang Yongliang.
I had first met the artist, who now lives and works between Shanghai and New York, in 2015 when I was in China researching the first
group of artists for the White Rabbit Collection Book '99 Chinese Artists',
eventually published in 2019. Like other artists whose work alludes to past
traditions in China, Yang struck me as an inheritor of the scholarly tradition
of the literati - the highly educated elite who had passed the gruelling
Imperial Examinations and worked as advisors to the court. Their beautiful
calligraphy and ink wash paintings of mountain landscapes represented a Daoist
metaphysics of universal harmony - and a solace and respite from the realpolitik
of the imperial court. Yang, in his studio in an Art Deco building near
Shanghai's Bund, was gentle, softly spoken and very serious about how his work
both looks back to the past and also critiques the present day. Discovering the incredibly laborious and meticulous process in which he creates his digital still and moving works was intriguing.<div><br /></div><div> So here is the
essay: </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Travelling Among Mountains and Streams: Yang Yongliang’s Imagined
Landscapes</span></div><div><br /></div><div> “...Clouds darken with darkness of rain, </div><div>Streams pale with pallor of
mist. </div><div>The Gods of Thunder and Lightning </div><div>Shatter the whole range. </div><div>The stone gate
breaks asunder </div><div>Venting in the pit of heaven, </div><div>An impenetrable shadow.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Li Bai
(71-762 CE), ‘Tianmu Mountain Ascended in a Dream’ </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUNM-56iNgiMUzTejxsSqB9ipv4hQChUxyw6FoWUo4UriEEeK9AnRYgRp-vglMhBXI1INjPRWi2EShyphenhyphenJpxp6xkg1yjAVs6Sw6yC1GDPZezMWCpVaIC4trYM4oH27F2QidSXDDdAovL4y8/s2048/%25E6%25BE%2584%25E8%25A7%2582%25E5%259B%25BE%25E5%2586%258C02+-edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1418" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUNM-56iNgiMUzTejxsSqB9ipv4hQChUxyw6FoWUo4UriEEeK9AnRYgRp-vglMhBXI1INjPRWi2EShyphenhyphenJpxp6xkg1yjAVs6Sw6yC1GDPZezMWCpVaIC4trYM4oH27F2QidSXDDdAovL4y8/w445-h640/%25E6%25BE%2584%25E8%25A7%2582%25E5%259B%25BE%25E5%2586%258C02+-edit.jpg" width="445" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yang Yongliang, Goose, giclee print, image courtesy the artist and Sullivan & Strumpf</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>Each time I have visited
Shanghai, speeding in a taxi along elevated freeways from the airport or the
high-speed train station, I am reminded of the ‘Jetsons’ cartoons of my
mid-twentieth-century childhood. Gleaming towers with strangely Gothic spires
stuck on top, neon flashing through smog, terrifying spaghetti junctions and
abrupt dives onto off-ramps into congested streets of half-demolished houses –
the city seems to represent a modernity in the process of becoming, an
unrealised, shining, technicoloured future that never quite arrived, a promised
future of robots, airborne cars and monorails.</div><div><br /></div><div>This urban spectacle is the
source of multidisciplinary artist Yang Yongliang’s paradoxical homage to the
past thousands of years of China’s cultural history, and simultaneously an
expression of deep foreboding about what the future holds – not just for China,
but for the planet. Home to more than twenty million people, Shanghai is a
modernist dream of unceasing transformation – and also a nightmare. Its skyline
is ever more dramatically vertical, and its streetscape undergoes constant
demolition and reconstruction. The past is erased anew every day. Hints of a
different history remain; a wall surrounds a demolition site with one ‘nail
house’ still standing, a few neighbourhoods of ungentrified traditional <i>lilong</i>
lane houses are filled with hanging washing, leaning bicycles, and gossiping
neighbours. But the tower blocks and new roads are always visible. </div><div><br /></div><div>Yang
Yongliang’s melancholy digital works are his response to life in this urban
palimpsest: he applies new media in an adaptation of Chinese traditions of
landscape painting, appropriating the shan shui (literally mountain, water)
idiom to represent the contemporary world. Now, living and working between
Shanghai and New York, he looks back to China’s artistic heritage – to Song
Dynasty landscape scrolls in particular – for inspiration, adapting ink painting
techniques to digital platforms. In Yang’s work the past, transformed, informs
the present and issues a warning about the future. Yang Yongliang was born in
1980, at the dawn of China’s period of seismic change under the ‘open door’
economic policies of Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping. Over the next thirty years
China was transformed, becoming an urban nation of mega-cities. Yang’s
birthplace, an ancient water town, was a place of traditional southern white
houses with upturned eaves, a famous pagoda, and old humpbacked stone bridges
over quiet canals. Gradually, though, Jiading Old Town was subsumed by the
ever-expanding Shanghai suburbs. So much so that when Yang returned to his
hometown from university, everything he remembered had vanished. This sudden
change, experienced as a traumatic erasure of personal history, lies at the
heart of his work. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzzY4eIY8dRbVbcJXPfG5Q3lESWwqVYPK6XmW3LgCzVdYcLUmd3tCTXxkK50nIae99_mtfzCymYjRVUipEbNsSsURSLNp_k4HVvTSYZ7Y6-eGeuodj1dvuFmyjMp23h9Zz_Y8wyxRviqo/s225/images+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzzY4eIY8dRbVbcJXPfG5Q3lESWwqVYPK6XmW3LgCzVdYcLUmd3tCTXxkK50nIae99_mtfzCymYjRVUipEbNsSsURSLNp_k4HVvTSYZ7Y6-eGeuodj1dvuFmyjMp23h9Zz_Y8wyxRviqo/w400-h400/images+%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yang Yongliang, Tiger, 2021, giclee print, image courtesy the artist and Sullivan & Strumpf</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>China’s headlong rush towards modernisation brought many
benefits, and much wealth to some, but along with it came a deep uncertainty and
anxiety. The unceasing expansion of metastasising cities – bulldozers tearing up
ancient villages like ravaging beasts leaving behind towering piles of rubble –
erased the landscapes of the past, replacing them with endless rows of high-rise
apartment blocks beside eight lane highways. Imagery of this perpetual cycle of
demolition and construction is buried within Yang Yongliang’s landscapes. At
first sight they appear like backlit, digital versions of sublime literati
paintings. But look a little closer and you discover they are made up of
thousands of photographs, seamlessly layered to reveal a very different world.
Giant cranes loom through the clouds and mist, electricity pylons march across
the countryside, and tumbledown houses are replaced by steel and glass towers.
It is as if Yang is constantly revisiting his moment of shock, returning home to
find the familiar become utterly strange. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5ZhexmTVu4Biz5_hvvM7lUoh1DaKHh3EaTIjgNzOb3kXUN90x8l9fS_avON4Mmb2Nu8E8ezM2dVcPuHSxGSAqhNnCxcg7SpFWAxvPGY6iUyo_7F3retl8PlmTHue8P8iBJSi1HHCqmwo/s2048/%25E6%25BE%2584%25E8%25A7%2582%25E5%259B%25BE%25E5%2586%258C07-edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1418" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5ZhexmTVu4Biz5_hvvM7lUoh1DaKHh3EaTIjgNzOb3kXUN90x8l9fS_avON4Mmb2Nu8E8ezM2dVcPuHSxGSAqhNnCxcg7SpFWAxvPGY6iUyo_7F3retl8PlmTHue8P8iBJSi1HHCqmwo/w444-h640/%25E6%25BE%2584%25E8%25A7%2582%25E5%259B%25BE%25E5%2586%258C07-edit.jpg" width="444" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yang Yongliang, Boy, 2021, giclee print, image courtesy the artist and Sullivan & Strumpf</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>The years he spent living and working
in Shanghai, watching it become a shining, hustling, globally connected city,
underpin his laboriously constructed still and moving images. Yang is at once
fascinated and appalled by this transformation, and his work is a paean to what
has been lost in the process. Perhaps that is why he turns so often to Song
Dynasty master painters like Fan Kuan and Guo Xi for inspiration. In a period
following dynastic upheaval, political strife, and conflict depictions of
beautiful landscapes represented solace. The mountains were an escape from the
troubles of the world. Song Dynasty <i>shan shui </i>paintings were expressions of
Daoist and Buddhist belief in the interconnectedness between humanity and the
natural world, and the mutually reciprocal relationship between yin and yang.
With deft brushstrokes and subtle tonal gradations of ink on silk, these scrolls
create a place, as Guo Xi wrote in his treatise on painting, ‘Lofty Record of
Forests and Streams’, in which the viewer could immerse themselves, taking an
imaginary wander along mountain paths beside gushing waterfalls, climbing up
into the high mountains, the home of the Immortals. </div><div><br /></div><div>Yang Yongliang’s
appropriations of Song Dynasty paintings may appear at first sight to be
faithful reinterpretations of the originals. But in <i>Travelers Among Mountains
and Streams</i> (2014), for example, the soaring peaks of Fan Kuan’s famous scroll,
painted around 1000 C.E, have become mountains of towering apartments stacked
one behind the other, the fir trees replaced by electricity pylons, scaffolding
and cranes. Yang fills the foreground with derelict white houses like those of
his childhood hometown, but they appear to be tumbling into the churning waters
of the ravine. <i>Early Spring</i> (2019), Yang’s adaptation of Guo Xi’s 1072
masterpiece, retains the mist-wreathed crags and claw-like trees of the Song
Dynasty landscape with its hidden message of neo-Confucian universal harmony,
but adds a note of warning. Hints of human rapaciousness alert us to how
differently we see the natural world today – as a resource to be exploited. </div><div><br /></div><div>His
digital landscapes oscillate between sublime beauty and dystopian horror.
Intricately layering images of rocks and waterfalls shot in various parts of
China – and in other parts of the world – with photographs of mining sites,
construction zones and land clearing operations, Yang Yongliang makes us look at
Chinese painting traditions and at our fragile planet in a new way. Yang
Yongliang is celebrated internationally for his monochrome works that evoke in
digital form the nuances of tone achieved by master ink painters. He has now
ventured into colour for the first time in a series that recalls the delicate
palette found in paintings by Ming Dynasty master Lan Ying that feature pine
trees, bamboo, fantastical twisted rock forms, and sometimes a tiny figure
seated in a pavilion, observing the mountains. Drawing on these pictorial
conventions, Yang’s series depicts similarly vertiginous ‘mountains’ wreathed in
mist rising from water, but on a closer examination we see they are not
mountains at all, but impossible clusters of high-rise buildings.</div><div> </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN-EFDuMkuo1VN_Aae0MDZUe9OCoS09UlfId2ByjtMSQ1Ej3ZuJmK4wxOKVQs3VghR0_lpBk7tF2xbzjf-EUYqSrteijQWmwM53EiIarnRT1oCw_GQ-_LmM-4NOrKwMO8usF8Jw1Ox_jw/s2048/%25E5%25AE%258B+%25E4%25BD%259A%25E5%2590%258D%2528%25E6%2597%25A7%25E9%25A2%2598%25E9%2583%25AD%25E7%2586%2599%2529%25E6%2598%25A5%25E6%25B1%259F%25E5%25B8%2586%25E9%25A5%25B1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E9%25A1%25B525.8x27-edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN-EFDuMkuo1VN_Aae0MDZUe9OCoS09UlfId2ByjtMSQ1Ej3ZuJmK4wxOKVQs3VghR0_lpBk7tF2xbzjf-EUYqSrteijQWmwM53EiIarnRT1oCw_GQ-_LmM-4NOrKwMO8usF8Jw1Ox_jw/w400-h400/%25E5%25AE%258B+%25E4%25BD%259A%25E5%2590%258D%2528%25E6%2597%25A7%25E9%25A2%2598%25E9%2583%25AD%25E7%2586%2599%2529%25E6%2598%25A5%25E6%25B1%259F%25E5%25B8%2586%25E9%25A5%25B1%25E5%259B%25BE%25E9%25A1%25B525.8x27-edit.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yang Yongliang, Monkey, 2021, giclee print, image courtesy the artist and Sullivan & Strumpf</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>Each image
hints at some impending disaster – ruined buildings have collapsed into rubble,
derricks are moored offshore and the earth has been stripped bare by machinery.
Unusually for Yang Yongliang, each work in the series contains a solitary human
or animal, rendered as a small, insignificant presence in an utterly indifferent
world. A lonely dog stares out to sea, a monkey clings despondently to a rock, a
white horse stands precariously on a cliff, a flock of geese take flight. A man
attempts to fish in a shallow pool, ignoring the misty ocean below him. Tiny
human figures such as wandering scholars or hermits were often featured in
Chinese paintings, representing the relationship between humanity and nature in
Daoist cosmology. Yang’s are weighted with different meanings. They seem like
the sole survivors of an environmental catastrophe. The waves crash, and the
mountains, denuded of vegetation, seem about to slide into the ocean.</div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyvhWah5l-pBq4lvnl2iJID_l72GGXvec8XlM9-Q5DvPu8PwVovLLUJxUTntcxZn5nVchwY4dluC8FNrPJiZv_QXV5D1sn8Cu6l-HF3eQ1Dw5kvSjsjKVuxofWUsyXFjYh9F9dC04j0YA/s1280/1127922215_1280x720.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyvhWah5l-pBq4lvnl2iJID_l72GGXvec8XlM9-Q5DvPu8PwVovLLUJxUTntcxZn5nVchwY4dluC8FNrPJiZv_QXV5D1sn8Cu6l-HF3eQ1Dw5kvSjsjKVuxofWUsyXFjYh9F9dC04j0YA/w400-h225/1127922215_1280x720.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yang Yongliang, Five Dragons, video, image courtesy artist website</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Yang
Yongliang’s work asks us to face uncomfortable truths, to view the world that
human greed has wrought. Endlessly innovative, in recent years Yang Yongliang
has ventured into new technological realms, exploring the creative possibilities
of Virtual Reality and 3D video animation, reinventing traditional analogue
photography techniques and introducing colour to his immersive video
installations and digital images. He continues to riff on Song Dynasty paintings
and Chinese mythology, yet his work is also imbued with twenty-first century
allusions to video game design, inviting audiences into an enticing imaginary
world. Described by the artist as a “multi-point perspective mind journey
through the eyes of the dragons”, 4-channel video Five Dragons (2020), for
instance, was inspired by a Southern Song Dynasty painting by Chen Rong from
1244 that depicts the symbolic beasts writhing through swirling mists. Yang
notes that historically the dragon was a symbol of imperial power and stability,
wisdom, benevolence and good fortune. Today, however, it is often associated
merely with prosperity, in yet another sign that economic development and
material consumption trumps all. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0e06SJPd5zZPpRijR0DO9N6PhFyVrpEONOUxjKJOmW-s8TUPkdyb9x48PoTFtUTWAbUJE8yPRgEFG-nye_6PFCwvusq9Ev6EC9t4gxLOkxfCa2Zrza0DarOXsIJtvj4u6Gt4LA0NMYLc/s275/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0e06SJPd5zZPpRijR0DO9N6PhFyVrpEONOUxjKJOmW-s8TUPkdyb9x48PoTFtUTWAbUJE8yPRgEFG-nye_6PFCwvusq9Ev6EC9t4gxLOkxfCa2Zrza0DarOXsIJtvj4u6Gt4LA0NMYLc/w400-h266/images.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yang Yongliang 'Imagined Landscapes' installation view, Sullivan & Strumpf Sydney</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>In Glows in the Night (2020), a development
from Journey to the Dark, a 4-channel video work shown at Sullivan & Strumpf
Sydney in 2018, Yang provides audiences with an immersive experience that
recalls the (pre-pandemic) experience of flying into a big city at night,
looking down at an apparent wonderland of twinkling lights, neon signs, and the
golden ribbons of car headlights on highways. We see fairy lights on boats,
flashing screens on skyscrapers, mountains in the distance, and in the
foreground, glimpses into apartment windows. This sprawl of habitation is like a
human anthill, glimpses into the lives of millions of strangers, inhabitants of
this megalopolis. It could be anywhere in the contemporary world. Glows in the
Night reveals the paradox at the centre of Yang Yongliang’s practice: the
seductive allure of urban modernity and the simultaneous knowledge of its
fragility.</div><div><br /></div><div>You can do a wonderful virtual walkthrough of the exhibition <a href="https://www.sullivanstrumpf.com/httpswww-sullivanstrumpf-comenglishnew-news-list-news/yang-yongliang-imagined-landscapes/?year=2021" target="_blank">HERE</a></div><div>And read the essay in its much more beautiful layout version in the gallery magazine <a href="https://www.sullivanstrumpf.com/viewing-spaces/yang-yongliang/" target="_blank">HERE</a></div>An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-52037874732324472422021-06-12T04:12:00.000-07:002021-06-12T04:12:49.920-07:00Passing Through the Human World: Cao Yu<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmbHTU1PK7JQyJdIReTWyIvqwwoVhTrEBPUZwqGnJaUvq287mrzsLkEIpWZb74RMVAIheFTSlj5XXn3qchlUzzyUho6TBDVmv1usMWw1w7Sg4sFZ1FEtqQloKQOInE2vsqCODVJauHm0w/s2048/Something+Inside+the+Chest-1+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1831" data-original-width="2048" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmbHTU1PK7JQyJdIReTWyIvqwwoVhTrEBPUZwqGnJaUvq287mrzsLkEIpWZb74RMVAIheFTSlj5XXn3qchlUzzyUho6TBDVmv1usMWw1w7Sg4sFZ1FEtqQloKQOInE2vsqCODVJauHm0w/w400-h358/Something+Inside+the+Chest-1+.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cao Yu, 'Something Inside the Chest', image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><p>Looming PhD thesis deadlines, in combination with our closed borders and the strange stasis of the COVID-19 world that we now inhabit, have all conspired to stop me updating this blog. The 'art teacher in China' that was me twelve years ago at the start of this journey is no longer really an art teacher as such, and I cannot go to China until (one day) 'Fortress Australia' decides to let its citizens leave and return. When that day comes, I very much hope to be able to return to Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and all the other places that I thought I had heaps of time to visit. I haven't yet been to Chongqing, or to Xiamen, and I would dearly love to go to Yellow Mountain and see the frescoes of Dunhuang.</p><p>Meanwhile, though, there is plenty of Chinese art to write about, and I've been doing quite a bit of that, for catalogue essays, interviews and articles published in COBO Social and elsewhere. So over the coming days I'll add links to various things I've written and comment on some of the best exhibitions I've seen.</p><p>I was very happy to be asked to write an essay for Cao Yu's solo exhibition at <a href="https://www.galerieursmeile.com/" target="_blank">Urs Meile</a> Gallery Beijing, and for Yang Yongliang's at <a href="https://www.sullivanstrumpf.com/" target="_blank">Sullivan & Strumpf</a> in Sydney. They are both extraordinary and interesting artists whose work I admire. I've interviewed three wonderful women - Charwei Tsai, Tianli Zu and Louise Zhang - for <a href="https://www.cobosocial.com/" target="_blank">COBO Social</a>, with more artist interviews to come. </p><p>I'll start with Cao Yu - because anyone reading this blog from Beijing should get along to 798 and Galerie Urs Meile and see 'Passing Through the Human World'. I'm sad I can't be there to see it myself. Cao Yu and I have had many long exchanges via Wechat and email in the process of writing this:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZORuryEbQwOItuY-1HpOsXzjSuXb6sYDXYvk0cfVLnqXTvptKQ_W3L3zWMpIzLzk14E4LzlqSf_NOiQLSaF3Q5xa_Kr_nhth2o_617yQrZWXavO_Uq1kLNOdra33ei-7Jb-ovnDbHZIM/s2048/The+Head+of+Dragon.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZORuryEbQwOItuY-1HpOsXzjSuXb6sYDXYvk0cfVLnqXTvptKQ_W3L3zWMpIzLzk14E4LzlqSf_NOiQLSaF3Q5xa_Kr_nhth2o_617yQrZWXavO_Uq1kLNOdra33ei-7Jb-ovnDbHZIM/w266-h400/The+Head+of+Dragon.jpeg" width="266" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cao Yu, Dragon Head, image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cao Yu: Passing Through This Human World</span></h4><p>Cao Yu’s solo exhibition, Passing Through the Human World, focuses on our complicated relationships with
the natural world, with each other, and with our desire to find meaning in our lives. It evokes the three
cosmological realms of syncretic Daoist/neo-Confucian thought. The concept of ‘<i>tian di ren heyi</i>’ (heaven,
earth, human united) represents an interconnected triad in which humans endeavour to live in harmony
with the cosmos, including with the ancestors in the underworld of the dead. Cao is unafraid of big ideas
like this—she examines the messy, painful, sometimes comical business of being human.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUqzQBo8hp2FMzpCj1SSMlTEkuKpcyf-2AyRirVYifDo12sSi4tTEMNG2uS21jnpmMFTDBxJ5Ct8YJy1P479SF7UbPlzimTZ8v2byB-8q0TCP3kSsweJoC2QtDuow5rzNPBwN-TSWSoHc/s1455/Femme+Fatale-2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1455" data-original-width="988" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUqzQBo8hp2FMzpCj1SSMlTEkuKpcyf-2AyRirVYifDo12sSi4tTEMNG2uS21jnpmMFTDBxJ5Ct8YJy1P479SF7UbPlzimTZ8v2byB-8q0TCP3kSsweJoC2QtDuow5rzNPBwN-TSWSoHc/w434-h640/Femme+Fatale-2.jpeg" width="434" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cao Yu, 'Femme Fatale 2', image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><br /> A conceptual
thread that runs through her ambitious, multidisciplinary work is her willingness to reveal things that
are more often hidden from view, politely veiled, or camouflaged by euphemism. Cao Yu is, above all else,
courageous.
In this exhibition Cao explores gendered experiences of sexuality and motherhood; connections
between life and the afterlife; links between species, and across aeons. Perhaps only in China, for example,
could an artist procure a fossil from the Ice Age—a mammoth’s enormous leg bone unearthed in far
north-eastern Heilongjiang Province—for an installation that examines profound human and post-human
connections. </p><p>In <i>Nothing Can Ensure that We Will Meet Again (Ice Age - 2014)</i>, Cao Yu asks us to confront our
deepest fears, and our deepest longings. She inserted the umbilical cord that once attached her to her firstborn child, frozen since 2014 for this precise purpose, into a space dug out of the bone and filled with resin.
Inlaid and preserved like a prehistoric insect trapped in amber, the knotted cord will survive long
past Cao’s own life span, and her son’s. It is a time capsule illustrating the powerful connection between a
mother and her infant, but also a reminder of their inevitable separation and mortality. She chose the mammoth bone, she says, because they too, long ago, suckled their babies. For Cao, “The life that has gone is
a witness to the connection and separation of the other two lives.” With the circular bracelet of her umbilical cord, Cao Yu is closing the circle between animal and human life forms, between past and present,
and between death and a kind of immortality. </p><p>The range, diversity and conceptual depth of her work is astonishing, but she is also deeply invested in the nature of her materials, from the more conventional – marble, stretched linen, digital media,
neon, video – to the appearance of surprising, even transgressive, materials including raw meat, bones, and
the artist’s own hair, breastmilk, and urine. This focus on materiality is a distinctive aspect of contemporary art from China. Art historian and curator Wu Hung explored the concept of ‘material art’ (<i>caizhi yishu</i>)
to analyse how Chinese artists make use of unconventional materials in order to produce works in which
“material, rather than image or style, is paramount in manifesting the artist’s aesthetic judgement or social
critique.” Such materials, says Wu, “transcend codified art forms.”</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNfW5AjQ_9PgsutYqjCA99cK8hJsgTP2aqedwrY8ovImqZKxrKM65NgM4FZuyHrPayLQwJ6ap548QhBauNFF0-eHUkwqEwUdmFe6ApZByHOfOg-2szm_xNrUDMkyCj-nXZvVV1G0ph1tw/s1180/9+%25C2%25B5%25C3%25BF%25C2%25BB%25C3%25BE%25C3%259C%25C3%25A4%25C2%25B4%25E2%2595%259D%25C3%25AE%25C2%25B5%25C3%25AA%25C3%25A6%25C2%25B5%25C3%25B9%25C3%25A1%25C3%2595%25C3%25B1%25C3%25A4%25C3%25B5%25C2%25A9%25C3%25AC%25C3%2595%25C2%25A3%25C2%25BF+Yeah%25C2%25B4%25E2%2595%259D%25C3%25AEI+am+everywhere-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="816" data-original-width="1180" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNfW5AjQ_9PgsutYqjCA99cK8hJsgTP2aqedwrY8ovImqZKxrKM65NgM4FZuyHrPayLQwJ6ap548QhBauNFF0-eHUkwqEwUdmFe6ApZByHOfOg-2szm_xNrUDMkyCj-nXZvVV1G0ph1tw/w400-h276/9+%25C2%25B5%25C3%25BF%25C2%25BB%25C3%25BE%25C3%259C%25C3%25A4%25C2%25B4%25E2%2595%259D%25C3%25AE%25C2%25B5%25C3%25AA%25C3%25A6%25C2%25B5%25C3%25B9%25C3%25A1%25C3%2595%25C3%25B1%25C3%25A4%25C3%25B5%25C2%25A9%25C3%25AC%25C3%2595%25C2%25A3%25C2%25BF+Yeah%25C2%25B4%25E2%2595%259D%25C3%25AEI+am+everywhere-1.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cao Yu, 'Yeah I Am Everywhere', image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD8wF76R8hrJcyjgbziIJ05WHfrOX5TX0Pl5cLSuWlEI9kI__JnVdkWZYF9L1mQEEhWElzXop-83v3m7ztxXamowXGictIiPGYxpOoZVp3CTAF_w67zJ_oDxWJ7ioC6md6WPhj51CcK-0/s1169/10+%25C2%25B5%25C3%25BF%25C2%25BB%25C3%25BE%25C3%259C%25C3%25A4%25C2%25B4%25E2%2595%259D%25C3%25AE%25C2%25B5%25C3%25AA%25C3%25A6%25C2%25B5%25C3%25B9%25C3%25A1%25C3%2595%25C3%25B1%25C3%25A4%25C3%25B5%25C2%25A9%25C3%25AC%25C3%2595%25C2%25A3%25C2%25BF+Yeah%25C2%25B4%25E2%2595%259D%25C3%25AEI+am+everywhere-2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="784" data-original-width="1169" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD8wF76R8hrJcyjgbziIJ05WHfrOX5TX0Pl5cLSuWlEI9kI__JnVdkWZYF9L1mQEEhWElzXop-83v3m7ztxXamowXGictIiPGYxpOoZVp3CTAF_w67zJ_oDxWJ7ioC6md6WPhj51CcK-0/w400-h269/10+%25C2%25B5%25C3%25BF%25C2%25BB%25C3%25BE%25C3%259C%25C3%25A4%25C2%25B4%25E2%2595%259D%25C3%25AE%25C2%25B5%25C3%25AA%25C3%25A6%25C2%25B5%25C3%25B9%25C3%25A1%25C3%2595%25C3%25B1%25C3%25A4%25C3%25B5%25C2%25A9%25C3%25AC%25C3%2595%25C2%25A3%25C2%25BF+Yeah%25C2%25B4%25E2%2595%259D%25C3%25AEI+am+everywhere-2.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cao Yu, 'Yeah I Am Everywhere' (detail), image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><p><br />Ever since her Central Academy of
Fine Arts graduation exhibition in 2016, Cao Yu has used her practice to expose her own vulnerabilities—
and to make us reflect upon ours. To a mixture of astonishment and affront from the audience, she presented her video Fountain, which showed the artist in dramatic chiaroscuro as a human fountain of expressed breastmilk. Cao was satirising the ejaculatory masculinity of canonical art historical works such as
Duchamp’s notorious porcelain urinal, Fountain (1917), and American conceptual artist Bruce Nauman’s
Self-Portrait as a Fountain (1966–1967), a video which showed the artist in the act of spitting out an arc of
water. Like Duchamp, she is a provocateur, and like Nauman her work is self-reflexive: Cao’s dialogue with
art history inverted gendered expectations in which women were typically represented as passive objects of
the male gaze. She may be reclining, bare-breasted, in Fountain but she forces us to reconsider the female
body as powerfully productive. Having experienced pregnancy, labour, birth, and the sheer physicality of
new motherhood, she said: “I felt for the first time as a woman that my body could have an even more violent power to release tension than a man’s.”</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOPs4LgGMGT0uJxTDM4QzCQgQb5T67G2fWvOtWkjHSDjUlrzoedyT_Pxhz_eWZNcLJ5Eyvz17AY2aPf6zDPyeFLP-P2ebfj-bVF9dQEXEwxfE6VPaTZ7pg-w6Ia-1LW4mx2bVrxVG7N-k/s2048/1%25C2%25B5%25E2%2594%2582%25C3%25AB+Fountain+_film+still++_1_2015+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1174" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOPs4LgGMGT0uJxTDM4QzCQgQb5T67G2fWvOtWkjHSDjUlrzoedyT_Pxhz_eWZNcLJ5Eyvz17AY2aPf6zDPyeFLP-P2ebfj-bVF9dQEXEwxfE6VPaTZ7pg-w6Ia-1LW4mx2bVrxVG7N-k/w366-h640/1%25C2%25B5%25E2%2594%2582%25C3%25AB+Fountain+_film+still++_1_2015+.jpg" width="366" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cao Yu, 'Fountain', video still, 2016, image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><p>To read the rest of the essay, see the Urs Meile website <a href="https://www.galerieursmeile.com/exhibitions/event/passing-through-human-world" target="_blank">HERE</a>. It finishes with this:</p><p>Yet all is not grim in Cao Yu’s three cosmological realms of <i>tian di ren heyi</i>. A sculptural installation,
Yeah, I am Everywhere III (2019) consists of two pieces of rough-hewn green marble from which, impossibly,
ten gold-plated fingers emerge. They resemble curling spring shoots seeking the sun. The work suggests a fairy-tale—the undoing of a sorcerer’s enchantment, perhaps—or an unsettling dream of bizarre, inexplicable transformation. The ten golden fingers are cast from the artist’s own; growing out of the hardness of
stone they represent her tenacity, courage, and resilience. The title is a mantra, an affirmation: “Yeah, I am
Everywhere</p>An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-23853451896751993432021-02-19T15:47:00.000-08:002021-02-19T15:47:13.718-08:00Seeing the Moon in a Dewdrop: Lindy Lee at the Museum of Contemporary Art<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1rmuKMwQY0s5s4Vdv3_91kNF_6JxTs5OnW90Sprvw49S5lmvgESFZfktcRWnZW-uG3B4ndH3cQxpt-qqj72VLJGIEDLV5QY1QG6K56sAo_5caLMtO49McI8V6aM4hFRgsuQE591BQLaE/s2048/Lindy+Lee%252C+Buddhas+and+Matriarchs%252C+photo+Anna+Kucera++%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1rmuKMwQY0s5s4Vdv3_91kNF_6JxTs5OnW90Sprvw49S5lmvgESFZfktcRWnZW-uG3B4ndH3cQxpt-qqj72VLJGIEDLV5QY1QG6K56sAo_5caLMtO49McI8V6aM4hFRgsuQE591BQLaE/w400-h266/Lindy+Lee%252C+Buddhas+and+Matriarchs%252C+photo+Anna+Kucera++%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;">Appropriately enough at this tail end of the lunar new year celebrations, the review I wrote of Lindy Lee's survey exhibition 'Moon in a Dewdrop' at the Museum of Contemporary art back in December has been published in <a href="https://www.randian-online.com/" target="_blank">Randian</a> this week. It's timely too, because her new solo exhibition at <a href="https://www.sullivanstrumpf.com/" target="_blank">Sullivan and Strumpf</a> has just opened - more on that show soon. And given that Facebook has exercised its unscrupulous might over the Australian government and blocked ALL news from its platform in Australia, it means that freelance writers and academics can no longer post links to their articles: posting references and links on this blog is now one of the few ways for me to share my writing with others who are interested in Chinese contemporary art, including the art of the diaspora and of Australian/Chinese artists. </p><p style="text-align: left;">So my piece for Randian began with a personal reflection: Lindy Lee and I are of the same generation, and although our experiences and cultural heritages are quite distinct, we both entered an artworld in Australia that was isolated and insular in the 1970s, growing less so in the 1980s, and is now far more connected with the rest of the world.
Here's the beginning of the article: </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR0mpngWoWHCAw44Ss1VxtrxA0EXxXCOPz7FVGNrpVCR5StclbG79E7KGhkqvta47TwmZoSzw1Wq1U4hkBm9BQ2r5D8TCa-V9wAy0sIiWnj4lc_cYmzDywHvmuA5IlgSJQJ1P1guBZ0Bc/s2048/Lindy+Lee+Moon+in+a+Dew+Drop_Lindy+Lee_Doctrine+of+the+Golden+Flower_UQAM+%25282003%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1439" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR0mpngWoWHCAw44Ss1VxtrxA0EXxXCOPz7FVGNrpVCR5StclbG79E7KGhkqvta47TwmZoSzw1Wq1U4hkBm9BQ2r5D8TCa-V9wAy0sIiWnj4lc_cYmzDywHvmuA5IlgSJQJ1P1guBZ0Bc/w281-h400/Lindy+Lee+Moon+in+a+Dew+Drop_Lindy+Lee_Doctrine+of+the+Golden+Flower_UQAM+%25282003%2529.jpg" width="281" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Lindy Lee, Doctrine of the Golden Flower, 2003, inkjet print, synthetic polymer paint on paper
mounted on board, 25 parts: 40.6 x 28.6 cm each, </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">204.2 x 142.8 x 28.6 cm overall, Collection of The
University of Queensland, gift of Lindy Lee through the Australian Government's
Cultural Gifts Program, 2013</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><h4 style="text-align: left;"><br />Replicas, postmodernism and ‘bad copies’ </h4><p style="text-align: left;">I vividly remember seeing Lindy Lee’s early works when they were first exhibited in Sydney in 1985 in Australian Perspecta and 1986 in the 6th Biennale of Sydney. Grainy, velvety black photocopies of famous faces – portraits by Jan Van Eyck, Rembrandt, Ingres, Artemisia Gentileschi and other images from the western art historical canon – were arranged in rows or grids. They gazed out from behind layers of acrylic paint, or wax that had been partially scraped back. Hints of darkened visages emerged through cobalt blue or deepest crimson pigment, making them appear unfamiliar and mysterious. Their characters seemed to be both concealed and revealed by the artist’s manipulations. </p><p style="text-align: left;">These shadowy works powerfully conveyed a sense common to artists and writers of my generation (and Lee’s): we were far from the action, on the other side of the world. The cultural centres, the ‘real’ art hubs, or so we thought then, were London, Paris, Florence, New York. We Australians were exiled to the periphery, inhabiting a postcolonial shadow world, a simulacrum – a pale photocopy, faded by the tyranny of distance. The art history we studied was almost entirely European and American; we feasted on images in reproduction, leafing through books with colour plates of Renaissance masters, and lined up for the (very occasional) blockbuster exhibition of works loaned from overseas collections at the state galleries. In that 1980s heyday of postmodern theory Lee’s works were discussed by critics and academics invoking Walter Benjamin and Baudrillard, but for me their interest lay in the connection forged between the artist and the mechanical reproduction. They suggested the angst of someone searching for a relationship across differences of time and culture.
But there was more to Lee’s search than the general Australian awareness of the colonial ‘fatal shore’. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Lindy Lee was born in Brisbane in 1954 to parents who had immigrated from China. She grew up in the (then) stultifyingly parochial suburbs of Brisbane during the era of the racist White Australia Policy; just a few years earlier, in 1947, Labor politician Arthur Calwell had notoriously ‘joked’ in parliament that ‘Two Wongs don’t make a white’. This upbringing, and the experience of being the only Chinese child in her school, left Lee uncertain of her identity. Like other children of Australia’s post-war migrants, she felt she was somehow inauthentic – not quite Australian, nor quite Chinese. Her early, experimental work with photocopies examined her own sense of being a ‘bad copy’, an altered, faded reproduction of the ‘real thing’.
</p><p style="text-align: left;">Read the whole article <a href="http://www.randian-online.com/np_review/lindy-lee-moon-in-a-dewdrop-replicas-postmodernism-and-bad-copies/" target="_blank">HERE</a> on the Randian Online site - and subscribe to their newsletter for interesting articles, interviews, reviews on global contemporary art</p>An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-68147533524824993852020-12-20T22:29:00.000-08:002020-12-20T22:29:23.932-08:00Watching the Moon: The end of a terrible year<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu5su72zBfN_07GDXjv-pHz6xwVu75PJvD7510Fhj_wNWaoPX9kpayefkucLwY8BiBNkZqGLODIQfPIVq_t_wV5A0W6ZoYgR-wbd2R9x6ZT00WcFhFeabtAXycm2ZrHLw-HChiW7SUjeQ/s2048/liao_2013_Things+We+Talk+About.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1556" data-original-width="2048" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu5su72zBfN_07GDXjv-pHz6xwVu75PJvD7510Fhj_wNWaoPX9kpayefkucLwY8BiBNkZqGLODIQfPIVq_t_wV5A0W6ZoYgR-wbd2R9x6ZT00WcFhFeabtAXycm2ZrHLw-HChiW7SUjeQ/w400-h304/liao_2013_Things+We+Talk+About.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pixy Liao, 'Things We Talk About', 2013, image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><p><br />In normal times at this tail end of the year I would write a kind of 'best of'' list of the art, the exhibitions and the most memorable artworld moments of 2020. I know, I know, it's kind of lame and a cliched media trope, but I have always enjoyed looking back over my calendar and sorting through all the many and varied experiences. Well, as we all know, these are not normal times, and this year there are vanishingly few things to talk about. The lasting experience of 2020 is of solitude mixed with uncertainty, boredom, and occasional lapses into existential despair. Life became very small as I encountered my students and colleagues mostly on Zoom, and seized precious socially distanced opportunities to see family and friends. I have tried to be more aware of the natural world, the turning of the leaves, the singing of birds in the garden, the sunsets and the moon - but frankly I'm often reading or watching Netflix and shamefully I see the moon and the sunsets in other people's Instagram photos more often than in reality. And as for art.....</p><p>The final exhibition I saw before the onset of Sydney's lockdown in March, somewhat nervously due to the increasingly serious pandemic, was 'Xu Zhen: Eternity Vs. Evolution' at the National Gallery. I felt that the visceral spectacle of the works, which had been so evident in the major survey exhibition at Beijing's UCCA and in various shows at White Rabbit Gallery, was somehow diminished inside the rather dark concrete spaces of that Brutalist Canberra building. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Fd03rF9_ejhcLaGNvF5_dxTyjky3Hr4P4NNZgCmNW-GjhLh8qlVOlP6svCYuUTXYIpUD9RHVjeEfgWPcE3QjvIDjR4b_0uOtehJt5YI3PU1U9mf7iF9lu3C7tIn_6COkkDRfwdHvnu0/s4608/20200314_114107.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Fd03rF9_ejhcLaGNvF5_dxTyjky3Hr4P4NNZgCmNW-GjhLh8qlVOlP6svCYuUTXYIpUD9RHVjeEfgWPcE3QjvIDjR4b_0uOtehJt5YI3PU1U9mf7iF9lu3C7tIn_6COkkDRfwdHvnu0/w400-h300/20200314_114107.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: start;">XU ZHEN® </span>"Hello", installation view, Photograph: Luise Guest</td></tr></tbody></table><p>The best critical account of that exhibition is by Alex Burchmore, in Randian. Of the snake-like, moving Corinthian column activated by visitor movement he writes: ''<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the voluptuous coils of ‘“Hello”’ (2019) take pride of place in ‘Eternity Vs Evolution’, towering over the viewer and following their every move with a baleful gaze that threatens consumption by the emptiness of the void (and note the inclusion of quotation marks in the title). The caption for this work draws attention to the historic prestige of the Corinthian column that Xu has chosen for the body of his serpent, ‘first created in ancient Greece [as] a symbol of power, prestige and western civilization.’ Yet the flaccid immobility of this automated guardian, save for the hesitant and creaking sway of its pediment-head when activated by the approach of the viewer, inspires more pity than dread. Carved in soft and yielding Styrofoam, this is a column devoid of all function, a structural support incapable of supporting its own weight, spectacular in scale but hollow within. As such, ‘“Hello”’ offers a clue to the underlying message of the exhibition: that which seems invulnerable and eternal is often little more than an artfully contrived illusion, while the evidence of our own eyes is rarely as straightforward as it seems and inevitably colored by the assumptions that structure our view of the world.'' Read the full article</span></span> <a href="https://www.randian-online.com/np_review/article-xu-zhen-eternity-vs-evolution-at-the-national-gallery-of-australia-canberra/." target="_blank">here.</a> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga4c0SRPDFCFpj2nA0aP10cZS_PKqDBGZQ04s3waGLmsdJkqrAhwiIHPE7o6Q6H2FwdIrIv3Cn5WMRJbcre096osVsKczCJk8dAv2nB9dRDO2eQrYVx-NUA4D8-uDEkF2WFRsLp0fOzvs/s4608/20201017_115952.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga4c0SRPDFCFpj2nA0aP10cZS_PKqDBGZQ04s3waGLmsdJkqrAhwiIHPE7o6Q6H2FwdIrIv3Cn5WMRJbcre096osVsKczCJk8dAv2nB9dRDO2eQrYVx-NUA4D8-uDEkF2WFRsLp0fOzvs/w400-h300/20201017_115952.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Lindy Lee, 'Moonlight Deities', installation view, photo: Luise Guest</div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKWCIMcKM0XVegdBa9qbh5nTBShurIUtJu-Rs8ZGOkiEsc0VhJSOAtBtMUXldbRX-BMmY66S2M3qMa_KIV32fkKATD8LegP7NWlr3fkAjWkElIuATGjC2CXFkha_12t4hz4Pnd33xMmzA/s2048/Lindy+Lee%252C+No+Up%252C+No+Down%252C+I+Am%25E2%2580%25AFthe%25E2%2580%25AFTen+Thousand+Things%252C+photo+Anna+Kucera++%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKWCIMcKM0XVegdBa9qbh5nTBShurIUtJu-Rs8ZGOkiEsc0VhJSOAtBtMUXldbRX-BMmY66S2M3qMa_KIV32fkKATD8LegP7NWlr3fkAjWkElIuATGjC2CXFkha_12t4hz4Pnd33xMmzA/w400-h266/Lindy+Lee%252C+No+Up%252C+No+Down%252C+I+Am%25E2%2580%25AFthe%25E2%2580%25AFTen+Thousand+Things%252C+photo+Anna+Kucera++%25282%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="normaltextrun"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;">Lindy Lee, <i>No Up,
No Down, I Am the Ten Thousand Things</i>, 1995/2020, installation
view, <i>Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop</i>, Museum of Contemporary Art
Australia, Sydney, 2020, photocopy, synthetic polymer paint, ink on Stonehenge
paper, dimensions variable, image c</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;">ourtesy the artist, Sutton
Gallery, Melbourne and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney and © the
artist,</span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> photograph: Anna
Kucera<br /><br /></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table>I managed to briefly see a small part of Brook Andrew's Biennale of Sydney before it closed and then, once museums re-opened, enjoyed a visit to an almost empty Museum of Contemporary Art to see 'Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dewdrop' (about which, more later). Apart from those experiences, months apart, the wonderful 'Indonesia Calling' at 16 Albermarle Project Space turned out to be one of those increasingly rare experiences - an exhibition that was curatorially coherent and visually and conceptually exciting. John McDonald's curation of an exhibition of work by extraordinary (and eccentric) ink painter Li Jin for <a href="https://www.vermilionart.com.au/chinesehome-333013-180458-863318.html" target="_blank">Vermilion Art</a>, 'To Live [It Up]', was also interesting, providing a different view of the artist's work than the big survey show of his career that I had seen at Ink Studio in Beijing in 2019. It's great to know that a number of works were acquired from this exhibition for the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPY0ARjwVF1aNc6ggKXXpLwbUch9fLXr2wU9jzf-3gaMQiB0QIFD6BKOVNjm12EKpjbBvcJPGIjXVycm4_su7Z7gMhjtgt6279VCK42OnuJHVpfiNUnflA8KURKtD-HApwm_Dt9Wv4AR8/s2929/20201114_141046.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /><img border="0" data-original-height="2236" data-original-width="2929" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPY0ARjwVF1aNc6ggKXXpLwbUch9fLXr2wU9jzf-3gaMQiB0QIFD6BKOVNjm12EKpjbBvcJPGIjXVycm4_su7Z7gMhjtgt6279VCK42OnuJHVpfiNUnflA8KURKtD-HApwm_Dt9Wv4AR8/w400-h305/20201114_141046.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0R5KJlQlmySWRCvFQNIbb7GfZUe-7ZaVScVNFa-xDwkZ7evjkb3B8J79Ewn19zm6p7_9hoJzgJvZE1Gt7Qlyfa7miKRmM3lvWFy5T_Be6IqODiTWdtU8VoVkLKb05yz93CLZmFtDzIMY/s2228/20201114_141031.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1686" data-original-width="2228" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0R5KJlQlmySWRCvFQNIbb7GfZUe-7ZaVScVNFa-xDwkZ7evjkb3B8J79Ewn19zm6p7_9hoJzgJvZE1Gt7Qlyfa7miKRmM3lvWFy5T_Be6IqODiTWdtU8VoVkLKb05yz93CLZmFtDzIMY/w400-h303/20201114_141031.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Works by Li Jin shown at Vermilion Art in November</td></tr></tbody></table><p>So, in this globally calamitous and personally very challenging year, how to make some sense out of the chaos and confusion? Is it even possible in this year when the president of the United States is advocating a literal military coup to contest an election he lost, and when so many of us have lost faith in our governments' responses to the pandemic that has devastated the globe. We are increasingly divided, angry, sad and cynical.</p><p>Among the many losses of the year, a bright spot for me was the realisation that it was still possible to continue my conversations with Chinese artists, albeit (sadly, and who knows for how long) not face to face in their studios. I've spoken with Pixy Liao, Cao Yu, Liu Xi and Shoufay Derz via email, Facebook and Wechat and have had articles published in a range of print and online journals that I've referenced in previous blog posts, including most recently an article in <a href="https://www.artmonthly.org.au/current" target="_blank">Art Monthly Australasia</a>.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF3ZlBvX-lfO2xsqtxOgiJfBVyzpAc_Y6pzjUbPmKLJfD0RVk28V-g2t5b1QbyeeNxBMb0M3epbPYknLkuaZzEUwKICwo5A61NDZXOEVoeVpDmKIaOXAU6OAR_b89G1OnaGxj_lNXU7K0/s2048/liao_2013_It%2527s+never+been+easy+to+carry+you.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1561" data-original-width="2048" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF3ZlBvX-lfO2xsqtxOgiJfBVyzpAc_Y6pzjUbPmKLJfD0RVk28V-g2t5b1QbyeeNxBMb0M3epbPYknLkuaZzEUwKICwo5A61NDZXOEVoeVpDmKIaOXAU6OAR_b89G1OnaGxj_lNXU7K0/w400-h305/liao_2013_It%2527s+never+been+easy+to+carry+you.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pixy Liao, 'Ít's Never Been Easy to Carry You', 2013, image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table><p><br />These conversations were interesting and thought-provoking, challenging some of my assumptions about art, feminism and China, which is always a good thing. I take these ideas now into the chapter for a book that I am working on, so watch this space! Here is the opening section of the Art Monthly piece. In the extract below I've left out the footnotes and references, just to make it more readable in this blog format:</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"> 'Public Bodies, Private Lives: the work of Cao Yu and Pixy Liao'</h4><p></p><p class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #191919;">In the cold Beijing winter of 2012, I interviewed
Lin Tianmiao – often described as one of very few feminist artists in China. She
told me bluntly, ‘There is no feminism in China. It’s a Western thing.’She meant, I think, that Euro-American feminism/s were not especially relevant
to the experiences of Chinese women – and also that she resisted being silo-ed in
a still-patriarchal Chinese artworld as a ‘woman artist’. </span><span lang="EN-AU">It is generally acknowledged, as Shuqin Cui recently argued, that
‘few Chinese women artists would welcome the label of feminist art or
categorize their work as feminist art even if the feminist dimensions of their
work were clearly evident.’ </span><span lang="EN-AU">Nonetheless, many
artists grapple with issues of gender and challenge heteronormative stereotypes. </span><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #191919;">A feminist self-identification is not especially significant, as</span><span lang="EN-AU"> art historian
Joan Kee noted: </span><span lang="EN-AU">‘<span style="background: white; color: #333333;">The question
is not whether women artists from Asian countries identify themselves as
feminists, or whether their work imparts feminist messages. Instead, the issue
concerns the logic of interpretation’. </span></span><span lang="EN-AU">Feminism is embodied in nuanced and culturally specific
ways in the practice of many contemporary Chinese artists – even if they disavow
the label. <span style="color: #191919;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
I spoke with multi-disciplinary artists </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #191919;">Cao Yu</span></b><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #191919;"> and </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #191919;">Pixy Liao</span></b><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #191919;">,</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #191919;"> </span></b><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #191919;">they</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #191919;"> </span></b><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #191919;">expressed
reservations about being pigeonholed, yet their work powerfully challenges essentialist
notions of the ‘feminine’.</span></span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1mJnLa8VTTeMZRgf-AH9xIf_NsXAk5bwsOW7UFTBeIGmRoVw3JleFz2Xk4JkMafW1NtR_zk8lUmFd4RDkdfbKIFqlF1ePDSUmYqhyphenhyphenkxQlnlIPs1PA6nww9QYzptCXtRkgMRNKU_rf3ZQ/s2048/26+++Mother+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1441" data-original-width="2048" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1mJnLa8VTTeMZRgf-AH9xIf_NsXAk5bwsOW7UFTBeIGmRoVw3JleFz2Xk4JkMafW1NtR_zk8lUmFd4RDkdfbKIFqlF1ePDSUmYqhyphenhyphenkxQlnlIPs1PA6nww9QYzptCXtRkgMRNKU_rf3ZQ/w400-h281/26+++Mother+.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cao Yu, 'Mother' series, installation view, image courtesy Cao Yu and Urs Meile Beijing/Lucerne</td></tr></tbody></table></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiROU4ULbd2UOrFiMuFS5sik9a5ALGbToAs3mufOHfDExaoe-Bba7M-X72iiGchWaFYiZ2-4OdfaXwKeoPu23EPvR_G5j29x2dmLj4ELVQmXEtj7zv8l0T9j8robLAcdfJxYGs3zW5AGhA/s2048/13+Everything+will+be+left+behind-1%25C3%25B5%25C2%25A9%25C3%2587%25C3%2595%25C3%25AA%25C3%25A7%25C3%25BE%25C3%259C%25C3%25A5%25C3%259E%25C3%25B3%25C2%25BD%25C2%25B5%25C3%25A8%25C3%25B8%25C3%2595%25C3%2589%25C3%25A6%25C3%259E%25C3%25A4%25C3%25A6%25C3%2595%25C3%2589%25C3%2584.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiROU4ULbd2UOrFiMuFS5sik9a5ALGbToAs3mufOHfDExaoe-Bba7M-X72iiGchWaFYiZ2-4OdfaXwKeoPu23EPvR_G5j29x2dmLj4ELVQmXEtj7zv8l0T9j8robLAcdfJxYGs3zW5AGhA/w400-h266/13+Everything+will+be+left+behind-1%25C3%25B5%25C2%25A9%25C3%2587%25C3%2595%25C3%25AA%25C3%25A7%25C3%25BE%25C3%259C%25C3%25A5%25C3%259E%25C3%25B3%25C2%25BD%25C2%25B5%25C3%25A8%25C3%25B8%25C3%2595%25C3%2589%25C3%25A6%25C3%259E%25C3%25A4%25C3%25A6%25C3%2595%25C3%2589%25C3%2584.jpeg" width="400" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-size: 12pt; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjthL8FnZbdEMayiMvOIM0yos_qbClxva5lQoyxYz4Kb1sxUWvs5ZVL3MgWDVrqb50qvz8ulwDONx_l19e6XZzz4nSqYvFhd-Ad9q1_ZFg77CLmJbaxJq-7EYEozAwBBAmK39bmDhoYrfI/s2048/15+Everything+will+be+left+behind-1%25C3%25B5%25C2%25A9%25C3%2587%25C3%2595%25C3%25AA%25C3%25A7%25C3%25BE%25C3%259C%25C3%25A5%25C3%259E%25C3%25B3%25C2%25BD%25C2%25B5%25C3%25A8%25C3%25B8%25C3%2595%25C3%2589%25C3%25A6%25C3%259E%25C3%25A4%25C3%25A6%25C3%2595%25C3%2589%25C3%2584.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjthL8FnZbdEMayiMvOIM0yos_qbClxva5lQoyxYz4Kb1sxUWvs5ZVL3MgWDVrqb50qvz8ulwDONx_l19e6XZzz4nSqYvFhd-Ad9q1_ZFg77CLmJbaxJq-7EYEozAwBBAmK39bmDhoYrfI/w400-h266/15+Everything+will+be+left+behind-1%25C3%25B5%25C2%25A9%25C3%2587%25C3%2595%25C3%25AA%25C3%25A7%25C3%25BE%25C3%259C%25C3%25A5%25C3%259E%25C3%25B3%25C2%25BD%25C2%25B5%25C3%25A8%25C3%25B8%25C3%2595%25C3%2589%25C3%25A6%25C3%259E%25C3%25A4%25C3%25A6%25C3%2595%25C3%2589%25C3%2584.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cao Yu, 'Everything Will Be Left Behind', installation view (above) and detail (below), image courtesy the artist and Urs Meile Beijing/Lucerne</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">You will find the whole article in the Summer 2020/2021 issue of <a href="https://www.artmonthly.org.au/current" target="_blank">Art Monthly Australasia</a>.</div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">Perhaps, at the end of a year that has been so terrible for so many across the globe, at the mercy of a virus (and I don't mean the one in the White House) we come back to the knowledge of our tiny insignificance in the vastness of the universe. Lately I am finding that comforting rather than frightening. The title of Lindy Lee's exhibition 'Moon in a Dewdrop' is a reference to the writings of </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #202122;">Dōgen, </span>the 13th century Zen monk who brought Buddhism from China to Japan. Lee is a practising Buddhist and the philosophy informs her life and art. I think of the artists I know in China whose study of Daoism similarly inflects their work, and their reactions to the world and its suffering. We too are the 'ten thousand things' - everything under heaven - in a constantly fluxing relationship with the world and everything in it - light and dark, health and illness, solitude and companionship. Well, I'm working on that level of acceptance. Mostly failing. It's a process.</span><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyAmA7N_qM6ToHxWuKUWFM-K7sJ4vuQSPzMIGWq1CpYq7hLNWkSIfCaS9sr9L8z8UNDbIWksQCov1n4uafLZN8LP_6Tka_0D4TokQSTQ3hB2SS-pMQocnErFVuii9xzyU0r7CQUc0kJko/s2048/Lindy+Lee%252C+Buddhas+and+Matriarchs%252C+photo+Anna+Kucera++%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyAmA7N_qM6ToHxWuKUWFM-K7sJ4vuQSPzMIGWq1CpYq7hLNWkSIfCaS9sr9L8z8UNDbIWksQCov1n4uafLZN8LP_6Tka_0D4TokQSTQ3hB2SS-pMQocnErFVuii9xzyU0r7CQUc0kJko/w400-h266/Lindy+Lee%252C+Buddhas+and+Matriarchs%252C+photo+Anna+Kucera++%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr></tbody></table></span></span></span></span></p><p class="paragraph" style="margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Lindy Lee, <i>Buddhas and Matriarchs</i>, 2020,
</span><span class="normaltextrun"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">installation
view, <i>Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop</i>, Museum of Contemporary Art
Australia, Sydney, 2020,</span></span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"> flung bronze, image courtesy the artist,
Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and Singapore and the Museum of Contemporary Art
Australia, Sydney with the assistance of UAP and</span><span class="normaltextrun"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> © the artist,
photograph: Anna Kucera</span></span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As Dōgen said of himself watching the moon:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">‘Sky above, sky beneath, cloud self, water origin’</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /><br /></span></span></span></span></span></p><p>
</p><div style="mso-element: endnote-list;"><!--[if !supportEndnotes]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;"><br /></div></div><p></p>An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-70848935899509102382020-09-10T01:44:00.000-07:002020-09-10T01:44:16.718-07:00Show and Tell: Cao Yu’s Gendered Embodiment<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgfzbYob6s2TZ2RhfysnB8xG0zqnIPJwMjFBcHR-itVP97fFXqrYncMZZYhItWgZp1_gb8ybhTZ_zlxfUKE_ufLrCHOivvyPFNHY-rh-kSIuONj6CZdnhYVTHbIgDfGXBOgJBziLi0pJQ/s2048/4%25C2%25B5%25C3%25AA%25C3%25A6%25C2%25B5%25C2%25A3%25C3%25AB+IHave_film+still_1+2017..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgfzbYob6s2TZ2RhfysnB8xG0zqnIPJwMjFBcHR-itVP97fFXqrYncMZZYhItWgZp1_gb8ybhTZ_zlxfUKE_ufLrCHOivvyPFNHY-rh-kSIuONj6CZdnhYVTHbIgDfGXBOgJBziLi0pJQ/w500-h281/4%25C2%25B5%25C3%25AA%25C3%25A6%25C2%25B5%25C2%25A3%25C3%25AB+IHave_film+still_1+2017..jpg" width="500" /></a></div><br />Back in March, finding myself cut adrift from all certainty and from what I had foolishly assumed to be a continuing professional identity, I was catapulted like so many others across the globe into a time of uncertainty and fear. One of the things that has held me together is my conversations with artists, and my interest in writing about the work of women artists in particular. In the last six months I've written about the practice of some extraordinary women, including Liu Xi, Pixy Yijun Liao, and most recently, young rising star Cao Yu. Of necessity our conversations have been conducted online, via email and WeChat, and it's sad not to be physically present in their studios for these conversations. But even given this restriction, our dialogues have been richly rewarding and I'm delighted by the trust they've shown me to represent their work in my words.<p></p><p>My article about the very transgressive and courageous work of Cao Yu, one of the most interesting young artists emerging from the Sculpture Department of Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts. was published in <a href="https://www.randian-online.com/" target="_blank">Ran Dian</a> this month. </p><p>All images reproduced courtesy of the artist and Urs Meile Gallery, Beijing and Lucerne.</p><p>Here's an excerpt:</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Show and Tell: Cao Yu’s Gendered Embodiment</h3><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4TdqwkScEfM_PWIDX4hMmSNkn3WxKHGPsQdbZVl7P6glauDuvIGlXbviAqCVW9n97OGh90K6V49vvv4z4wnrBe2MH4Vz-taM9WzSOzISiAfB3zOlYTfjOgsoONSETg6lNkbhPMZCD2WU/s2048/1%25C2%25B5%25E2%2594%2582%25C3%25AB+Fountain+_film+still++_1_2015+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1174" height="625" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4TdqwkScEfM_PWIDX4hMmSNkn3WxKHGPsQdbZVl7P6glauDuvIGlXbviAqCVW9n97OGh90K6V49vvv4z4wnrBe2MH4Vz-taM9WzSOzISiAfB3zOlYTfjOgsoONSETg6lNkbhPMZCD2WU/w358-h625/1%25C2%25B5%25E2%2594%2582%25C3%25AB+Fountain+_film+still++_1_2015+.jpg" width="358" /></a></div><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">A naked female torso is half obscured by shadow. We cannot see her face. As her hands rhythmically squeeze her pale breasts, jets of milk shoot into the air. ‘Fountain’ (2015), a video first exhibited at her graduation show in 2016, brought young artist Cao Yu instant notoriety. Viewers reacted viscerally – some with outrage and disgust, some with anger, some with fascination and delight, and some with bewilderment. Was it pornography? Was it a joke? Was it a feminist statement about motherhood? Reactions to this work, including an attempt by authorities to remove it from the exhibition, reveal so much about how women’s bodies and their sexuality are perceived. Cao Yu’s transgressive work issued a defiant challenge to ingrained cultural taboos, that is for sure.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Minimalist, conceptual, and deliberately provocative, Cao’s work reflects upon and exploits the physicality of her materials, from the conventional – marble, stretched linen and canvas – to unexpected, even transgressive, substances including the artist’s own hair, breastmilk and urine, and their various significations. Cao graduated from the academically rigorous Sculpture Department of Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts and cites Sui Jianguo and Zhan Wang as influential teachers and mentors. In a recent interview Cao Yu said it was Zhan Wang, whose own work is deeply conceptual and uncompromising in its refined physicality (1), who encouraged her to realise her potential when she began postgraduate study.(2)</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRnemGzJRdzNhGKbG5lQmcjE4FkfmxKdQivKvgUpHiW0y0EPiAL-X6-KCqJKU5mQTrfLnPo1mLDuFP-NtD_OTeT685ijnf1BxyIptNNbOvXN4DyNgoUYkCzGL4NJB9jXmNAYeu3logfj0/s2048/21Artist+manufacturing%25C2%25B4%25E2%2595%259D%25C3%25AE+%25C3%259E%25C3%25AB%25E2%2595%2591%25C2%25B5%25C2%25A3%25C2%25BB%25C3%2595%25C2%25AB%25C3%2582%25C3%2595%25C3%25AA%25C3%2582%25C3%259A%25C3%2587%25C3%25A1+2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1308" data-original-width="2048" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRnemGzJRdzNhGKbG5lQmcjE4FkfmxKdQivKvgUpHiW0y0EPiAL-X6-KCqJKU5mQTrfLnPo1mLDuFP-NtD_OTeT685ijnf1BxyIptNNbOvXN4DyNgoUYkCzGL4NJB9jXmNAYeu3logfj0/w500-h319/21Artist+manufacturing%25C2%25B4%25E2%2595%259D%25C3%25AE+%25C3%259E%25C3%25AB%25E2%2595%2591%25C2%25B5%25C2%25A3%25C2%25BB%25C3%2595%25C2%25AB%25C3%2582%25C3%2595%25C3%25AA%25C3%2582%25C3%259A%25C3%2587%25C3%25A1+2016.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p></p><h1 style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16.62px; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px;"><b>Font of Wisdom</b></h1><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite dramatic lighting that creates a Caravaggesque chiaroscuro, ‘Fountain’ is no art historical Madonna. It is real and a bit disturbing. For me, it evokes memories of breastfeeding two babies, of painfully engorged, inflamed or leaking breasts. Lactation makes people uneasy. Bizarrely, it often evokes disgust. Even today, breastfeeding women in public are required to cover themselves discreetly with precarious arrangements of shawls, and are often pressured to remove themselves completely from the public gaze. Cao Yu’s video bravely defies such patriarchal, squeamish nonsense, forcing us to watch her female body doing its thing.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Obviously, the title refers to Marcel Duchamp’s notorious challenge to the art establishment in 1917. ‘Fountain’, a porcelain urinal turned on its side, is a sly reference to gendered sexualities, a hand grenade thrown into art history and over a century later it is still the subject of contested interpretations. Cao Yu also references Bruce Nauman’s ‘Self-Portrait as a Fountain’ (1966–1967), in which he spits out an arc of water (with obvious ejaculatory symbolism). Cao’s breastmilk fountain satirises the phallic subtexts of both works.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cao Yu’s uncompromising chutzpah in confronting the masculinist history of modern and contemporary sculpture and performance art – so much testosterone! – echoes the similarly audacious work of a Chinese performance and transdisciplinary artist of the previous generation. In 2001, He Chengyao removed her shirt to stride bare breasted along the Great Wall. It was, she says, an impromptu performance during the public exhibition of German artist H. A. Schult’s installation of life-sized figures constructed of consumer waste.(3) When the semi-naked He Chengyao suddenly appeared in the midst of the crowd, attention was immediately diverted towards her. Because her spontaneous action was so public, and because it took place at this site – a potent symbol of Chinese nationhood – the considerable media attention was mostly negative.(4) She was accused of being an immoral attention-seeker, a judgement rooted in a misogynist view of ‘good womanhood’ that has not noticeably abated in the twenty years since. Some years ago, reflecting on her motivation for this transgressive action, He Chengyao told me, “Faced with all this hostility I tried to figure out the reason behind my performance. It was as if I was being controlled by a supernatural power of some kind. I decided to look inside for answers instead of outside.”(5)</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This sense of looking ‘inside’, feeling an uncontrollable imperative to use her body as a means of artistic expression, is familiar to Cao Yu, too. Cao gave birth to her first child in 2014. Childbirth and motherhood changed her view of her own body and herself; a visceral female physicality found its way into her work. ‘Fountain’, Cao says, was a work that she <i>had</i> to make. After her child was born, for the duration of her lactation, she had frequent bouts of mastitis that caused high fevers and almost unbearable pain:</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Although it caused me pain, it also brought nutrition and life energy to my child, so my milk became this wonder substance that I [both] loved and hated. So, in the process of fighting this pain, I was sensitively aware that my body at this moment was full of endless life energy and explosive force. I felt for the first time as a woman that my body could have an even more violent power to release tension than a man’s. And [if] my body was gradually turning into a masculine fountain monument, then it [also] became a container for life-giving and spraying milk. The white milk was imbued with the memory of love and hate.</i>(6)</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXqtf8wcW5QD_soX-1_HjlvJTRHQIFl3o_Y2gGZpUie961fCvmHdnq5dlbfPm9mzcgcWt_SftvTKNsISETxu_Wc9ZrvqOBTc-a1TVZew6nR9bxuOAQvNGcbj_Jt0X2Pva17GhaWI_E4TY/s2048/3%25C2%25B5%25E2%2594%2582%25C3%25AB+Fountain+%25C2%25B4%25E2%2595%259D%25C3%25AEfilm+still3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1200" height="781" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXqtf8wcW5QD_soX-1_HjlvJTRHQIFl3o_Y2gGZpUie961fCvmHdnq5dlbfPm9mzcgcWt_SftvTKNsISETxu_Wc9ZrvqOBTc-a1TVZew6nR9bxuOAQvNGcbj_Jt0X2Pva17GhaWI_E4TY/w460-h781/3%25C2%25B5%25E2%2594%2582%25C3%25AB+Fountain+%25C2%25B4%25E2%2595%259D%25C3%25AEfilm+still3.png" width="460" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;">The video is shot from the point of view of the artist as she gazes down at her own body, experiencing its power. Undoubtedly there is an erotic charge in the work – certainly the physical closeness of breastfeeding an infant can be intensely pleasurable as well as sometimes extremely painful. But in a contemporary culture in which the breast is commodified as an erotic object, and sexuality and motherhood are often seen as incompatible, ‘Fountain’ issues a challenge to the pornographic gaze that reinforces this binary. Cao Yu wanted all attention to be focused on the jets of liquid shooting into the air and the power of her body to expel it with great force. The milk fell into her eyes, almost blinding her. Cao carefully directed the lighting, camera angle and the positioning of her body:</span><p></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">We chose to shoot this video with the brightest light exposure possible, which created a clear contrast between the white milk and the dark background. The details of the breasts were gone, instead, it showed a beautiful landscape of two active volcanoes.</span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cao was in so much pain from her engorged breasts by the time the video was shot that she felt they would explode. She experienced exquisite relief as she began pumping, until the last drops of milk were gone. Tension and release, and that strange mixture of joy and sorrow familiar to all new parents, are communicated so powerfully in this work. Cao Yu knew that ‘Fountain’ would evoke strong reactions (undoubtedly, at least in part, her intention) but her video is not merely subversive, it is also aesthetically beautiful.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Such candid representations of motherhood are rare. We are more accustomed to saccharine depictions of selfless maternal sacrifice, or airbrushed, Instagram-perfect imagery that belies the bloody reality of childbirth, the delirious exhaustion and pain of new motherhood and lactation, or the endless, repetitive labour of raising a child. It is no surprise that the work excited controversy when it was exhibited – indeed, Cao Yu says she suddenly knew what it was like to be an overnight sensation. Some members of the art academy’s administration tried to prevent the work being shown at all, declaring it to be pornographic. Her name was abruptly withdrawn from an awards list. Members of her family were embarrassed. Audience reaction was mixed, and she was attacked online, in terms reminiscent of those used to attack He Chengyao almost twenty years earlier. Cao described the scene:</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the museum, someone was whispering in front of the work, someone called friends to come back and watch it again and again, some people were pointing fingers with bad intentions, there was also someone bursting into tears during the viewing.</span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I wondered whether the references to Duchamp, Nauman, and the problematically masculinist narratives of art history were at the forefront of Cao Yu’s mind as she planned this work, or whether they had revealed themselves only once she saw the video. In response, Cao quoted the Chinese idiom ‘to paint a dragon and dot the eyes’ (<i>huà lóng diǎn jīng</i> 画龙点睛) meaning ‘to add the final finishing touch’ to something. From the moment she decided to make the work, Cao realised that she was entering a dialogue with art history, not just with Duchamp and Nauman, but also with earlier works such as Ingres’ ‘La Source’ (1856), a neo-Classical painting depicting an idealised nude woman holding an urn spilling water balanced on her shoulder. The Chinese title of Cao’s video ‘泉’ may be translated as ‘Fountain’ but also refers to a spring or source of water. She says:</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">These classics have one thing in common, namely, they all came from the interpretation of ‘Fountain’ by the great male artists in art history. Therefore, the video work Fountain, created using new media, and from the perspective of a female artist from a younger generation, launched a new understanding and interpretation of the classic works in history, which was a leap forward, and that really excited me.</span></i></p><h1 style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Formation</span></b></h1><div><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB4SlTBD3e2iduIk5hWYOyDNJybmMcwm8aEFKwgunvNgGSWr1954OKXhpWlG29Yplq1-wzhyjWo1sp_mlikyyL0G-WotTIMIympC7cSDBCdG7poFMT8XwaF16dv-2XBRyEGrtR0jdf5ys/s2048/23+Artist+manufacturing-3+%25C3%259E%25C3%25AB%25E2%2595%2591%25C2%25B5%25C2%25A3%25C2%25BB%25C3%2595%25C2%25AB%25C3%2582%25C3%2595%25C3%25AA%25C3%2582%25C3%259A%25C3%2587%25C3%25A1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB4SlTBD3e2iduIk5hWYOyDNJybmMcwm8aEFKwgunvNgGSWr1954OKXhpWlG29Yplq1-wzhyjWo1sp_mlikyyL0G-WotTIMIympC7cSDBCdG7poFMT8XwaF16dv-2XBRyEGrtR0jdf5ys/w500-h281/23+Artist+manufacturing-3+%25C3%259E%25C3%25AB%25E2%2595%2591%25C2%25B5%25C2%25A3%25C2%25BB%25C3%2595%25C2%25AB%25C3%2582%25C3%2595%25C3%25AA%25C3%2582%25C3%259A%25C3%2587%25C3%25A1.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></b></div><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Fountain’ transformed the milk produced by Cao Yu’s body into an art material. ‘Artist Manufacturing’ (2016) makes this intention even more explicit. Cao condensed eighteen litres of her breast milk into a malleable, clay-like material, and used it to mould abstract forms. Unmediated by the distancing of video camera and screen, they bear the marks of the artist’s kneading fingers and are redolent of sour milk. Described by Rachel Rits-Volloch as an ‘extrusion of her own bodily fluids, an inversion of herself from inside to outside, signed with her own fingerprints’(7), Cao has made the product of her own body into art. This is not unprecedented; in 1961 Piero Manzoni filled 90 cans with his own faeces. Each was numbered and labelled in Italian, English, French and German, identifying the contents as ‘”Artist’s Shit”, contents 30gr net freshly preserved, produced and tinned in May 1961’.(8) Thus, in a neat comment about the aesthetic judgement and intellectual acuity of the artworld, the product of the artist’s body became a commodity.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTZTDNd6w9XOhy0k1p5FGTZtZh4hje18MxG-cVfvQVoIemi1KCCyzuGFZunqoSkymsbGb-GJwjrHgJm7MRB7kAvdhYDDzZIkjKq3L_Q_YGTZLfDORDh-gfVfQRR-j1sSNcZJKuZj4QIa8/s2048/22+Artist+manufacturing-2%25C3%259E%25C3%25AB%25E2%2595%2591%25C2%25B5%25C2%25A3%25C2%25BB%25C3%2595%25C2%25AB%25C3%2582%25C3%2595%25C3%25AA%25C3%2582%25C3%259A%25C3%2587%25C3%25A1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTZTDNd6w9XOhy0k1p5FGTZtZh4hje18MxG-cVfvQVoIemi1KCCyzuGFZunqoSkymsbGb-GJwjrHgJm7MRB7kAvdhYDDzZIkjKq3L_Q_YGTZLfDORDh-gfVfQRR-j1sSNcZJKuZj4QIa8/w400-h266/22+Artist+manufacturing-2%25C3%259E%25C3%25AB%25E2%2595%2591%25C2%25B5%25C2%25A3%25C2%25BB%25C3%2595%25C2%25AB%25C3%2582%25C3%2595%25C3%25AA%25C3%2582%25C3%259A%25C3%2587%25C3%25A1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cao Yu’s work is quite different, however, and arguably more interesting. Although she says, very emphatically, that she is not a feminist,(9) ‘Fountain’ and ‘Artist Manufacturing’ align more readily with works by feminist artists who challenged taboos around menstruation, pregnancy and birth and refused to hide the realities of the female body – its inconvenient leakiness, as well as its sexual and maternal power. Carolee Schneeman’s 1975 ‘Interior Scroll’, a performance in which she drew a long, narrow scroll of paper from her vagina and read aloud from it comes to mind.(10) So, too, do the performance works of Patty Chang, such as</span><i style="font-family: inherit;"> </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Melons’ (1998) in which she wears a large bra with the cups filled with cantaloupes that resemble prosthetic breasts. Chang slices through bra and melons with a sharp knife and scoops out the flesh with her hand, enacting an imaginary ritual at the death of her aunt from breast cancer. Chang also used her own breastmilk in ‘Letdown (Milk)’ (2017), photographs of the discarded milk she had expressed into cups and any other available receptacles as she documented an arduous journey through Uzbekistan. The double meaning of her title references both the physical sensation when milk begins to flow, prompted by the sucking of the infant on the nipple, and an emotional state of disappointment.(11)</span><p></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-gE-7WEcnC_uQ4YPLZNEEJKfnucnjNdBsvBb-WHRea07w_b3L0pyHak48qdlycCiisWtCeU6uav6TpMBa1aQ19Kp5SX_F_LMIJuQZQbHZ3RrEBJ-bl_bq1VO_gz-qrFj_SHYndLrw_hY/s2048/19.TheLabourer_film+still_%25C3%2595%25C3%25A8%25E2%2594%2582%25C3%2595%25C3%25A8%25C2%25BF%25C3%259E%25C3%2587%25C3%25A0jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-gE-7WEcnC_uQ4YPLZNEEJKfnucnjNdBsvBb-WHRea07w_b3L0pyHak48qdlycCiisWtCeU6uav6TpMBa1aQ19Kp5SX_F_LMIJuQZQbHZ3RrEBJ-bl_bq1VO_gz-qrFj_SHYndLrw_hY/w500-h281/19.TheLabourer_film+still_%25C3%2595%25C3%25A8%25E2%2594%2582%25C3%2595%25C3%25A8%25C2%25BF%25C3%259E%25C3%2587%25C3%25A0jpg.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;">To read more about Cao Yu, click on the Ran Dian article </span><span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a href="http://www.randian-online.com/np_feature/show-and-tell-cao-yus-gendered-embodiment/" target="_blank">HERE</a></span></span><p></p>An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-90595598966551348382020-08-20T17:39:00.010-07:002020-08-20T17:40:33.620-07:00Experimental Material: Desire and Intimacy in the work of Pixy Liao<p> My article about Pixy Yijun Liao's challenge to binaries of gender, race and heteronormativity was published in the most recent issue of 'Yishu' journal. To say I was thrilled to be published in Yishu would be an understatement. I picked up a back issue of this important journal in the shop of San Francisco's Asian Art Museum many years ago, and have subscribed ever since - both for myself and for the research library at the White Rabbit Collection, which now holds an impressive collection of back issues that were very kindly donated to them. Yishu has consistently published interesting voices in the field of contemporary art from China. To have the opportunity to interview Pixy Liao in April (by email, from her home in lockdown in New York and my home in lockdown in Sydney) was a delight, and to then have the article published in Yishu buoyed my spirits at a very dark time in my life. So I encourage you to read the journal in full, and I post a short excerpt here.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ25VTGdc_MFvo6iUMFjoCXnIraVVwr-M81XopDOsb6KjGFcja8QJTG4vVLccwoG-qsBfxFoDcAQF5w0t1K0ilFL3ZGwZMhjOMeGFlR9fP61YfFK4Si3DFWYoactTpQAYiNSbG6oYwItI/s2048/liao_2012_Debut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1525" data-original-width="2048" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ25VTGdc_MFvo6iUMFjoCXnIraVVwr-M81XopDOsb6KjGFcja8QJTG4vVLccwoG-qsBfxFoDcAQF5w0t1K0ilFL3ZGwZMhjOMeGFlR9fP61YfFK4Si3DFWYoactTpQAYiNSbG6oYwItI/w400-h298/liao_2012_Debut.jpg" title="Pixy Liao, Debut, 2012, Image Courtesy the Artist" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Desire, intimacy, and the performative nature of
sexuality—this is the complicated, gendered territory of Pixy Liao’s
photographic practice. When the </span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Shanghai-born, Brooklyn-based artist </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">moved from China
to the United States in 2006 to study photography in Memphis, a chance
encounter with a Japanese musician and fellow student inspired a continuing
body of work. </span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He became her
boyfriend, her model, and her muse, appearing in a series of staged photographs
enacting an exaggerated, heightened version of their partnership.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-6LFKK21O9CH9oM-JvkTNVoFpYoltj6kPQX0x2E1H01n6QEi1ds5rXJzsNuYXbuUhFFHeFv3ULfcugKpNBshwHF4cqfxX29zgRTg0o1n9UKAw43blTEk8JPYJW2qpekvEMehRxoMVCeM/s2048/liao_2015_Japanese+Room+II.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Pixy Liao, Photography, Chinese Contemporary Art" border="0" data-original-height="1569" data-original-width="2048" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-6LFKK21O9CH9oM-JvkTNVoFpYoltj6kPQX0x2E1H01n6QEi1ds5rXJzsNuYXbuUhFFHeFv3ULfcugKpNBshwHF4cqfxX29zgRTg0o1n9UKAw43blTEk8JPYJW2qpekvEMehRxoMVCeM/w400-h306/liao_2015_Japanese+Room+II.jpg" title="Pixy Liao, Japanese Room II, 2015, photography, 75 × 100 cm. Image courtesy the artist" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pixy Liao’s much-anticipated first solo Canadian show, curated
by Henry Heng Lu at Vancouver’s Centre A Gallery, was a victim of the novel coronavirus,
opening only in virtual form on April 3, 2020. The exhibition, </span><i><span style="color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pixy Liao: Experimental Relationship (for your
eyes only, or maybe mine, too)</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Poppins",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">,</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt;"> features her ongoing (since
2007) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Experimental Relationships </i>project
and the more explicitly erotic<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> For Your
Eyes Only</i> series (2012–ongoing).<a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Pixy%20Liao/edit.luiseguest.3.ks_LG_1.6.20.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Pixy Liao
examines the dynamics of her romantic relationship with her partner, subverting
expectations of gender and heterosexuality in images that are sometimes
playful, sometimes touching, sometimes erotic—and occasionally a little
disturbing. These photographs, in which the artist herself often appears with
her boyfriend, Moro, are generally shot in interior domestic spaces with a
cool, high-key aesthetic. A couple, shut away from the world, focused only on
each other and their relationship? In a pre-pandemic world this may have seemed
a somewhat obsessive, inward-looking practice. But as COVID-19 swept across the
globe, introversion became a way of life for many and Pixy Liao’s unsettling
photographs seem more poignantly <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">representative
</span>of the zeitgeist than ever.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUqdXyYiPhirMxMk9O5zOqgbpuLhAQudcSq-BJQD0Ron9-e74VvXxSL9qOp3OcOa-BDXNJt0f-QS0kzTnnZVdHBNo8i7MxrAFdqlUeKB-idzdpr658vadTNeBSeN94J0EuzWCISA1aZ7Y/s2048/liao_2008_How+to+build+a+relationship+with+layered+meanings.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Pixy Liao, Contemporary Chinese Art, Chinese Photography" border="0" data-original-height="1638" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUqdXyYiPhirMxMk9O5zOqgbpuLhAQudcSq-BJQD0Ron9-e74VvXxSL9qOp3OcOa-BDXNJt0f-QS0kzTnnZVdHBNo8i7MxrAFdqlUeKB-idzdpr658vadTNeBSeN94J0EuzWCISA1aZ7Y/w400-h320/liao_2008_How+to+build+a+relationship+with+layered+meanings.jpg" title="How to Build A Relationship with Layered Meanings, 2008, photography, 75 × 100 cm. Image courtesy the artist" width="400" /></a></div><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt;">In her examination of the shifting power plays in her relationship,
Pixy Liao also explores broader themes of cultural identity, the representation
of masculinity, and the fetishization of the Asian woman. </span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Experimental
Relationships</i> series, posed by the couple using a self-timer that is
generally visible in the shot—a broad hint at the “meta” nature of her allusive
practice—the mundane domestic interiors in which they act out their desires are
a significant element of her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mise-en-</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">scène</span></i><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. She invites us to imagine what lies behind the bland
facades of suburban houses, the dramas taking place around the IKEA furniture.
In ordinary, unglamorous kitchens and bedrooms, Pixy Liao inverts the misogyny
of the art historical male gaze, posing the pale body of her younger partner like
a flexible prop. She wraps him, folded over bedclothes like a piece of human sushi,
dresses him in her own clothes, or drapes his naked body over her shoulders
like a shawl. Liao is generally clothed, or wearing a nude bodysuit, and Moro
is often naked, thus overturning centuries of objectification of the female
nude. In his 1972 book and television series, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ways of Seeing</i>, John Berger pointed out what later seemed so
blindingly obvious: In (Western) art history, “<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Men act</span> and <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">women
appear</span>. Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Pixy%20Liao/edit.luiseguest.3.ks_LG_1.6.20.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Here, it is Pixy Liao who
is doing the looking. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwhsK3JjOnwxNY3pPM3eFbjAcWMy9O8pbyEOEv1aScr5zl4V0Cu0daXnPL2HJnMtuISuwE5-sBVP9bUIqEC-JpnEAhh2K5W3cF-8Kngr8aWhPEgLgyIWlPT8-c7goJnygY_MKxMoDyK6w/s2048/liao_2009_Start+off+your+day+with+a+good+breakfast+together.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Pixy Liao, Contemporary Chinese Art, Chinese Photography" border="0" data-original-height="1563" data-original-width="2048" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwhsK3JjOnwxNY3pPM3eFbjAcWMy9O8pbyEOEv1aScr5zl4V0Cu0daXnPL2HJnMtuISuwE5-sBVP9bUIqEC-JpnEAhh2K5W3cF-8Kngr8aWhPEgLgyIWlPT8-c7goJnygY_MKxMoDyK6w/w400-h305/liao_2009_Start+off+your+day+with+a+good+breakfast+together.jpg" title="Start Off Your Day with A Good Breakfast Together, 2009, photography, 75 × 100 cm. Image courtesy the artist." width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The “determining
male gaze” proposed by film theorist Laura Mulvey entered Chinese critical
discourses in the late twentieth century.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Pixy%20Liao/edit.luiseguest.3.ks_LG_1.6.20.docx#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Lara Blanchard explains
how Mulvey’s psychoanalytic theorizing of desire was adapted to analyze
pre-modern Chinese images of women. However, in her discussion of feminist art
practices in China, Blanchard argues that the theory cannot apply to gazes that
fall outside the familiar trajectory of the male desiring gaze directed at the
female subject, nor to the mutual gaze between women.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Pixy%20Liao/edit.luiseguest.3.ks_LG_1.6.20.docx#_edn4" name="_ednref4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[iv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Where does this place an
artist such as Pixy Liao, who directs her frankly desiring gaze toward her male
subject while at the same time positioning herself for the objectifying gaze of
the camera lens? She is author, participant, observer, and observed, occupying
a complicated space in which she fetishizes her own body as well as Moro’s. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNYn1Nzo403MDXDZ5YJCunJLn0gQWQ9QL0VQo_b_MbOHL_j3wx8031TuGx1r6XXe1hgSAuMCBzg9AUG4-tYcpHU8GybPyIkKrs3UkFhQ-Cr58DKXpjgQpvXrBNIMPwHae4xxN3pt6GX84/s2048/liao_2008_Relationships+work+best+when+each+partner+knows+their+proper+place.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Pixy Liao, Contemporary Chinese Art, Chinese Photography" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1576" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNYn1Nzo403MDXDZ5YJCunJLn0gQWQ9QL0VQo_b_MbOHL_j3wx8031TuGx1r6XXe1hgSAuMCBzg9AUG4-tYcpHU8GybPyIkKrs3UkFhQ-Cr58DKXpjgQpvXrBNIMPwHae4xxN3pt6GX84/w308-h400/liao_2008_Relationships+work+best+when+each+partner+knows+their+proper+place.jpg" title="Pixy Liao, Relationships Work Best When Each Partner Knows Their Proper Place, 2008, Image courtesy the artist" width="308" /></a></div><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><a name="_Hlk39923621"><i><span style="background: white; color: #191919; font-size: 12.0pt;">Relationships work best
when each partner knows their proper place</span></i></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk39923621;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> (2008) shows the fully
dressed artist pinching Moro’s nipple while she gazes blankly at the camera in
a witty parody of the famously</span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk39923621;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk39923621;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ambiguous</span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk39923621;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 17.5pt;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk39923621;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt;">sixteenth-century French painting <em><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; padding: 0cm;">Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters</span></em>.</span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk39923621;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Art historian
Rebecca Zorach speaks of a “libidinal economy” of possession and collection in
relation to this painting, and she might equally well be speaking of Pixy Liao’s
semi-parodic allusions to fetishism and voyeurism. Zorach describes an
intersection between desire and possession that is “mimetic, producing a
likeness in the desirer of the thing desired.”</span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Pixy%20Liao/edit.luiseguest.3.ks_LG_1.6.20.docx#_edn5" name="_ednref5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk39923621;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[v]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk39923621;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The For Your Eyes
Only</span></i><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> series makes this playful intention
explicit. Pixy Liao describes it as “a combination of daily life and performance
with a naughty attitude.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Pixy%20Liao/edit.luiseguest.3.ks_LG_1.6.20.docx#_edn6" name="_ednref6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[vi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Images of body parts are
fragmented and closely cropped: a close-up of Moro’s crotch in tight
underpants, for example, or Pixy Liao’s buttocks poking through a vulva-shaped
opening between deep-red curtains. Laura Mulvey argued that “in a world ordered
by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and
passive/female,”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Luise%20Guest/Desktop/Freelance%20Writing/Pixy%20Liao/edit.luiseguest.3.ks_LG_1.6.20.docx#_edn7" name="_ednref7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[vii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
In the light of more recent theoretical analysis of the performative nature of
gender and sexuality, Pixy Liao’s work clearly establishes the pleasure
inherent in the female gaze revealed through the distancing lens of her camera—at
the body of her lover, at herself, and at their physical (and emotional)
connection.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And to read the rest of the article, you'll need to download the PDF from <a href="https://yishu-online.com/browse-articles/?1043" target="_blank">Yishu Online</a>!</span></p>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;"><br /><div id="edn7" style="mso-element: endnote;">
</div>
</div><br /></div>An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-59807948491177987022020-06-28T17:30:00.002-07:002020-06-28T17:30:43.345-07:00Porcelain and Paradox: the work of Liu Xi<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Xhq8-eDWjEEZWSLBjvfRV6DEe7WpPFFQ6PqJDuBnLBx2rwiu2mc5Ou9-MA0y62xuOfD2cEq55Ue-API9Uq02UbBhv6AI0loL5tWjv7fQG0m5dFzApS0PG5DnXk_Mgpq0PiVycDTB28k/s1753/Low+to+earth_5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1753" data-original-width="1240" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Xhq8-eDWjEEZWSLBjvfRV6DEe7WpPFFQ6PqJDuBnLBx2rwiu2mc5Ou9-MA0y62xuOfD2cEq55Ue-API9Uq02UbBhv6AI0loL5tWjv7fQG0m5dFzApS0PG5DnXk_Mgpq0PiVycDTB28k/w354-h500/Low+to+earth_5.jpg" width="354" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Liu Xi, <i>Low to Earth</i> stoneware, raw clay, 2018, Photo: Eric
Set ©<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"> Gaya Ceramic Arts Center, Bali</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div>In my newly reinvented identity as an independent researcher and writer, I've had the enormous pleasure during this weird and fragmented time of the pandemic lockdown to interview three interesting Chinese artists. Thank goodness for the technology that allows us to break out of our lonely isolation and continue transcultural dialogues! I am beyond delighted that my conversations with the three -- Shanghai-based <b>Liu Xi</b>, Brooklyn-based <b>Pixy Liao</b>, and <b>Cao Yu</b>, who lives and works in Beijing -- will appear over the coming months in <a href="https://yishu-online.com/" target="_blank">Yishu</a> and <a href="https://www.randian-online.com/">Ran Dian</a>.<div><br /></div><div>Firstly, I had a fascinating emailed Q&A with <b>Liu Xi</b>, whose porcelain installations convey her ideas about the historical position of women -- in China and globally -- <span style="font-size: 16px;">in her frank exploration of gender and sexuality, including explicit representations of female genitalia. H</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">er work also examines hidden female histories, and the sometimes fraught
and complex relationship between the individual and society. She challenges
conventions of porcelain and ceramics production with unorthodox combinations
of materials and methods of display, revealing both technical virtuosity and her
willingness to engage with difficult ideas. The material of clay in its very
physicality is paradoxical – soft and malleable, it becomes hard and brittle
once fired. Porcelain is imbued with associations of Chinese history, its
imperial prestige and status, yet clay is dug from the earth. Liu Xi’s work
encompasses these binaries, just as she explores paradoxes of female strength
and vulnerability.</span></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Vaginal
imagery became something of a leitmotif of feminist art of the 1970s. From Niki
de Saint Phalle to Judy Chicago and Carolee Schneemann, women artists were reclaiming
the vagina as a symbol of female power and fecundity. Georgia O’Keeffe’s fleshy
floral paintings were identified with this cause too, despite the artist’s
consistent denial of any such intention. To misquote Freud’s probably
apocryphal disclaimer, perhaps sometimes a flower <i>is</i> just a flower. Yet
imagery of female genitalia can, even now, and despite its twenty-first century
pornification, be powerfully transgressive.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrnAsw2YrLwrs9OucxdjHDQSH-Af2TcY6wHlB1wu1W6bPMAHdheWFU5XLV0Ov28UTlcC5eJ8eCgTZbt2hfXry1udbUnKJEY4iWW7WAbwnejj9plYuacvi32iqp5snqUlRL8IkBzcOjUUA/s5616/Our+God+is+Great+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3588" data-original-width="5616" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrnAsw2YrLwrs9OucxdjHDQSH-Af2TcY6wHlB1wu1W6bPMAHdheWFU5XLV0Ov28UTlcC5eJ8eCgTZbt2hfXry1udbUnKJEY4iWW7WAbwnejj9plYuacvi32iqp5snqUlRL8IkBzcOjUUA/w400-h255/Our+God+is+Great+1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><font face="inherit"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626;">Liu Xi, <i>Our God is Great </i>(2018-2019) porcelain, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #54595f;">52 pieces, dimensions variable, <br /></span></font>Image courtesy the artist</td></tr></tbody></table></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Times New Roman"; letter-spacing: normal; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></table></span></p><span style="text-align: left;"><b>'Liu Xi's Paradox' was published by Ran Dian earlier this month. It begins this way:</b><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;">During the last decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: text-top;">st</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">, Chinese avant-garde artists were challenging previous taboos on representations of nudity and sexuality. A number of women artists began to make work from a feminist standpoint, using their own bodies, or the bodies of other women, to explore female subjectivities. Examples include </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Chen Lingyang</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">’s photography series </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Twelve Flower Months</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"> (1999-2000) depicting the artist’s bleeding genitals during her menstrual cycle, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Cui Xiuwen</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">’s notorious video of sex-workers filmed in the toilets of a Beijing nightclub, “Ladies Room” (2000), and performance artist </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">He Chengyao</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">’s bare-breasted walk along the Great Wall in 2001, “Opening Up the Great Wall” (1). All these works received varying degrees of public opprobrium at the time, and work by women artists (</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">nüxing yishu</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">) came to be characterised, rather, as focused on private, domestic and emotional concerns in contrast to the public and the political – an essentialist view that persisted until very recently.</span></div></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"></table><p class="MsoNormal"><font face="inherit"><span style="line-height: 107%;"></span></font></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px;"><font face="inherit">The relationship between Chinese women artists and feminism is an ambivalent one, shadowed by memories of the state-sponsored feminism of the past, and their awareness that the concerns of women in China are distinct from those of Euro-American feminists. Attempted transcultural dialogues have often been thwarted by mutual misunderstandings. Despite the flurry of translated feminist texts and theoretical positions that entered the discourse in China from the late 1980s (thoroughly documented by Min Dongchao) (2) , and despite significant women-only exhibitions in the 1990s and early 2000s that have been analysed in the work of scholars such as Peggy Wang, Tao Yongbai, Shuqin Cui and Sasha Su-Ling Welland, few mid-career women artists today overtly identify with feminism, even those whose work examines aspects of gendered experience. (3)</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Read the whole article <a href="https://www.randian-online.com/np_feature/liu-xis-paradox/" target="_blank">HERE:</a></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWSIMzXJr4VMEZQvPt-GGtEe7CCqAbxvOGCr8xXLlE7LEwfGPJ0PWldKtYri8MUD7IsrGTwQhRyoZCHk5A9ZVDhQwqx-f34viqv89o4kgXraIA9fCzYaZGQUxWl-k-t4aFl3-h6YSfxMU/s2041/Bouldless+Night+No2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2041" data-original-width="2041" height="625" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWSIMzXJr4VMEZQvPt-GGtEe7CCqAbxvOGCr8xXLlE7LEwfGPJ0PWldKtYri8MUD7IsrGTwQhRyoZCHk5A9ZVDhQwqx-f34viqv89o4kgXraIA9fCzYaZGQUxWl-k-t4aFl3-h6YSfxMU/w625-h625/Bouldless+Night+No2.JPG" width="625" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Liu Xi, <i>Boundless Night No. 2</i>, 2016, Porcelain, 54 x 34 x 9cm, Photo; Tao Min, <br />Image courtesy the artist<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: SimHei; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 217;"><o:p></o:p></span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><br /></div>An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-15175474977081109932020-04-19T18:53:00.001-07:002020-04-19T21:45:19.515-07:00Doing the Cha-Cha with Marx and Engels: an Ode to Shanghai<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fuxing Park, Shanghai, April 2019. Photo: Luise Guest</td></tr>
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In a pre-pandemic world I would have been in Shanghai with my daughters right now, introducing them to the city I have grown to love over the last ten years. Such plans we had, for wandering the streets of the former French Concession, watching the dancers in the park, exploring the tiny shops and all the art galleries, and - of course - eating amazing food. In this grim and fractured time it may seem frivolous or self-indulgent to be remembering an era when travel to China was a (relatively) simple matter of getting a visa and booking a flight: in our new parallel universe that will likely be unthinkable for a long time to come. But in a period of growing xenophobia everywhere across the globe, it's more than ever necessary that we hold on to our dreams of trans-cultural encounters and our hopes that in the future our borders will open and our horizons will expand once more. And my nostalgia helps me with that, in a bittersweet way.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shanghai laneway, April 2019. Photo: Luise Guest</td></tr>
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Instead of being a Shanghai<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="background-color: white;"><i>flâneur</i></span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span>exploring ever-widening arcs around Maoming Nan Lu, I'm 'sheltering in place' like most people across the planet and wondering whether our world will ever be the same. One year ago I was in Shanghai after a week in Beijing, interviewing artists, visiting exhibitions, and enjoying the frenetic pace of this city with its complicated history. I've been thinking about what it is that I most enjoy about Shanghai, and how it is so different to Beijing. My affection was far from instant - it took quite a few years of learning the rhythms of this mega-city with its population of more than 24 million people before I suddenly realised one day that I had fallen in love with it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shanghai street scene, 2017. Photograph Luise Guest. </td></tr>
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On my first visit, arriving by high-speed train after a month spent in Beijing, I became instantly lost in the multiple exits from the station, and found it utterly alienating. I had unwittingly booked a hotel in exactly the wrong part of the city, all 8-lane highways and concrete and glass, impossible to walk around and in a construction zone difficult for taxis to navigate. It was the end of winter, and still bitterly cold and damp. On my second visit the following year, and just slightly more savvy, the taxi driver from the airport decided that a foreigner was just too much <i>mafan</i> and tried to make me get out on the side of the elevated expressway off ramp. Fortunately, by this time my Chinese was just barely good enough to argue, and by midnight I'd arrived at the right (very odd) hotel. Although only after he had tried to drop me at three others, apparently randomly selected.<br />
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I hired a young translator for my interviews with artists who introduced himself to me with his chosen English name as 'Troy Sailor'. He was certainly handsome and charming, but on our first trip to an artist's studio he unsmilingly told me that in China, old women like me stayed home to save their money to pass on to their children and didn't gallivant around the world on their own. A great start! But going back through my notebooks I am astonished to remember that on my very first trip, as the recipient of a travelling scholarship for art educators, in a single week I interviewed luminaries Hu Jieming, Yang Zhenzhong, Shi Qing and Pu Jie, as well as Shi Zhiying, Chen Hangfeng, performance artist Wu Meng and Monika Lin. And a very young Lu Yang, who had just recently graduated from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. This is evidence of my own chutzpah, for sure, but also reveals the kindness and generosity of the artists and their galleries - I'm grateful to Shasha Liu and Martin Kemble from Art Labor, Lorenz Helbling from ShanghART, and to Art + Shanghai curator Diana Freundl, who had shown Shi Zhiying's beautiful paintings in a group show of women artists.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lu Yang with 'Biological Strike Back', 2011. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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Leaving the hotel to find somewhere to eat on my first night in Shanghai I remember being too terrified to cross the road, as hundreds of motor scooters revved their engines impatiently at every traffic light. Shanghai taxi drivers were not the chatty, chain smoking '<i>lao Beijingren'</i> with their leather jackets and buzzcuts listening to crosstalk on their radios that I had become used to, but surly characters who reversed terrifyingly, at speed, on the elevated freeway and zigzagged in and out of lanes, horns blaring and cigarettes dangling from their mouths as they swore at every other road user. Shanghai driving, it seemed, was a Darwinian exercise where only the most fearless survived. When I showed a Chinese address to one driver, he told me he didn't have his glasses so would have to borrow mine - then proceeded to hurtle down the highway, turned around to face me in the back of the cab, wearing my multifocals. At that point I truly thought I would never see my children again.<br />
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In 2012 I was still describing Shanghai as a savage beast of a city - a jabberwock with 'jaws that bite and claws that catch'. When did this change? Perhaps it was in 2013 when I had enough Chinese to feel more confidently independent, or arriving in the Spring of 2014 and realising just how beautiful the old streets are.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Former French Concession street scene, April 2019. Photograph Luise Guest<br />
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So what do I love?<br />
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The parks with their dancers and singers - of course. I love the impromptu concerts by students in the tiny park across the road from the Shanghai Conservatorium. On each visit I try to make a very early morning visit to Fuxing Park with its staggering array of activity including the very loud, and often completely tone-deaf, amplified singers belting out anything from Chinese opera, to cheesy karaoke ballads, to Puccini. I love watching the ballroom dancers doing rather stiff, upright, Latin moves under the watchful gaze of Marx and Engels.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Doing the cha-cha with Marx and Engels. April 2019. Photo Luise Guest</td></tr>
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I love the tree-lined streets with their tiny shop windows where gaudy <i>qipao</i> and satin stilettos jostle against windows displaying rows of lacquered roast ducks or dusty mops and buckets in hardware stores. I love the lines of people waiting to buy baozi, pancakes and cakes at the famous places on Huaihai Road. I love the strange fashions in the windows of the 'Shanghai Lady' department store. I love peering into beautiful but run-down gardens behind walls and fences. I love the sheets, towels, quilts and undies hanging from lines strung from windows, between trees, and on power lines, and the padded jackets waving in the wind on coat-hangers hooked onto street lights.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Shanghai flags' in the French Concession. April 2019. Photo Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cyclists on Changle Lu, Shanghai, 2017. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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I used to love the uniquely Shanghainese habit of wearing pyjamas in the street - often paired with high heeled shoes, and a tiny dog on a leash, or sometimes worn with fluffy slippers. Younger people found this fashion choice excruciatingly unsophisticated and over the years these sightings have become very rare. I always found it eminently practical and comfortable, if not exactly elegant. Now that we are all wearing old track pants all day, or switching from our night pyjamas to day pyjamas to start working on laptops in our locked-down interior worlds, it also seems rather foresighted.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shanghai street scene, 2012. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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I love Shanghai's architecture too, from the art deco around Maoming Nan Lu and Huaihai Lu and the colonial buildings (a reminder of a dark past, but very beautiful) on the Bund. The towers topped with neon-lit, Gotham City-like spires you glimpse as you speed along the elevated freeway coming into the city are visions of a modernity of the past. The stone doorways of <i>shikumen</i> houses and multi-dwelling <i>longtang</i> laneways, whether crumbling and chaotic or restored and gentrified are beautiful. They are endangered, of course, as Shanghai undergoes a constant process of being torn down and rebuilt, like every other Chinese city.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shanghai Longtang, Neighbours chatting, 2015. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqYgKKB2hZVTRq0YSmjHDgVwunduIYB7ypF7cTrkkVkjNHYLf1TSgd9ZRpp4vTOZ-cPz8XOvakQyGAmw_9xYQ3PeomCdHeaBTMUs3iUejsdiore_5BusAxCZDh96bZMramVrjHy32XxXI/s1600/044.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqYgKKB2hZVTRq0YSmjHDgVwunduIYB7ypF7cTrkkVkjNHYLf1TSgd9ZRpp4vTOZ-cPz8XOvakQyGAmw_9xYQ3PeomCdHeaBTMUs3iUejsdiore_5BusAxCZDh96bZMramVrjHy32XxXI/s400/044.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shanghai rooftops, 2011. Photograph Luise Guest.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Most of all I love the palpable energy of my conversations with artists in their studios - oftentimes now far outside the city centre - and their sense that anything is possible. Last April I engaged in intense conversations, recording interviews with artists ranging from painter Zhao Xuebing to video artists Li Xiaofei and Qiu Anxiong, and global new media star Lu Yang, almost ten years after we first met.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjffaoaIFHwHSejhpZ-Ov3ksgMIm7mzR98jOZxM7sYmok3vOZ5Kw0BUeCh5R5cdNa0ObWvxMpoXj411RqRrx9wVu3RdPfwEiKyUC3hjnrjMbmb5tr2Q8o0ApvX3PtQ0-KaLTRsIw_3tQU8/s1600/20190408_124829.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1177" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjffaoaIFHwHSejhpZ-Ov3ksgMIm7mzR98jOZxM7sYmok3vOZ5Kw0BUeCh5R5cdNa0ObWvxMpoXj411RqRrx9wVu3RdPfwEiKyUC3hjnrjMbmb5tr2Q8o0ApvX3PtQ0-KaLTRsIw_3tQU8/s400/20190408_124829.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zhao Xuebing in his studio, 2019. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_6H7iRjXqmPJiNB88pzgs_PXfxkGqTiYgle_aRA-LVxtm6nTjVRe10TdCE7u9uZZAirwN8ZDxoYElBuPHNdnMlLKEkhFhSfG1wH5XLZ4RXq1IFBlLk4YVOt5c9xWjCzJMCa78uHNmmkI/s1600/20190411_171051.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1177" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_6H7iRjXqmPJiNB88pzgs_PXfxkGqTiYgle_aRA-LVxtm6nTjVRe10TdCE7u9uZZAirwN8ZDxoYElBuPHNdnMlLKEkhFhSfG1wH5XLZ4RXq1IFBlLk4YVOt5c9xWjCzJMCa78uHNmmkI/s400/20190411_171051.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Qiu Anxiong in his studio, 2019. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdNedBxvzqV-1FB3PCS-DZSyUWhb4yS9G4ScRl7QlJCIX8cMfrRYntdSv6hpRnZvB6oxa7SQoEUe5CGhrFPXMvICKUuKRG7dsqngybt9qAJWHooCAioMDRdegqyOyidT66OQeMfhIUxc4/s1600/IMG_20190408_172036_120.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="883" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdNedBxvzqV-1FB3PCS-DZSyUWhb4yS9G4ScRl7QlJCIX8cMfrRYntdSv6hpRnZvB6oxa7SQoEUe5CGhrFPXMvICKUuKRG7dsqngybt9qAJWHooCAioMDRdegqyOyidT66OQeMfhIUxc4/s400/IMG_20190408_172036_120.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With Lu Yang, Shanghai, 2019</td></tr>
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Now, of course, galleries and museums are closed, exhibitions are virtual, and art fairs are cancelled or indefinitely postponed. The future of the artworld, and of artists as nomadic beings participating in a global ecology of fairs, biennales and curated museum shows is anyone's guess. We can probably assume that after this (if there is an after this) then nothing will ever again be quite as it was.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm4f2fIoYt0XB9wo2CfwWy2eF0jIYQ65zCFbVI57CYdUzRAicJd4DLw5gnJTHkrZot54uLtXljFL-lh_mTHjFtblG0CB_vonQpLh-Ur2UA3Zi2osJUBF1r-yFKvQLpQngUhujTNJtXxiA/s1600/Chen+Hangfeng+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1339" data-original-width="1600" height="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm4f2fIoYt0XB9wo2CfwWy2eF0jIYQ65zCFbVI57CYdUzRAicJd4DLw5gnJTHkrZot54uLtXljFL-lh_mTHjFtblG0CB_vonQpLh-Ur2UA3Zi2osJUBF1r-yFKvQLpQngUhujTNJtXxiA/s400/Chen+Hangfeng+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chen Hangfeng in his Shanghai studio, 2011. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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Last April I travelled to the outskirts of the city to meet once again with Chen Hangfeng in a suburban villa. I had first interviewed Chen ten years earlier in his tiny, former French Concession studio: changes in the places where artists live and work echo the changes in Chinese society over the intervening time. Chen discussed his new work 'Excited with No Reason'. This video animation was inspired in part by his new life, shuttling back and forth between Shanghai and Amsterdam, and his interest in global trade and its effects - an interest that seems even more compelling in a world brought to its knees by a pandemic that has infected the globe, vectored on planes and cruise ships.<br />
<br />
The outcome of that conversation with a wonderful artist who jokingly describes himself as a 'half-assed literati' was published last year as <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242; font-size: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><i>Invasive Species and Global Trade Routes: A Conversation with Chen Hangfeng. </i>Click on the link to read the article in Sydney-based online journal, <a href="https://theartlife.com.au/2019/invasive-species-and-global-trade-routes-a-conversation-with-chen-hangfeng/" target="_blank">The Art Life</a>.</span></span></div>
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Artists, in Shanghai and everywhere, are continuing to work in their studios. Perhaps artists and writers, often somewhat introverted and solitary by nature, are among those whose lives are least altered by our current circumstances. I hope I shall return to see their new work and to wander those streets and laneways once again.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1UJVf5-Ok4BSItJ1qj_CLRlI_IMkT3pH3F0lceFb1cPq5q8JEFdunVY_nLQlt1ZNMpPkaCt5lZGOOUhGr6d4sSOnWxjdVp1TkwCBqxn2Rml5wBy9SA7i-jYEze9KpJxlvBPd10LHAJ0c/s1600/031.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1UJVf5-Ok4BSItJ1qj_CLRlI_IMkT3pH3F0lceFb1cPq5q8JEFdunVY_nLQlt1ZNMpPkaCt5lZGOOUhGr6d4sSOnWxjdVp1TkwCBqxn2Rml5wBy9SA7i-jYEze9KpJxlvBPd10LHAJ0c/s640/031.JPG" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shanghai street in the rain, 2011. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-21579594614165736052020-03-31T18:31:00.000-07:002020-04-19T19:29:45.290-07:00一 日 千 秋: 'One Day, a Thousand Autumns'<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhleFEGVE9dC7zr8u2CIGNwM6_bcT1kYl1SLpnHPYoZyKJVC2O8yAPpUkRdQgKQSgqKKTzYXOY_LaeJxipDzz7lAEUg92zW97oThXNqH1HH_sb9QEnXmiJYHuyPVPJo78AQ8aL4jbAgSaA/s1600/20170405_140117.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1570" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhleFEGVE9dC7zr8u2CIGNwM6_bcT1kYl1SLpnHPYoZyKJVC2O8yAPpUkRdQgKQSgqKKTzYXOY_LaeJxipDzz7lAEUg92zW97oThXNqH1HH_sb9QEnXmiJYHuyPVPJo78AQ8aL4jbAgSaA/s400/20170405_140117.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guozijian Street, Beijing. Photo: Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">In this time
of isolation, anxiety, and various kinds of sorrow both deeply personal and globally
shared, a time that Nick Cave described in his <a href="https://www.theredhandfiles.com/corona-fill-the-time/?fbclid=IwAR3VHiJlBZnOoklHmpcxElNBi4vvSHTf6WnifvfrIQIC4dsIDZh3j8JIdVA" target="_blank">newsletter</a> as </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21;">making us 'become eyewitnesses to a catastrophe that we are seeing unfold from the inside out',</span> writing is something that I and many others are turning to. For some that takes the form of a diary or frequent social media posts, for others it might be letters to friends and family. For me and other suddenly unemployed writers it's blog posts like this one. Whatever form they take, they are all like letters in bottles cast into the ocean. The days seem very long, and somewhat shapeless,
recalling the Chinese idiom: ‘One day, a thousand Autumns’.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHyHG8XwHWuCpgFR9qZFrnqPtVUlwbC3XGKnV_kRlkY7-OlnTNFQtZeDrgCe3NE5PRNXcsL8_2j94D9JOo9ws1HAar3I_W7q3WBkEOyfugnJ7FtbN8H54fXEcYU7B4L00DmYWfKepwo8g/s1600/20170406_134338.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1570" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHyHG8XwHWuCpgFR9qZFrnqPtVUlwbC3XGKnV_kRlkY7-OlnTNFQtZeDrgCe3NE5PRNXcsL8_2j94D9JOo9ws1HAar3I_W7q3WBkEOyfugnJ7FtbN8H54fXEcYU7B4L00DmYWfKepwo8g/s400/20170406_134338.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guozijian Street, Beijing. Photo: Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Looking back
over this blog since I began writing it at the end of 2010, I suddenly remembered the
optimism and unfettered joy of my earliest trips to China. That astonished desire
to exclaim, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, ‘Well Toto, we’re not in Kansas
anymore!’ is something I’d love to recapture. I had been so looking
forward to taking my two grown-up daughters to Shanghai for their first experience of
China, before Covid-19 brought the world as we knew it to a screaming halt. I
am still hoping to do that eventually, although the news of China closing its
borders to foreigners this week sent a chill down many spines, virus or no
virus.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyN10u7ec-m23oHE3snnihgFzA113GofgdR4X4zGVewhYKtjTcOsXRRGjgou546ufxcmVTLAc9-RAL6vswd0INCwMNdKECHzhFlqHFVHVZAw5Odc-GhkWRrJ5g32i-8RKHUGzfrgFs09Y/s1600/20170403_133040.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1570" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyN10u7ec-m23oHE3snnihgFzA113GofgdR4X4zGVewhYKtjTcOsXRRGjgou546ufxcmVTLAc9-RAL6vswd0INCwMNdKECHzhFlqHFVHVZAw5Odc-GhkWRrJ5g32i-8RKHUGzfrgFs09Y/s400/20170403_133040.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hutong view near Dashilan'r. Photo: LuiseGuest</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">I’ve been
looking back at my travels, to a time before they mostly became work trips for the
job I have now lost – a sudden and unexpected redundancy that has profoundly
shaken me, even in the midst of global turmoil. I’m hoping to regain my old
adventurous spirit in the future as an independent writer and researcher, untrammelled
by external strictures and obligations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">So, aiming
for optimism and planning a new future even while living day to day, as we all now must,
here are some of the things I love about China – and about Beijing in particular:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h4>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">BEIJING GREY</span></h4>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4fMER2R1XmzcMBsszI3wDYzBGkSuFHgngWvpYKZ5ROO_R9Hnn_s4qi2VpqYoiGORwrSqnL_kBuIZG_u3tn5vcNtcVU2FUfbOx_W7Pq4jx3CJCkVQVyWnlGLoWloQJWyxuKgUfNILD4_s/s1600/20151015_132222.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4fMER2R1XmzcMBsszI3wDYzBGkSuFHgngWvpYKZ5ROO_R9Hnn_s4qi2VpqYoiGORwrSqnL_kBuIZG_u3tn5vcNtcVU2FUfbOx_W7Pq4jx3CJCkVQVyWnlGLoWloQJWyxuKgUfNILD4_s/s400/20151015_132222.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beijing Grey. Photo: Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">There
is a particular Beijing grey (and those who know me know that I do love grey!)
It’s the grey walls of the hutong alleys and courtyard houses and their grey tiled roofs, echoed very often by grey and polluted air
that makes those rare blue-sky days all the more miraculous. Grey walls are
offset by red doors and brightly coloured washing drying on lines, fences, or
draped over powerlines – less so than in Shanghai where it used to be called
‘Shanghai flags’, but it’s still a thing. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz76L0DPFnSq-cbllhbTZEAPBJSkb4ljcvI8DnRtpRMQ4Cd3FvO6KjozEuoe3LYOJWju8N-2Cu5jGY87sgHi688rIkXA7nDxrPtladAoZLIS3VvQIuVNbCvTReFHrZFvvKJrHnxJoEEXM/s1600/hutong+washing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1135" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz76L0DPFnSq-cbllhbTZEAPBJSkb4ljcvI8DnRtpRMQ4Cd3FvO6KjozEuoe3LYOJWju8N-2Cu5jGY87sgHi688rIkXA7nDxrPtladAoZLIS3VvQIuVNbCvTReFHrZFvvKJrHnxJoEEXM/s640/hutong+washing.jpg" width="452" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hutong Washing. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<h4>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SUDDENNESS HAPPENS</span></h4>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">'Beware lest suddenness happens' is one of my favourite 'Chinglish' warning notices (in the Beijing Zoo). And suddenness does indeed happen. Constantly. To follow the sound of music at 9 o'clock at night,
enter the park and find more than a hundred people ballroom dancing in the dark.
To come upon the water calligraphers still absorbed in brushing their beautiful
characters onto the pavement at dusk. To round a corner in the park and find a
man taking his songbirds in their cages for a turn around the lake. One morning
I came out of the gate of my lane onto the street and found all the young real
estate agents lined up outside their office with their hands on their hearts
while the national anthem was played. This was quite a sight – they were
usually fully occupied with lying across their motor scooters playing games on
their phones, playfully pushing and shoving each other or vainly combing their
hair and gazing into their mirrors. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh83wLKOIG9_fRN-UFRmA96tEt0wkH_twxc3FCFagAcD9pakllJna1pj3x0fj3RfI_s-tDw4z4nD5_N8O__t53z2jBe-2GhdXBVCCYYrwQmsb1OLJaqfWj-qtFyE3UvNegNARGi2Q5mSCE/s1600/20170408_165942.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1570" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh83wLKOIG9_fRN-UFRmA96tEt0wkH_twxc3FCFagAcD9pakllJna1pj3x0fj3RfI_s-tDw4z4nD5_N8O__t53z2jBe-2GhdXBVCCYYrwQmsb1OLJaqfWj-qtFyE3UvNegNARGi2Q5mSCE/s400/20170408_165942.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blossoms in Caochangdi Gallery courtyard. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<h4>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />PEOPLE</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">And
that brings me to the people. My first
encounters were so open-hearted and generous, from the translator I hired who
told me his English name was Stanley (‘Why Stanley?’ ‘Stanley Kubrick, of
course, Miss Luise’) and constantly told me to wear warmer clothes, to the very young doorman at the hotel that I had booked
in my complete ignorance of Beijing geography, on the wrong side of the city.
Wearing a much too big PLA greatcoat and a battered fur hat he grinned each
time I left and called out ‘<i>Man zou ah!</i>’ (Literally, ‘walk slowly’, but
meaning ‘take care’.) Because Beijing was my first Chinese city, and because I
made friends in that first six-week trip that I hope will be friends for life,
it has seemed almost like home to me ever since. People are incredibly kind and open-hearted,
and I hope that the recent, widely reported suspicion of foreign-ness will not
change that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXAxR2Pa3AFNA_dbZFWAxVXL_JwI0gq2XW9M2a7hy9cSH8PsBNsoM7EKGbNnsVDHp0OdkxgtU2CgybmbNkxJQgE9B_0bsmAdQhVMKYY0LSrG3spjAvyVoaZTs9khpDOIC0jPsMc6n29QU/s1600/20170403_122633.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1570" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXAxR2Pa3AFNA_dbZFWAxVXL_JwI0gq2XW9M2a7hy9cSH8PsBNsoM7EKGbNnsVDHp0OdkxgtU2CgybmbNkxJQgE9B_0bsmAdQhVMKYY0LSrG3spjAvyVoaZTs9khpDOIC0jPsMc6n29QU/s400/20170403_122633.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beijing street scene, 2016. Photo: Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I have always struck up conversations (in my sadly still non-fluent
Chinese) with old men sitting out in the hutongs, with mothers watching their
children in the park and – especially when my daughter was expecting her first
baby and I was feeling very far away – with grandmothers wheeling prams or
holding hands with red-cheeked toddlers bundled up in so many padded clothes
that they look like miniature Michelin men. They were probably a bit bemused by
the laowai’s unsolicited ‘I’m also going to be a grandmother!’ but they were always
very kind. Dancing aunties ask me to dance with them in the park, singers explain
the words of their revolutionary songs, and shopkeepers sometimes run after me
with change I have forgotten or gloves I've left behind: all these encounters are woven into the threads of
my memories. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgQSm_D_pqiBkJbKKs1UMMp5wDFfQ-9Y_jY87bnctPjB_uqvv0-Uew3DXQQa3cP6LGwATL8PAk_QjoHGlG31EKco5rEqRY4MAs1kE5hTiPmyqT78CWiSNi2OLIaIJgiLyBZqb-9vsYj5U/s1600/20170408_142507.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1570" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgQSm_D_pqiBkJbKKs1UMMp5wDFfQ-9Y_jY87bnctPjB_uqvv0-Uew3DXQQa3cP6LGwATL8PAk_QjoHGlG31EKco5rEqRY4MAs1kE5hTiPmyqT78CWiSNi2OLIaIJgiLyBZqb-9vsYj5U/s400/20170408_142507.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A feast from the Caochangdi artist hangout 'Fodder Factory', now sadly closed. Photo: Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">And
finally, of course, the food. It must be said that </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">food has figured
largely in the fascination of my time in China. The visual richness of street
vendors of all kinds was a feature of any walk in Beijing – sadly many have now
been moved on or returned to far provinces – and the foods on offer changed as
the weather changed. Tiny sweet clementines that I have never found anywhere else
in the world, whole pineapples on sticks, pomegranate juice, grilled corn, chestnuts
and walnuts, congee and pancakes and baozi, sweet potato sold from braziers, and cakes: Beijingers
love their <i>'xiao chi</i>' (literally, ‘little eats’, i.e snacks)</span>.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpp3laOxjV64UhxTIxEey3n0yPpBZp6YacQ5RE_P8e5LAjK_LGYtcsFFUz4Sn0PV3Q7eWj-gD2cZjhg3OoMUbNsITvSFpU8ZTS9ytair_AyYPwbAmePb0ULfEJn7aiP_lGxwRjtKJkEMo/s1600/20170403_122628.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1570" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpp3laOxjV64UhxTIxEey3n0yPpBZp6YacQ5RE_P8e5LAjK_LGYtcsFFUz4Sn0PV3Q7eWj-gD2cZjhg3OoMUbNsITvSFpU8ZTS9ytair_AyYPwbAmePb0ULfEJn7aiP_lGxwRjtKJkEMo/s400/20170403_122628.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDT1UYgQlmU8975W-UvM0e7V4RsllEqv3x3gtCHA1NTznU3G3sbIT_ZVpI4cGYt0FsrmFqY8_lHx-Eq3rRBzGIAO3FMq1obRoeP3MXr2SVjaIEIR4U_p45wSPzrZOMJmWS1wkvvO-coOI/s1600/2013-11-18+16.47.53.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDT1UYgQlmU8975W-UvM0e7V4RsllEqv3x3gtCHA1NTznU3G3sbIT_ZVpI4cGYt0FsrmFqY8_lHx-Eq3rRBzGIAO3FMq1obRoeP3MXr2SVjaIEIR4U_p45wSPzrZOMJmWS1wkvvO-coOI/s400/2013-11-18+16.47.53.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Girl selling pomegranates, Beijing 2015. Photo: Luise Guest<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">And I remember the beautifully coloured dumplings on my very
first lunch with friends in Beijing, at a tiny restaurant that I could never
find again, the duck at different ‘Lao Beijing’ famous restaurants, and the
fabulous hand-pulled noodles. And the cakes (some delicious, some ... odd) from <i>Daoxiangcun</i>, an old ‘Beijing
brand’ cakeshop established in 1895 -- or 1773 depending on who you believe.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQAFZn5glJunbrRGJUDF5lUvR57q_yeDdmJXd37IeSOQG2G0ZVzDZKND0me8CrkJA2e8In__g4dSajeZiOiGo4XRPneWEhX1u35KcnNddp6EK7UCezv_QiznIe12iEWQIRx9WNF0JmKwo/s1600/Beijing+cakes+from+Liu+Shiyuan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="314" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQAFZn5glJunbrRGJUDF5lUvR57q_yeDdmJXd37IeSOQG2G0ZVzDZKND0me8CrkJA2e8In__g4dSajeZiOiGo4XRPneWEhX1u35KcnNddp6EK7UCezv_QiznIe12iEWQIRx9WNF0JmKwo/s640/Beijing+cakes+from+Liu+Shiyuan.jpg" width="502" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Beijing is changing – it is already a different city from the
one I fell in love with ten years ago. The gentrification, the ‘Great Bricking’
that made the old hutongs that had teemed with life more blandly homogeneous, the closure of
street markets, the removal of migrants who had flocked to the city from all over China and the loss of their tiny,
flourishing businesses – hole in the wall noodle joints, flower shops, bicycle
repair stalls, tailors and convenience stores – all this has made Beijing
cleaner, certainly, but perhaps less interesting. But constant change is a
given in China, and its people are nothing if not resilient and adaptable. I
just hope I will see it again, and spend much more time there than I have been
able to in the last five years of brief work visits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEishYmiJuGGW8JQK-iyjT0z-iNus56uMWg0x9bEYRSSlc7hb6sFRQVAhR9874KG1EB-1_Yoztilqa6wN8fL47RZAQgWbPAKzmy0svLAh4fjtdVzTy1BH8ghgzLZVgFLD7YXagun64kNFF8/s1600/20170406_130339.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1570" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEishYmiJuGGW8JQK-iyjT0z-iNus56uMWg0x9bEYRSSlc7hb6sFRQVAhR9874KG1EB-1_Yoztilqa6wN8fL47RZAQgWbPAKzmy0svLAh4fjtdVzTy1BH8ghgzLZVgFLD7YXagun64kNFF8/s400/20170406_130339.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hutong shopping. Photo: Luise Guest</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I hope the terrifying children's rides are still there, too, but I fear all these little shops selling an extraordinary mixture of <i>dongxi</i> will be gone with the gentrifying winds of change.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGq20Tt9N5-7uIRV0lpNI3eztT_2jiaNd8-6bEWOiLMgs27WTi2RCcIiJnpO3jvXmdqD7mjYrCzty6u9qBhGq4yt2b_oezilkHRDepVixrGAgmPgipwWINzu9zGBe_Kga5tEpn2nR-3hY/s1600/20170408_144122.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1570" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGq20Tt9N5-7uIRV0lpNI3eztT_2jiaNd8-6bEWOiLMgs27WTi2RCcIiJnpO3jvXmdqD7mjYrCzty6u9qBhGq4yt2b_oezilkHRDepVixrGAgmPgipwWINzu9zGBe_Kga5tEpn2nR-3hY/s400/20170408_144122.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Just for the record, I’m pleased that my second-favourite
Chinglish sign was still to be found in public toilets on my last visit. It
says: "This is what I have been wanting to talk to you about. Please flush
the toilet. You are the best."</span></div>
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An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-80808616124420558822020-01-11T14:25:00.000-08:002020-04-07T01:16:27.668-07:00Liu Zhuoquan's Wronged Ghosts<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiugU6Vzb6ONQKmvn0n4NnCpxWurqdUCnwY5V8ebn96_Rq_YkbIWw-LVpZijthBFHHsyfZTHjkSR8OwI-NP6c0hz8KnlR5E1DEoRC04Rc5ZEH3a_mEmjIIXn2-ZB6Wu9MYNT8O-g7pM0Cw/s1600/2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiugU6Vzb6ONQKmvn0n4NnCpxWurqdUCnwY5V8ebn96_Rq_YkbIWw-LVpZijthBFHHsyfZTHjkSR8OwI-NP6c0hz8KnlR5E1DEoRC04Rc5ZEH3a_mEmjIIXn2-ZB6Wu9MYNT8O-g7pM0Cw/s400/2010.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #7a7a7a; font-family: "roboto" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Liu Zhuoquan, </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: start;">Object Series</em><span style="color: #7a7a7a; font-family: "roboto" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">, 2007, glass bottles, mineral paint, dimensions variable, White Rabbit Collection, Sydney.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimgTu5larcH2iKecKkhSSjYM5nXeDw8U850098Ea0906VB8HkFi9vslROXcqJWCugwuy-aBKlkDhNJjQUY84dhzWGHKp1m5uaGiJ43JigYO5IWxuhXwJN_3_Ks6Er0jAJWByOYun1G_u4/s1600/Liu+Zhuoquan+2+Oct+2015.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimgTu5larcH2iKecKkhSSjYM5nXeDw8U850098Ea0906VB8HkFi9vslROXcqJWCugwuy-aBKlkDhNJjQUY84dhzWGHKp1m5uaGiJ43JigYO5IWxuhXwJN_3_Ks6Er0jAJWByOYun1G_u4/s400/Liu+Zhuoquan+2+Oct+2015.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Liu Zhuoquan in his studio, Beijing, 2015. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
Beijing-based artist Liu Zhuoquan is best known for beautiful installations of glass vessels in which delicately painted objects, animals and people are captured, suspended like specimens floating in formaldehyde. Many contemporary Chinese artists reinvent traditional art and craft forms, from ink painting to papercutting; from paper lanterns to embroidery, and from bookbinding to kite-making, mixing them up in a glorious postmodern mash-up to create ambitious large-scale installations, performance art or new media works. But Liu Zhuoquan’s practice is something entirely unique. He knew about the ancient art of <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">nei hua</em>, the supremely difficult process of painting the inside of tiny snuff bottles, using curved brushes and working in reverse, from the front to the back of the image. The walls of his Beijing studio are lined with shelves; on every shelf is an array of glass bottles of different shapes and sizes. Inside their curved surfaces the artist has depicted every conceivable aspect of his world. It’s like a cabinet of curiosities or a museum of specimens: as you turn your head your vision fills with crawling insects, leaping fish, fluttering birds and a vast panoply of flora and fauna. Some contain human body parts, foetuses or images of police and prisoners. By populating discarded glass vessels with miniature figures and objects, Liu is as much magician as scientist.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuSbY14Hnvv0Y7-n740c1MBxqfN7FmGV4qBuHPXF7TN5DkxeCwU_kBhHzHaqPl2hF5-NIx0Ks1J9XUk-GYTESRnidBZk5quzCqgOsNaWcgXxAZajlJYJvjQRRA0BtC1nfXX-U0b41L0jo/s1600/Liu+Zhuoquan+Studio+2+Oct+2015.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuSbY14Hnvv0Y7-n740c1MBxqfN7FmGV4qBuHPXF7TN5DkxeCwU_kBhHzHaqPl2hF5-NIx0Ks1J9XUk-GYTESRnidBZk5quzCqgOsNaWcgXxAZajlJYJvjQRRA0BtC1nfXX-U0b41L0jo/s400/Liu+Zhuoquan+Studio+2+Oct+2015.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A wall in Liu Zhuoquan's Studio, 2015. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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Liu Zhuoquan adapted the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">nei hua</em> (inside painting) technique, to reflect on his own contemporary life as an artist in Beijing. Qing snuff bottles were painted with tiny landscapes, immortals, animals, flowers and birds. Traditionally, the artist uses a bent, hooked brush made with a few strands of yak hair to apply mineral colours with incredible<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span>skill and precise detailing. In 1696, during the reign of Emperor Kangxi, the first state glass factory was set up to produce the bottles, which were presented to the royal members, senior officials, and foreign ambassadors. During the reign of Emperor Qianlong, in addition to glass and porcelain, other materials such as ivory, amber, coral, agate, crystal and bamboo roots were also used for making snuff bottles. Like many other art and craft practices seen as relics of the feudal past, this craft was largely forbidden during the Cultural Revolution.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_RQJG167v-xCUUWge_fZdepB6kMjkluSbQYKcZ9JiDH-CwdTfoXd6cUzSAeCuH32Zc07RslF9Op3f32ZUQTUH2q6o0tyjJDJx_A7sA4Nc9GbEvPWnRlSDPMmDlxi2j2ijDdgrZ9t3sok/s1600/Liu+Zhuoquan+Studio+1+Oct+2015.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_RQJG167v-xCUUWge_fZdepB6kMjkluSbQYKcZ9JiDH-CwdTfoXd6cUzSAeCuH32Zc07RslF9Op3f32ZUQTUH2q6o0tyjJDJx_A7sA4Nc9GbEvPWnRlSDPMmDlxi2j2ijDdgrZ9t3sok/s400/Liu+Zhuoquan+Studio+1+Oct+2015.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rows and shelves filled with painted bottles and the artist in his studio, 2015. Photograph Luise Guest<br /></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZcCwq7BibehPNQE4v8_bPOcwZi3He0DAnfK7LHfbUI2uuDyLqW0hq8EsrIX1u0NOKsSyqDG1v4QcAMPxvzWW_0LvnLoVj3CHs4-GJIGqf3s_Evl71e78vPQesQRsZ9qY_wecgUxUmnKQ/s1600/Lio+Zhuoquan+2010+display+box+24+assorted+glass+bottles+mineral+pigment+binder+60+x+80cm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="994" data-original-width="1600" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZcCwq7BibehPNQE4v8_bPOcwZi3He0DAnfK7LHfbUI2uuDyLqW0hq8EsrIX1u0NOKsSyqDG1v4QcAMPxvzWW_0LvnLoVj3CHs4-GJIGqf3s_Evl71e78vPQesQRsZ9qY_wecgUxUmnKQ/s400/Lio+Zhuoquan+2010+display+box+24+assorted+glass+bottles+mineral+pigment+binder+60+x+80cm.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Liu Zhuoquan, 24 bottles, 2010, mineral pigment and binder on glass. <br />Photographed in artist's studio in 2011 by Luise Guest</td></tr>
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In the 1970s a Beijing-trained painter returned to his hometown of Hengshui in Hebei Province. He was shocked at the poverty and poor living conditions of the locals and began to train some in this ancient art. Now it’s a centre of production of traditional inside-painted snuff bottles, mostly for the souvenir trade, and 20,000 people are employed painting the bottles – in China, nothing happens on a small scale! It is here that Liu Zhuoquan found his expert artisans. Working with a small team of these craftsmen as his assistants, Liu combines his contemporary sense of irony with acute observation of people, and of the fragile beauty of nature. He once described his studio as a scientific laboratory where he is recording the ‘ten thousand things’ of Daoist philosophy. In ancient China this phrase meant ‘everything that exists in the world’, the simultaneous sameness and difference of every element of the universe, the beautiful and the terrible alike.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjwzj6sd75CBJ6CxG6Ajc14y6hGpdP8kNUChoX9QTjz9TWViZ3gfQJPINoaVNVarz_AjulfXNJwMD9K8QXGG2QTzdxieOKJNqDV9W3eOaCFuoKnuMn4dvuAfTre_eKwnOJL6A2DKY1pas/s1600/15919.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="752" data-original-width="1134" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjwzj6sd75CBJ6CxG6Ajc14y6hGpdP8kNUChoX9QTjz9TWViZ3gfQJPINoaVNVarz_AjulfXNJwMD9K8QXGG2QTzdxieOKJNqDV9W3eOaCFuoKnuMn4dvuAfTre_eKwnOJL6A2DKY1pas/s400/15919.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: start;">Chang’an avenue</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: start;">, 2013</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: start;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: start;">cast iron lamp stand, explosion-proof light globes, wire, mineral colour</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: start;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: start;">dimensions variable. Image courtesy Niagara Galleries</span></td></tr>
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In <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Seven Sparrows</em> (2011), and <i>Chang'An Avenue</i> (2013) beautifully painted birds appear to flutter helplessly in their death throes inside glass light fittings. Sparrows have a very particular, personal meaning for Liu Zhuoquan – like so many others, his family was exiled, sent to the countryside in 1970, accused of being insufficiently revolutionary. As in many such cases, the farmers were understandably hostile to what they perceived as useless city people being foisted on them, more mouths to feed in a collapsing system of collectivised farms. Liu’s father, a city tailor, was ill suited to farm labour and was given the task of chasing birds from the crops, chasing them around the fields with a stick until he dropped from exhaustion. The dying sparrows that appear in many of Liu’s paintings thus become a tragic metaphor for the artist’s father.</div>
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But as so often in Chinese contemporary art they also symbolise a larger field of Chinese history. The Four Pests campaign of Mao’s disastrous ‘Great Leap Forward’ started in 1958. The four pests were rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows – the last included because they ate the grain seeds. The masses were mobilised to eradicate the birds, and citizens took to banging pots and pans or beating drums to scare the birds from landing, forcing them to fly until they fell from the sky in exhaustion. Nests were torn down, eggs were broken, and nestlings were killed, resulting in the near-extinction of the birds in China. By April 1960, Chinese leaders belatedly realised that the birds ate insects, as well as grains.<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span>Rather than being increased, rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased.<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span>Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, but it was too late. With no sparrows to eat them,<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locust" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #595858; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;">locust</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span>populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the problems already caused by the<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #595858; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;">Great Leap Forward</a>, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides. This ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #595858; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;">Great Famine</a>, in which it is now believed that more than 40 million people died of starvation.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLrtujXoM_-L4sfK86MsWmmKk_44-vlP7_5ihZRMiobnNL3veUXr9n1tOKld_Gi1OR9ygZYDhFO1m40cI05sh093J_TlpLmSpHv0tscI4REGRkXfnSR-1-gC8P9WtmvCrOpepxECdgQTg/s1600/2011.066+liu+zhuoquan%252C+seven+sparrows+detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="533" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLrtujXoM_-L4sfK86MsWmmKk_44-vlP7_5ihZRMiobnNL3veUXr9n1tOKld_Gi1OR9ygZYDhFO1m40cI05sh093J_TlpLmSpHv0tscI4REGRkXfnSR-1-gC8P9WtmvCrOpepxECdgQTg/s640/2011.066+liu+zhuoquan%252C+seven+sparrows+detail.jpg" width="426" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Liu Zhuoquan, <i>Seven Sparrows</i>, 2011 (detail). White Rabbit Collection Sydney</td></tr>
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In ‘Seven Sparrows’ the seventh sparrow is the figure of a hanging man, bound at the wrists. It has two meanings here, the first being a direct reference to the media reporting of condemned criminals, and the harsh punishments meted out to them. The ‘sparrow’ is a slang term for a method of interrogation. The second, coded reference relates to the artist’s father. When he died, after a lifetime of trials and tribulations, Liu Zhuoquan thought his frail body seemed as fragile and insubstantial as a dead bird.</div>
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In the artist’s own words, each glass vessel imprisons ‘a wronged ghost being cursed, a memory or an unsettling dream’.<br />
<br />
You can find another article about Liu Zhuoquan <a href="https://www.cobosocial.com/dossiers/one-man-liu-zhuoquan/" target="_blank">HERE</a> on <a href="https://www.cobosocial.com/" target="_blank">COBO SOCIAL</a>, based on the catalogue essay I wrote for his Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, solo show in 2017</div>
An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-24495812075636020682019-12-30T19:44:00.001-08:002019-12-31T16:02:35.737-08:0010,000 Things: Reflecting on a Year almost Gone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cai Guo-Qiang's 10,000 suspended porcelain birds at the NGV. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">On this final day of 2019, sitting at my desk with windows
closed against bush fire smoke and horrifyingly hot winds, a fan blowing noisily at my feet, it seems this is the time to reflect on a year of highs
and lows. Lows there have certainly been; it
has been a turbulent year of struggle and difficulty, of loss and grief, and of rising anxiety and even fear about the future that I know I share with so many. This is especially true now, when the orange disc in the sky seems almost
apocalyptic and we are assailed by warnings about the air we breathe, which is
equal in its polluted nastiness to any I have ever breathed in Beijing. But
enough of that! One of my new year’s resolutions is to avoid the constant
unsettling churn of media stories about Trump, Boris Johnson, Brexit, and our
own deeply inadequate national leader: the unending reiteration of ‘news’ adds nothing to the quality of
my life. Less social media too in 2020 – well, that’s the plan. But highs there have also been, not least the unconditional love of family and the absolute joy of being a grandparent. So, in this post there will be no wallowing. Instead, I’m
going to celebrate some of 2019’s milestones, achievements, wonders and delights.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2fULp0WWAIvgIdPf92BK4vNepornDI7nAOUQcshYu6ozGqbZnNcLt8j_SCTdPyYkpOmHcHnnQssz9Dp7MmXlchUvUe9hLwPbTdQv5O0eQ0Wx7glrJFXsLzVeo6zqgLE0kZriJQ2XBM6U/s1600/IMG_20190401_073956_253.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="706" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2fULp0WWAIvgIdPf92BK4vNepornDI7nAOUQcshYu6ozGqbZnNcLt8j_SCTdPyYkpOmHcHnnQssz9Dp7MmXlchUvUe9hLwPbTdQv5O0eQ0Wx7glrJFXsLzVeo6zqgLE0kZriJQ2XBM6U/s400/IMG_20190401_073956_253.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Poster design for the talk at Women's University, Beijing, in April 2019, featuring a work by Hong Kong artist Firenze Lai</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Milestones -- there were a few big ones. They included the completion of a significant
book project I’d been working on since 2015 (you can find details </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Artists-Judith-Neilson-Luise-Guest/dp/0980639859/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?keywords=99+chinese+artists&qid=1577753991&sr=8-1-fkmr1" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">HERE</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">); the
publication of an article in the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (</span><a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/jcca/2019/00000006/f0020002/art00004" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">HERE</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">); an
article in Art Monthly Australasia and a Quarterly Essay about Jingdezhen and porcelain for Garland (<a href="https://garlandmag.com/article/quarterly-essay-drifters-in-jingdezhen/" target="_blank">HERE</a>); an essay
for an NGV publication, </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%;">‘</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Centre – On Art and Urbanism in
China’; </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">the presentation of a research paper at the Art Association of
Australia and New Zealand Annual Conference in Auckland; a lecture to students at China Women's University, Beijing, a talk delivered
via a Wechat video link to students at Peking University’s global Yenching
Academy, and two talks at the NGV about the exhibition 'A Fairy Tale in Red Times' – and I’m another year closer to completing my PhD. I’ve continued my
now ten-year-long study of Chinese (but, oh God, will it EVER get any easier?) Probably it's not surprising that I'm just a bit tired.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1F8GEEyo7j37lJNIcdyaUDYwNeJRiW2vbaQLTR8Mgqpghu2wa-VHBM1-fNKGu4cVcbPephHIZBOu4Nk1jz7lQZq4kr647OLwb8y_0RgN3NrUCG-YSAuvEWJDHsqSBGnEIljeKJdeRI7o/s1600/Yan+Ping+2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1158" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1F8GEEyo7j37lJNIcdyaUDYwNeJRiW2vbaQLTR8Mgqpghu2wa-VHBM1-fNKGu4cVcbPephHIZBOu4Nk1jz7lQZq4kr647OLwb8y_0RgN3NrUCG-YSAuvEWJDHsqSBGnEIljeKJdeRI7o/s400/Yan+Ping+2011.jpg" width="352" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yan Ping, Still Life, 2011, image courtesy the artist</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0oBS5cDxbRAGZ4-Bqz04x5_WRB1oVzF0r2r5rUwRl3zdY43GpQ8TmaIVahefD17Lj6xiOnXRnN7fkXKdClkQ2kEsaexyl1zLlUwroy4SSQH3JtVv0nmX4HriLvWVzMrtfPPtwWT-k59Q/s1600/Yan+Ping+2001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1204" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0oBS5cDxbRAGZ4-Bqz04x5_WRB1oVzF0r2r5rUwRl3zdY43GpQ8TmaIVahefD17Lj6xiOnXRnN7fkXKdClkQ2kEsaexyl1zLlUwroy4SSQH3JtVv0nmX4HriLvWVzMrtfPPtwWT-k59Q/s400/Yan+Ping+2001.jpg" width="340" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A work from 2001 reveals Yan Ping's recurring theme of mother and child, and her influences from European modernism. Image courtesy the artist.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In late October I interviewed Beijing-based figurative painter Yan Ping, preparing to write an essay for a forthcoming book about this artist, who is not known as well outside China as her work deserves. Conducting a conversation
via a WeChat video link-up late into the evening, with the artist, her
assistant and my translator passing around their mobile phones in her Beijing
studio was not without its challenges,
and I spent a good part of the more than two-hour conversation seeing tantalisingly fleeting glimpses
of the artist while the camera focused on pot plants in the background. But the
talk was fascinating and revealed the life and work of an artist who was a new
discovery for me.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUnXXTiZZHjRy9-LS7nNcfMTQj0VHcMoC28SeE4PFpPUrwwTBd0rM5aOnSS1DKWKiLRCltOEoOHwgtSBO8D5GPg8TuNBhpyP7Aid1cpcc-wnF7favL7r7ebxLUMdoPiEtsrstJDR2d_Js/s1600/Yan+Ping+2009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="915" data-original-width="1024" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUnXXTiZZHjRy9-LS7nNcfMTQj0VHcMoC28SeE4PFpPUrwwTBd0rM5aOnSS1DKWKiLRCltOEoOHwgtSBO8D5GPg8TuNBhpyP7Aid1cpcc-wnF7favL7r7ebxLUMdoPiEtsrstJDR2d_Js/s400/Yan+Ping+2009.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yan Ping loves to paint theatre and opera troupes, acrobats and musician, often in behind-the-scenes moments. <br />
Image courtesy the artist</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Wonders and delights this year included interviews with extraordinary
artists visiting Sydney, including Cheng Ran, Wang Guofeng, Cao Hui and Gao Xiawu (you can find those videos <a href="https://www.jnprojects.net/interviews/" target="_blank">HERE</a>) and in China. A
meeting with Zhu Jinshi in Beijing in April was an absolute joy, as he spoke about his
participation in the ‘Stars’ exhibition in 1979, his time living and
working in Germany, and the thinking behind his extraordinary sculptural
installation ‘The Ship of Time’. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zhu Jinshi 'The Ship of Time', installation view at Tang Contemporary, Beijing, 2018. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I relished the opportunity to record long,
in-depth conversations with 17 artists in their studios in Beijing and Shanghai,
from significant established figures such as Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen to rising stars Ma Qiusha and Lu Yang, and to
talk with video pioneer Zhang Peili over delicate Longjing Tea and snacks in a teahouse
on the shore of Hangzhou’s idyllically beautiful West Lake. An interview
with Chen Hangfeng, who now lives and works between Shanghai and Amsterdam, was
fascinating, and I wrote about his new work 'Excited with No Reason' in an article called </span><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">'I<i>nvasive Species and Global Trade Routes: A Conversation with Chen Hangfeng</i>' </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">for The Art Life </span><a href="http://theartlife.com.au/2019/invasive-species-and-global-trade-routes-a-conversation-with-chen-hangfeng/" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">HERE</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTroIbDnUaspEKwXK7knfW7JTsV9Bai7tRqgdYNqTgjjNuVBDN1fm8vsMntthkFk0eqCj8jtus7ew_0RyL3RFMl8gtSb1e092mtsH510tbkDCIpXLDsMIoY_c7P-eXFkbt49K3bqSonTY/s1600/20180416_104208.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1570" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTroIbDnUaspEKwXK7knfW7JTsV9Bai7tRqgdYNqTgjjNuVBDN1fm8vsMntthkFk0eqCj8jtus7ew_0RyL3RFMl8gtSb1e092mtsH510tbkDCIpXLDsMIoY_c7P-eXFkbt49K3bqSonTY/s400/20180416_104208.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPIakWABBIcqh0Y6MozT8TkFZh85t9hMvkkoPdCq5fbzNxsNJVw0J2kxiaVg4FdBuIulp32EVve_Us2JOPI08ZjyWcxQvGcYG2cLdJLXyM8RDAuyej7y_8hzfCsL3cIv287OlfyF5saI4/s1600/20190412_090936.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1177" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPIakWABBIcqh0Y6MozT8TkFZh85t9hMvkkoPdCq5fbzNxsNJVw0J2kxiaVg4FdBuIulp32EVve_Us2JOPI08ZjyWcxQvGcYG2cLdJLXyM8RDAuyej7y_8hzfCsL3cIv287OlfyF5saI4/s400/20190412_090936.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shanghai's former French Concession in Spring - bicycles, washing lines, and neighbours chatting in leafy streets. Photographs Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Just being
in China is always a joy, and Beijing and Shanghai in April, with blossoming
trees and gorgeous gardens, are especially beautiful. Not to mention the dancing aunties, Peking Opera performers and mahjong players in the parks. And the food! </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbYckDDUUg0sF77_HLE9cQVBAeNAKnY5NOOJ9kZWwhzoI-giTIS2Yns9yI-Z9hMs80KlSx37e1LeEv8BjW97i-Ayi-EUdTE6nQuaIg3whD9JrroTOQQYWrROaY4GL-0ZkGitmexBQyfdY/s1600/20190405_181616.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1177" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbYckDDUUg0sF77_HLE9cQVBAeNAKnY5NOOJ9kZWwhzoI-giTIS2Yns9yI-Z9hMs80KlSx37e1LeEv8BjW97i-Ayi-EUdTE6nQuaIg3whD9JrroTOQQYWrROaY4GL-0ZkGitmexBQyfdY/s400/20190405_181616.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My translator, Jane, and kind-hearted driver Mr Zhang, at dinner at Shengyongxing in Beijing</td></tr>
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In the ‘wonders and delights’ category - and as lists appear to be essential at this time of year - I add my favourite exhibitions of 2019. (Apart from the wonderful 'Hot Blood' and 'Then' at White Rabbit Gallery of course):<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyad1zlDO9uNSKnQ1fbYVMBktWOYjzvTN5wTBawZQCdTPzJmviWPrcby82Fw0M5plan6yz6MFLc5fv5rER6xWv3mcweDsvJH9C_lmALDDh2f3L54CnBgqKa35CrBtupfxXvk-ScaKLQo8/s1600/20190402_121048.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1177" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyad1zlDO9uNSKnQ1fbYVMBktWOYjzvTN5wTBawZQCdTPzJmviWPrcby82Fw0M5plan6yz6MFLc5fv5rER6xWv3mcweDsvJH9C_lmALDDh2f3L54CnBgqKa35CrBtupfxXvk-ScaKLQo8/s400/20190402_121048.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Qiu Zhijie, 'Mappa Mundi' (detail), UCCA April 2019</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">1. In Beijing, at UCCA, 'Mappa Mundi', the significant exhibition of Qiu
Zhijie’s satirical socio-historical cartography of the strange world we now inhabit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh45iaVWJrSBiJUKtRYafOQM67LfwpDyO4m6gIUPVDosmqzVeLIvOMkwUeE1Ub6IeLu2bj-rZxS3Ci6XM4PMeCAF8d-k3WnJmaLYi7mRT1_55gPX7tNrB37NA10mkaxxiyUhzJFoLUuBe4/s1600/20190331_145253.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="662" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh45iaVWJrSBiJUKtRYafOQM67LfwpDyO4m6gIUPVDosmqzVeLIvOMkwUeE1Ub6IeLu2bj-rZxS3Ci6XM4PMeCAF8d-k3WnJmaLYi7mRT1_55gPX7tNrB37NA10mkaxxiyUhzJFoLUuBe4/s400/20190331_145253.jpg" width="298" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A detail of Qiu Zhijie's obsessively detailed map of China's modern and contemporary art history</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">2. In Shanghai, at ShanghART Westbund, the installation work of Ouyang Chun in which every piece was constructed with objects retrieved from j</span><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">unk salvaged from the staff living quarters of Xi’an University of Technology, where the artist had once lived with his parents. The compound was about to be demolished, so Ouyang made three trips from Beijing to Xi’an and collected almost 12 tons of rubbish and household goods. From toilet seats to timber doors and windows, from thermos flasks and crockery to rusty bedsteads, battered suitcases and broken furniture, for Ouyang every object was imbued with traces of time and untold histories. </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I wrote a review of this exhibition, and an account of his work, in </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">'<span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242; font-weight: inherit;"><i>Reconstructing Memory: Ouyang Chun’s ‘The Mortals’ at ShanghART Gallery'</i> </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">for The Art Life. Find the article</span><a href="http://theartlife.com.au/2019/reconstructing-memory-ouyang-chuns-the-mortals-at-shanghart-gallery/" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank"> HERE</a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsJQbNAJl5iE1l9W5Cy2Z4e-YKxgUGxr00apwPXY0qXhPqiGlKjoFJ9qpA3MBHbtbPpETNRSV7oJ45QUNjSjr-N57EhSY7BMuLmQr0WqQYnfVGnOqaKFOLQO486g53a5acEjKyxWbwO3A/s1600/20190409_140137.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="846" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsJQbNAJl5iE1l9W5Cy2Z4e-YKxgUGxr00apwPXY0qXhPqiGlKjoFJ9qpA3MBHbtbPpETNRSV7oJ45QUNjSjr-N57EhSY7BMuLmQr0WqQYnfVGnOqaKFOLQO486g53a5acEjKyxWbwO3A/s400/20190409_140137.jpg" width="382" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ouyang Chun, 'King and Queen Number 2', 2018, assemblage of found objects - wooden cabinet, plastic bed pans, wood, concrete, White Rabbit Collection Sydney. Photograph Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">3. At Shanghai’s Long Museum, I loved the major retrospective of the
work of extraordinary painter Yu Hong, 'The World of Saha', which she conceived as a 'visual opera' dividing her life into four acts. The exhibition included her 'Witness to Growth' series of self-portraits and her reflections on her life at the age of 50, 'Half Hundred Mirrors'. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-J34ebDfau3WpwWPWFk0YAki3P6_w5AHNF6f-O_TCQiN-QES9cZwwrIZy1chbFu2fRYYh8IeOvff9jQzt26-Zg55wnBsRW4RrIPj12HU7EBFfPvR4sBoZsvgeNlTV4zMbcwCz6rZkwkc/s1600/20190409_113649.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1177" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-J34ebDfau3WpwWPWFk0YAki3P6_w5AHNF6f-O_TCQiN-QES9cZwwrIZy1chbFu2fRYYh8IeOvff9jQzt26-Zg55wnBsRW4RrIPj12HU7EBFfPvR4sBoZsvgeNlTV4zMbcwCz6rZkwkc/s400/20190409_113649.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtpLJARN6PY7WVqIcnYai98Kmu9X8pQ7vGlJRE-MUJ2MqF2YsxSPOXbV1OSQf1u79ARGBCJyIPY4XA5a2fNP8fRbS60X0IRegbsPzET5tzBanpaqlBiMF_LVNwbkNSaZEIvUCf1MyRZ1M/s1600/20190409_121206.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1177" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtpLJARN6PY7WVqIcnYai98Kmu9X8pQ7vGlJRE-MUJ2MqF2YsxSPOXbV1OSQf1u79ARGBCJyIPY4XA5a2fNP8fRbS60X0IRegbsPzET5tzBanpaqlBiMF_LVNwbkNSaZEIvUCf1MyRZ1M/s400/20190409_121206.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">4. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">'</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Remapping Reality'</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"> at OCAT Project Space Shanghai - the first comprehensive presentation of Wang Bing’s collection of Chinese video art from the post-Olympic era. OCAT said 'In this moment of historical rupture, the exhibition attempts to take the collection as a point of departure to develop a new narrative framework that, on the one hand, is able to account for the ironies and complexities of China in the age of globalization, while on the other hand addresses the possibilities of “continuity” that is emphasized in China’s public discourse as an integral part of the Chinese experience.' </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEithwhzqt0SNkG3dtGqM1WcYwmgn1qnvLHB9nBt6vg4UZErbX2vCzRdxGTP_RZ7DXiEUyKDmy0BA3knkhzkRTtRiTckiHLqlJqXpdP3ryz-5-RIXYR8pStDRqBoki8tDfBKbea6tHAdkwk/s1600/IMG_20190409_182206_294.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="883" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEithwhzqt0SNkG3dtGqM1WcYwmgn1qnvLHB9nBt6vg4UZErbX2vCzRdxGTP_RZ7DXiEUyKDmy0BA3knkhzkRTtRiTckiHLqlJqXpdP3ryz-5-RIXYR8pStDRqBoki8tDfBKbea6tHAdkwk/s400/IMG_20190409_182206_294.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pang Tao (detail), installation view at Pearl Lam, Shanghai</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhmLaCCqn1fxwc0XUSydKhMXA4GqFSLzQGMGR2ZYIhJpJayazIeu6Br0dGZ5XgszOW7xSqDFtMcHI11cBlil4eCInMuWBV5c_Rf0VrF4MoUO92XJ7TBIicf-eGaOgZoBSU2F4w-RU-ewE/s1600/IMG_20190409_182206_291.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="883" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhmLaCCqn1fxwc0XUSydKhMXA4GqFSLzQGMGR2ZYIhJpJayazIeu6Br0dGZ5XgszOW7xSqDFtMcHI11cBlil4eCInMuWBV5c_Rf0VrF4MoUO92XJ7TBIicf-eGaOgZoBSU2F4w-RU-ewE/s400/IMG_20190409_182206_291.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portrait of a teenage Lin Yan preparing to enter CAFA when it re-opened after the Cultural Revolution, by Pang Tao</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">5. At Pearl Lam in Shanghai, 'Material Lineage', an exhibition of work by Lin Yan and her mother Pang Tao, who is now in her 90s and recently had a solo show devoted to her work at Beijing's Inside Out Art Museum. This was especially interesting, as on the way to the airport in Beijing I'd seen the exhibition of works by Lin Yan's father, Lin Gang, at the CAFA Art Museum. Her grandfather, Pang Xinqun, was one of the founders of the modernist 'Storm Society' in Shanghai when he returned from Paris in 1930. You can find my story about Lin Yan and her extraordinary artistic lineage, '<i>Lin Yan: A Tale of Three Cities</i>' in The Art Life </span><a href="http://theartlife.com.au/2017/lin-yan-a-tale-of-three-cities/" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">HERE</a>.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzt0ooEO2-2Tcb0jLdWaVEBgQtsyP0klCMIAVE4wiPWrZ-kIAZQkxWv93QxIGnrcpVVbJQL2P-q8MfaSAnM4qmNrHli4DWpf8mCaCSKXylReHnDkv1eVe6LQ0IgxWvo8yba4qwDzr4NKo/s1600/IMG_20190409_182206_308.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="883" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzt0ooEO2-2Tcb0jLdWaVEBgQtsyP0klCMIAVE4wiPWrZ-kIAZQkxWv93QxIGnrcpVVbJQL2P-q8MfaSAnM4qmNrHli4DWpf8mCaCSKXylReHnDkv1eVe6LQ0IgxWvo8yba4qwDzr4NKo/s400/IMG_20190409_182206_308.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lin Yan, paper installation in 'Material Lineage' at Pearl Lam Shanghai.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">6. Cai Guo-Qiang's 10,000 porcelain birds at the NGV, in an inspired juxtaposition with the Terracotta Warriors. (And, of course, 'A Fairy Tale in Red Times' curated by David Williams from Judith Neilson's White Rabbit Collection).</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO_rw-RSSlGZGEr_Cpb3_dActWDyEab4P92i9KG2iDMpth6SxpnVAsPuTn4jfWveNUAtPnHkndua2Jbm6iA-h4BERNg-qe1pkgypDh5OwWpvfSPt8SToCcB7-z12evpgYowjfnUs03TBk/s1600/20190531_113413.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1177" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO_rw-RSSlGZGEr_Cpb3_dActWDyEab4P92i9KG2iDMpth6SxpnVAsPuTn4jfWveNUAtPnHkndua2Jbm6iA-h4BERNg-qe1pkgypDh5OwWpvfSPt8SToCcB7-z12evpgYowjfnUs03TBk/s400/20190531_113413.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cai Guo-Qiang's porcelain birds at the NGV.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And finally, in non-China related experiences – yes, I do
occasionally have some of those! – I loved the Cindy Sherman show at London’s
National Portrait Gallery in September, the William Blake show at Tate, a tour of the newly re-opened China rooms of the British Museum before the museum opened for the day (what a luxury to be in an empty museum!) and
Berthe Morisot at Musée d’Orsay in Paris. I discovered the collection of treasures from across Asia in the </span>Musée Guimet, and must return there one day.<br />
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So, what will 2020 have in store? Perhaps ignorance is bliss. But hopefully, for Australia, RAIN and lots of it! For me, it's writing the PhD thesis, studying Chinese with more discipline and perseverance than before, continuing my research work and - how exciting - taking my daughters to Shanghai in April for their first trip to China. Signing out for now - 新年快乐! <i>Xinnian Kuai Le</i>! and a Happy New Year to all.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPLbfDwk5OePuETpwal6Jo5E05R8q9s1vQgpNHpyAnYSaW-3x53Y5rBuj1eCSjDlBsyvVe3mbPFZcyDltDhuoCPPRJV0tURZ7C57kNx_kkH9agEzJlvJ8dm46VYmC9W1Rj3UTSoiQHqaQ/s1600/20190920_123509.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1177" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPLbfDwk5OePuETpwal6Jo5E05R8q9s1vQgpNHpyAnYSaW-3x53Y5rBuj1eCSjDlBsyvVe3mbPFZcyDltDhuoCPPRJV0tURZ7C57kNx_kkH9agEzJlvJ8dm46VYmC9W1Rj3UTSoiQHqaQ/s400/20190920_123509.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tang Dynasty polo-playing lady from the collection of the <span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="text-align: start;">Musée</span> </span>Guimet, Paris</td></tr>
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An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-34389816185229085472019-04-26T03:34:00.000-07:002020-04-07T01:26:19.826-07:00中国日记 China Diary: 17 Artists and 13 Days<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0yuo-J3yDGna4TcvdSe-HVHmaKh3NhlB5tazgeNuD7R_yDucfj3WIj31X10jHGqpyBRehtI-Gd9e9inuL3bNvRWfGPXzMZCy-2_OG6thiN8jnXcHY9LzMjJVr8bEzr1d06tewZYCdef0/s1600/Ma+Qiusha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1177" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0yuo-J3yDGna4TcvdSe-HVHmaKh3NhlB5tazgeNuD7R_yDucfj3WIj31X10jHGqpyBRehtI-Gd9e9inuL3bNvRWfGPXzMZCy-2_OG6thiN8jnXcHY9LzMjJVr8bEzr1d06tewZYCdef0/s400/Ma+Qiusha.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artist Ma Qiusha in her Beijing Studio, photo: Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You can find blog posts, news items and much more besides on the new website where the White Rabbit Collection and White Rabbit Gallery now live - including my description of a recent whirlwind trip to Shanghai and Beijing to interview some wonderful artists. I'll be writing more about these interviews in the coming weeks, so please take a look!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Note: it seems that the archive of blog posts and articles about artists is no longer available on the White Rabbit Collection website</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">The purpose of the trip to China undertaken in April 2019 by myself and gallery coordinator Hannah Toohey was to visit artists in their studios and record new interviews </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px;">f</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;">or the</span><span style="color: #7a7a7a;"> a</span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">rchive</span>. Undertaking a marathon 17 interviews in 13 days, the conversations that ensued were intense – and intensely interesting. In between visiting artists they visited exhibitions in museums and galleries, and met arts writers, curators, gallery managers and museum directors to discuss the ever-changing Chinese art ecology.</span></div>
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<figure aria-describedby="caption-attachment-16881" class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_16881" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1024px;"><img alt="" class="size-large wp-image-16881 lazy-loaded" data-lazy-type="image" data-src="https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190405_150203-1024x768.jpg" data-srcset="" height="299" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" src="https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190405_150203-1024x768.jpg" srcset="https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190405_150203-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190405_150203-300x225.jpg 300w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190405_150203-768x576.jpg 768w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190405_150203.jpg 1184w" style="border-radius: 0px; border: none; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto 5px; max-width: 100%; opacity: 1 !important; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: opacity 0.3s ease 0s; vertical-align: middle;" width="400" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-16881" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Research Manager Luise Guest, artist He Sen, and Gallery Coordinator Hannah Toohey</figcaption><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-16881" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></figcaption></figure><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The artists visited on this trip included acknowledged pioneer of Chinese video art, <span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Zhang Peili</span>; iconoclastic young creator of<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Electromagnetic Brainology</em>, <span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Lu Yang</span>; influential painter and conceptual artist <span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Zhu Jinshi;</span> magical realist <span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yang Shen</span>; deeply philosophical <span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Qiu Anxiong</span> – creator of the sublime and terrifying <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">New Classic of Mountains and Seas</em>trilogy of animations – and painter <span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dong Yuan,</span> who is creating a new version of ‘Grandma’s House’, documenting in paint every room, and every object, in her grandmother’s house in Dalian.</span></div>
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<figure aria-describedby="caption-attachment-16882" class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_16882" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; width: 888px;"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-16882 lazy-loaded" data-lazy-type="image" data-src="https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190402_071726_720.jpg" data-srcset="" height="400" sizes="(max-width: 888px) 100vw, 888px" src="https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190402_071726_720.jpg" srcset="https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190402_071726_720.jpg 888w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190402_071726_720-150x150.jpg 150w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190402_071726_720-300x300.jpg 300w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190402_071726_720-768x768.jpg 768w" style="border-radius: 0px; border: none; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto 5px; max-width: 100%; opacity: 1 !important; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: opacity 0.3s ease 0s; vertical-align: middle;" width="399" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-16882" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Research Manager Luise Guest with artist Yang Shen, Beijing April 2019, following an interview that covered topics ranging from Cultural Revolution propaganda to the novels of Marquez and Borges and the painters of the Leipzig School.</figcaption></figure><figure aria-describedby="caption-attachment-16883" class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_16883" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1024px;"><img alt="" class="size-large wp-image-16883 lazy-loaded" data-lazy-type="image" data-src="https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190404_113435-1024x768.jpg" data-srcset="" height="299" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" src="https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190404_113435-1024x768.jpg" srcset="https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190404_113435-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190404_113435-300x225.jpg 300w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190404_113435-768x576.jpg 768w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/20190404_113435.jpg 1184w" style="border-radius: 0px; border: none; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto 5px; max-width: 100%; opacity: 1 !important; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: opacity 0.3s ease 0s; vertical-align: middle;" width="400" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-16883" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dong Yuan with part of her new version of ‘Lao Lao Jia’ (Grandma’s House) in Beijing. The discussion ranged from memories of her rural childhood to her inability to attend ancestor worship ceremonies at her grandmother’s home now that she is a married woman (and hence attached to another family).</figcaption></figure><figure aria-describedby="caption-attachment-16884" class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_16884" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #7a7a7a; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1024px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-radius: 0px; border-width: initial; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; transition-property: opacity;"><img alt="" class="size-large wp-image-16884 lazy-loaded" data-lazy-type="image" data-src="https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190415_162509_715-1024x1024.jpg" data-srcset="" height="400" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" src="https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190415_162509_715-1024x1024.jpg" srcset="https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190415_162509_715-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190415_162509_715-150x150.jpg 150w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190415_162509_715-300x300.jpg 300w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190415_162509_715-768x768.jpg 768w, https://www.jnprojects.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_20190415_162509_715.jpg 1080w" style="border-radius: 0px; border: none; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto 5px; max-width: 100%; opacity: 1 !important; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: opacity 0.3s ease 0s; vertical-align: middle;" width="399" /></span></span><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-16884" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Lu Yang in her natural habitat – behind multiple computer screens.</figcaption><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-16884" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></figcaption><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-16884" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></figcaption></figure>An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-64275627523136370992019-02-17T01:10:00.001-08:002019-02-17T01:10:40.119-08:00Shoes & The City: Lu Xinjian, Nike and the White Rabbit Collection<div class="elementor-element elementor-element-55a32243 elementor-widget elementor-widget-theme-post-title elementor-page-title elementor-widget-heading" data-element_type="theme-post-title.default" data-id="55a32243" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #929292; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">So here is my second blog post for the new website that covers White Rabbit Gallery, the White Rabbit Collection and its archive, and the new Research Library at Dangrove - it's about artist Lu Xinjian and his collaboration with Nike. What it doesn't tell you is that Lu Xinjian's paintings were some of the very first that I saw in a gallery in Beijing, on my first visit to China as a recipient of the NSW Premier's Travelling Scholarship. I was utterly clueless, totally lost in Caochangdi, and walked into a gallery where I got talking to the very lovely Shasha Liu - now a friend - who told me that an Australian collector called Judith Neilson had just acquired two of the paintings. A lot has happened since then!</span></h2>
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<span style="color: #7a7a7a; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In early 2011 two paintings by an emerging Chinese artist were acquired for the White Rabbit Collection. They used an unusual technique derived from the aerial mapping of cities to produce large, apparently abstract canvases with grids and formalist designs. Critics noted they recalled the paintings of Piet Mondrian and the early Modernist de Stijl artists and designers. The artist was Lu Xinjian, a Shanghai-based painter who had indeed studied in the Netherlands and had loved Dutch design since he was a young student in Nanjing. The two paintings, from his important early City DNA series, turned out not to be abstract at all, but rather represented aerial views of Beijing and Venice. Sources for his imagery included maps and satellite views of each location, as well as photographs, but the artist sees his work as philosophically complex and multi-layered. He believes cities are built and defined by history, culture and language as much as by geography; each is distinct and unique, despite the homogenising impact of globalisation.</span></span></div>
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<img alt="" class="attachment-large size-large" height="201" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" src="https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2011.053-Lu-Xinjian-City-DNA-Beijing-2010-acrylic-on-canvas-200-x-400-cm-1024x516.jpg" srcset="https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2011.053-Lu-Xinjian-City-DNA-Beijing-2010-acrylic-on-canvas-200-x-400-cm-1024x516.jpg 1024w, https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2011.053-Lu-Xinjian-City-DNA-Beijing-2010-acrylic-on-canvas-200-x-400-cm-300x151.jpg 300w, https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2011.053-Lu-Xinjian-City-DNA-Beijing-2010-acrylic-on-canvas-200-x-400-cm-768x387.jpg 768w, https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2011.053-Lu-Xinjian-City-DNA-Beijing-2010-acrylic-on-canvas-200-x-400-cm.jpg 1440w" style="border-radius: 0px; border: none; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="400" /></div>
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<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">City DNA Beijing, 2010, oil on canvas</em></div>
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</section><section class="elementor-element elementor-element-26d17b7 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default elementor-section elementor-top-section" data-element_type="section" data-id="26d17b7" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 1140px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">City DNA: Beijing (2010) shows the symmetrical axis of the Forbidden City, its surrounding </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">lakes and the jumble of historical hutongs and courtyards in lines and dashes on a scarlet ground. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The artist’s source imagery is scanned into a graphics software program to create a vinyl stencil, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">from which each shape must be carefully unpeeled before he can paint over it, in colours selected </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">from national or city flags. The process is repetitive and exhausting – it can take up to four days </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">to peel off each line from the stencil over one large canvas. The annotated print-outs from Google </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Maps that Lu donated to the Judith Neilson/White Rabbit Collection archive reveal how he begins </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">the laborious process of designing these complex compositions.</span></div>
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<img alt="" class="attachment-large size-large" height="309" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" src="https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2011.054-Lu-Xinjian-City-DNA-Venice-2010-acrylic-on-canvas-200-x-260-cm-1024x792.jpg" srcset="https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2011.054-Lu-Xinjian-City-DNA-Venice-2010-acrylic-on-canvas-200-x-260-cm-1024x792.jpg 1024w, https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2011.054-Lu-Xinjian-City-DNA-Venice-2010-acrylic-on-canvas-200-x-260-cm-300x232.jpg 300w, https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2011.054-Lu-Xinjian-City-DNA-Venice-2010-acrylic-on-canvas-200-x-260-cm-768x594.jpg 768w, https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2011.054-Lu-Xinjian-City-DNA-Venice-2010-acrylic-on-canvas-200-x-260-cm.jpg 1062w" style="border-radius: 0px; border: none; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="400" /></div>
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<div class="p1" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">City DNA Venice, 2010, oil on canvas</em></div>
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</section><section class="elementor-element elementor-element-e22f241 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default elementor-section elementor-top-section" data-element_type="section" data-id="e22f241" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 1140px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lu Xinjian sees his slow, methodical practice as connected to meditation or the calming </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">practice of Qi </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Gong, </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">despite the frenetic contemporary hustle and bustle of his urban subjects. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">He says, </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">‘Coming from a small peasant </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">village where nothing changes and the cultivation of tea </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">marks the </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">rhythms of life, the dynamism of the urban </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">landscape has always fascinated me.’</span></div>
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</section><section class="elementor-element elementor-element-cbbc2d4 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default elementor-section elementor-top-section" data-element_type="section" data-id="cbbc2d4" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 1140px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<img alt="" class="attachment-large size-large" height="266" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" src="https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/MG_0018.jpg" srcset="https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/MG_0018.jpg 1000w, https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/MG_0018-300x200.jpg 300w, https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/MG_0018-768x512.jpg 768w" style="border-radius: 0px; border: none; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="400" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Fast Forward to 2018. Lu Xinjian, now an extremely successful artist on the international </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">stage, </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">collaborates with Nike on a remarkable project: transferring new City DNA designs to a</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">limited </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">edition shoe, initially one especially designed for the current marathon world record holder </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Eliud </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Kipchoge. Asked about the connection between artist and runner, Lu explained: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">‘He runs through </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">cities, crosses them, lives them, takes them step by step. Instead, I paint the cities</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> – not only the </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">shapes on the canvas, but also the speed, the noise, the atmosphere.’ </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Only 300 pairs of shoes were </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">produced, released at the first Nike flagship store in Shanghai. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Their designs are based on the map of </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Shanghai, with the Huangpu River at its centre. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Two pairs of these extraordinary shoes are now in the </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">research library at Dangrove, evidence of </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">the enduring link between contemporary art and design that </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">has been embraced by Chinese artists. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Here, researchers can find interviews, plans and diagrams in </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">the archive, books and catalogues </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">in the library, and of course the works themselves in the collection.</span></div>
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<img alt="" class="attachment-large size-large" height="266" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" src="https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/MG_0021.jpg" srcset="https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/MG_0021.jpg 1000w, https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/MG_0021-300x200.jpg 300w, https://www.dangrove.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/MG_0021-768x512.jpg 768w" style="border-radius: 0px; border: none; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="400" /></div>
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Check out the whole website<a href="https://www.dangrove.net/" target="_blank"> HERE</a> - navigate to the 'Dangrove' section for information about the </div>
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White Rabbit Collection and its archive.</div>
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An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-73113927530101150352018-12-31T17:51:00.000-08:002020-04-07T01:19:37.064-07:00This is not a List: My Year in Chinese Art<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yang Fudong film set - a new epic in production at the Long Museum, Shanghai, April 2017</td></tr>
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As I've been swimming my (very slow) laps of the local pool over successive lazy Christmas holiday days, the splashing of the water drowned out by the relentless hum of cicadas, I've been thinking back over the year's highs and lows, achievements and regrets. In particular, as I drag myself up and down the pool, I've been remembering inspiring encounters with Chinese artists, and with their work seen in galleries, museums and studios. This year I've also had many opportunities to share ideas about Chinese contemporary art in some strange and wonderful locations. It would be impossible to rank these experiences into a 'Best of 2018' list, so what follows is a highly personal stream-of-consciousness musing on the year behind us.<br />
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During an April trip to China I was invited to speak on a panel at the Yenching Global Symposium at Peking University (better known as Beida), talking about the generational differences between older and younger artists in China, and my thoughts about how Chinese art has changed in the last 20 or 30 years. Moderated by Kaiser Kuo, founder of the <a href="https://supchina.com/series/sinica/" target="_blank">Sinica Podcast </a>and editor at <a href="https://supchina.com/author/kaiserkuo/" target="_blank">SupChina</a> - and a rock star/writer/broadcaster/provocateur whom I have admired for years - it was an initially nerve-wracking but ultimately exhilarating experience. In the same week I gave a talk in the odd but beautiful surroundings of the Dongyue Temple Art Museum to a mixed Chinese and non-Chinese audience, and then to a large group of students at China Women's University, where I spoke about my book 'Half the Sky'.<br />
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In Beijing, observing the constant reshaping of the city, the bricking-up of ramshackle bars and shops, the 'greyification' of the hutongs, and the dramatic changes seen even in my regular haunt of Xingfu Cun Lu and its little shops and restaurants, I travelled to meet artists every day, recording interviews for the White Rabbit Collection/Judith Neilson Archive. From young artists <b>Chen Zhe </b>and <b>Geng Xue </b>to pioneers such as <b>Wang Jianwei </b>and <b>Feng Mengbo</b>, every conversation was filled with rich and often unexpected treasures of information. Seeing the scale of <b>Sun Xun</b>'s studio production was fascinating, especially following the exhibition of his extraordinary 'Republic of Jing Bang' at the White Rabbit Gallery, and prior to his major exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Surrounded by ink drawings of life-size characters in the feature-length film he and his team are working on, we talked about art and life, and his journey from the sooty, smog-filled northern coal-producing city of his birth to the art academy in Hangzhou, and to his current life as a globe-trotting artist.</div>
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One rainy afternoon was spent recording a two-hour conversation with <b>Shang Yang</b>, discovering his slow-burning anger at the destruction of the Chinese landscape and the pollution of its air, soil and water in the name of 'progress'. For me, artists like Shang Yang represent the extraordinary resilience of the Chinese people: punished for years for his support of students in 1989, stripped of his teaching position and other roles and honours at Wuhan University, he continued to work, and remained steadfast and uncompromising in his subject matter. Now in his 60s, Shang had only two solo exhibitions in China until his New York show in September. I wrote about that exhibition for The Art Life - click <a href="http://theartlife.com.au/2018/forever-young-three-chinese-artists-in-manhattan/" target="_blank">HERE</a> if you want to read more.<br />
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The drive back from Shang Yang's studio to the northern centre of Beijing was hair-raising in a violent thunderstorm, the streets running with deep water and the traffic a cacophany of blasting horns and shouting drivers. After three hours in the car, and already quite dark at 7.00pm, my driver reluctantly agreed to let me out as soon as I vaguely recognised the surrounding geography, so I could walk the rest of the way. The next morning he told me it had taken him another three hours to get home. </div>
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Perhaps the biggest thrill for me in Beijing, though, was meeting <b>Xu Bing</b>. I had taught students about his work since discovering his 'New English Calligraphy' installations at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in the late 1990s, and I was completely overwhelmed when I saw his two enormous phoenixes hanging in New York's Cathedral of St John the Divine in 2014. In contrast to the arrogance that often accompanies art megastardom (no names, no pack drill) Xu appears humble and unassuming, talking readily and revealing an ironic sense of humour. After our long conversation about his film 'Dragonfly Eyes' we drank beer and ate spicy noodles at his local Sichuan restaurant in a shopping mall near the studio.<br />
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Of all the exhibitions in Beijing galleries large and small, two standouts were <b>Liu Wei'</b>s monumental installation and <b>Zhu Jinshi</b>'s 'Ship of Time', now in the White Rabbit Collection, at Tang Contemporary. Both were extraordinary and breath-taking, dramatically defining the exhibition space. At Long March Space Liu's mechanical planets slowly orbited the room and I could not tear myself away.<br />
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The next week, in Shanghai, my encounters continued, in studio visits with <b>Jin Feng, Ni Youyu, Liu Jianhua </b>and <b>Chen Yujun</b>. Once again I had the opportunity to meet an artist whose work I had taught since the 1990s. <b>Gu Wenda </b>was fortuitously in Shanghai and we were able to meet at his studio. I confess that at moments like these I feel as if I am inhabiting someone else's life - it is such a privilege to be able to engage these artists in conversations about their life and work. And what extraordinary stories I get to hear! Gu Wenda told me about his studies with Maryn Varbanov in Hangzhou, about his work being banned from an exhibition in Xi'an in 1986, and about his early days as a struggling Chinese artist in New York, as well as about his commissioned work for the White Rabbit Collection, a series of marble rocks inscribed with hybrid, partly invented characters relating to the 24 seasons of the traditional agricultural calendar.</div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">In many years of meeting Chinese artists I've seen a lot of remarkable and impressive studios, but Chen Yujun's transformation of a cavernous former factory has created an especially calm and beautiful space - old, weathered doors and windows rescued from demolition sites have been used to partition the enormous concrete spaces into areas for working, exhibiting, reading, chatting and drinking tea. </span></div>
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I enjoyed a long talk with<b> Liu Jianhua</b> about his use of porcelain. My last encounter with Liu was when he led the 'Everyday Legend' Research team on a field trip to Jingdezhen, where he had worked and studied from boyhood. To see the website of this research project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, click <a href="https://everydaylegend.org/about/" target="_blank">HERE.</a></div>
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Of all the many exhibitions seen in Shanghai, I especially loved <b>Yang Shen</b>'s 'Garden Oddity' at MadeIn Gallery: surreal juxtapositions of images drawn from cartoons and children's textbooks, sci-fi comics and animations and the strangest depths of the artist's imagination.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVcsgq3OuVkLcv1IY_aPcKzNpJh_cos2bH-9R02atPOShz1ndqDNGtWhCps7t6Hs4ZxCD1Hvn8urOHDbbGBkmzUoBoIplAf4qaT1uScET-ZFvHXuafxvR7nAt9Otk4uG_3Q1vyWNekn5w/s1600/Yang+Shen+Exhibition_1_April+2018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVcsgq3OuVkLcv1IY_aPcKzNpJh_cos2bH-9R02atPOShz1ndqDNGtWhCps7t6Hs4ZxCD1Hvn8urOHDbbGBkmzUoBoIplAf4qaT1uScET-ZFvHXuafxvR7nAt9Otk4uG_3Q1vyWNekn5w/s400/Yang+Shen+Exhibition_1_April+2018.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Back home, work continued on the establishment of the new <b>Dangrove White Rabbit Collection Research Library</b> and the archive, which has been a joy and a delight; I am lucky to work with a fabulous team of colleagues in a beautiful space. We welcomed our first groups of students from various universities to engage directly with the objects in the collection and the archival materials provided by its artists, and continued to film interviews with artists visiting Sydney, including <b>Gonkar Gyatso, Wang Guofeng, Cao Hui, Sun Xun, Yang Wei-Lin.</b> and (forthcoming)<b> Hou I-Ting, Guo Jian </b>and<b> Gao Xiaowu</b>. The wonderful painters<b> Yu Hong</b> and <b>Liu Xiaodong</b> brought piles of books and catalogues for the library when they arrived in town for a ceremonial switching off of Liu's 'painting machine' installation at White Rabbit Gallery. Liu Xiaodong's interview can be seen <a href="https://vimeo.com/304071694" target="_blank">HERE</a> on the White Rabbit Collection Vimeo site, where you will also find many others.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy1d3KMFVDyu88Ziyom_N-RfUiBcZm3b1no_BgnE-HBzADB6CW7J_zNRnOIwWvaA045R_Jiv9FJbvLtT2rVaUupHpW8J1Fhdtv0nP8UTnj8tAbwvha5GFG10gDeTMRMN67vVPgzAGuOsc/s1600/mmexport1532503799224.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy1d3KMFVDyu88Ziyom_N-RfUiBcZm3b1no_BgnE-HBzADB6CW7J_zNRnOIwWvaA045R_Jiv9FJbvLtT2rVaUupHpW8J1Fhdtv0nP8UTnj8tAbwvha5GFG10gDeTMRMN67vVPgzAGuOsc/s400/mmexport1532503799224.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Later in the year, in New York, I visited <b>Lin Yan</b> in her Long Island studio, went to the launch of <b>Barbara Pollack</b>'s new book 'Brand New Art from China' (and greatly enjoyed my conversations with her), and saw exhibitions of <b>Zhang Xiaogang, Shang Yang,</b> and<b> Liao Guohe.</b> The Guggenheim show from young star curator <b>Xiaoyu Weng</b> <span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242; font-family: "lato" , "arial" , "helvetica"; font-size: 16px;">f</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242; font-size: 16px;">eatured</span><strong style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #424242; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Cao Fei</strong><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242; font-size: 16px;">’s evocation of a post-human future, </span><strong style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #424242; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wong Ping</strong><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242; font-size: 16px;">’s fabulously eccentric digital tale of an elderly porno addict and new works by </span><strong style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #424242; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Lin Yilin</strong><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242; font-size: 16px;">, </span><strong style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #424242; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Samson Young</strong><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242; font-size: 16px;"> and </span><strong style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #424242; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Duan Jianyu</strong><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242; font-size: 16px;">. The famous koan, ‘one hand clapping’, says the Guggenheim, is a metaphor for how meaning is destabilised </span><strong style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #424242; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/one-hand-clapping" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #193441; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px !important; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">in a globalised world</a></strong><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242; font-size: 16px;">.</span></span><br />
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Now, on the first day of a new year that we all hope will be kinder and less crazy, albeit perhaps without too much optimism, I think about how lucky I am to spend so much time with artists. Art continues to matter in this scary world. To finish with a quote from art critic Jerry Saltz:<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Thank you all the artists I’ve ever known who made me think the way I think."</span>An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-25684039706484812072018-11-02T02:37:00.002-07:002018-11-02T02:37:16.611-07:00One Hand Clapping: Chinese Art in New York<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGjOCP-a4P-lNlF2Zi6FO6gdDNNzkQ9a0FTN4Z0EWxiepZ4pOS6xE5qGNfy1m1biX5QbuWa8QjPP0o9DjXHANZ5PUeRbzJReoTI2GzqE1VyzgWWqj1uUndv4vHLG3IsGgzD8v0pOdbVh8/s1600/20180919_152700.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGjOCP-a4P-lNlF2Zi6FO6gdDNNzkQ9a0FTN4Z0EWxiepZ4pOS6xE5qGNfy1m1biX5QbuWa8QjPP0o9DjXHANZ5PUeRbzJReoTI2GzqE1VyzgWWqj1uUndv4vHLG3IsGgzD8v0pOdbVh8/s400/20180919_152700.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zhang Xiaogang at Pace Gallery New York</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I've been a long time away from this blog, I know. Just one more thing to feel guilty about: those nuns taught me well! </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">In any case, self-flagellation aside, my September holiday in New York was so filled with Chinese art that it became what used to be called a 'busman's holiday' (for millennials that means '</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">a holiday or form of recreation that involves doing the same thing that one does at work.') I am sure there must be a Chinese idiom for this as there is for everything else, but I just don't know that one!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The New York gallery and museum scene was so filled with events and exhibitions relating to China that I wrote this piece for <a href="https://theartlife.com.au/2018/forever-young-three-chinese-artists-in-manhattan/" target="_blank">The Art Life.</a> And the focus on Chinese art helped to stop me picking at mental and emotional scabs caused by the hideousness of the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination and the fact that Donald Trump was in town. </span></span><br />
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Forever Young: Three Chinese Artists in Manhattan</h1>
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Anticipating a September holiday in New York, I imagined strolling through rooms hung with the monumental canvases of the giant egos of the mid-century moderns. Little did I expect my longed-for week in Manhattan to be focused on the generational shifts and transformations that now characterise contemporary art from China. But such is the nature of the global art world.</h1>
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From solo shows in Chelsea to Song Dynasty shan shui paintings (literally, ‘mountain and water’ and the Chinese term for landscape) at the Metropolitan Museum; from a book launch by celebrated critic and curator<strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Barbara Pollack</strong> to <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">One Hand Clapping</em>, young curator<strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Xiaoyu Weng</strong>’s latest exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, New York was most unusually focused on China. The Guggenheim show featured<strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Cao Fei</strong>’s evocation of a post-human future, <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wong Ping</strong>’s fabulously eccentric digital tale of an elderly porno addict and interesting new works by <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Lin Yilin</strong>, <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Samson Young</strong> and <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Duan Jianyu</strong>. The famous koan, ‘one hand clapping’, says the Guggenheim, is a metaphor for how meaning is destabilised <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/one-hand-clapping" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #193441; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px !important; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">in a globalised world</a></strong>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs7JtnfYBN04zMkUOPHrr7-3Gs4lp58zCyLzcyYysaBfC073IjI1HyDf0U2Pj5yzzn9533d-wk9dOSKLMxPXxZOdFFDfXtca2Grc2QyL2YbANwO79BgunR-OOoFi8mlGMFLElOhyphenhyphenXvMfI/s1600/20180920_184335.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs7JtnfYBN04zMkUOPHrr7-3Gs4lp58zCyLzcyYysaBfC073IjI1HyDf0U2Pj5yzzn9533d-wk9dOSKLMxPXxZOdFFDfXtca2Grc2QyL2YbANwO79BgunR-OOoFi8mlGMFLElOhyphenhyphenXvMfI/s400/20180920_184335.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Barbara Pollack and curator Xiaoyu Weng discuss Pollack's book 'Brand New Art From China' <br />at James Cohan Gallery</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Following the theme of a globalised world, </span><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/brand-new-art-from-china-barbara-pollack/prod9781788313131.html" target="_blank">Brand New Art From China</a></em><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> is art critic and curator Barbara Pollack’s second book, following her 2010</span><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Wild Wild East: The Adventures of an American Art Critic in China</em><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">. Book events to mark its launch were held at two major New York galleries in September. Pollack coined the phrase ‘post-passport generation’ to describe younger artists, often educated outside China, whose eyes are turned firmly to the global rather than the local. They are sometimes categorised as ‘post-80s’, or ‘post-internet’, labels that many detest. They often (but not always) reject obvious tropes of ‘Chineseness’ in favour of an international visual language.</span></div>
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<a href="http://theartlife.com.au/2018/forever-young-three-chinese-artists-in-manhattan/lgh_burn-witches_2018/" rel="attachment wp-att-13958" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #193441; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px !important; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13958" height="529" sizes="(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px" src="https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/LGH_Burn-Witches_2018-550x529.jpg" srcset="https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/LGH_Burn-Witches_2018-550x529.jpg 550w, https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/LGH_Burn-Witches_2018-300x289.jpg 300w" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; display: block; font: inherit; height: auto; margin: 0px auto 12px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="550" /></a></div>
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Liao Guohe, <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Burn Witches</em>, 2018, image courtesy Boers-Li Gallery, New York</div>
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This post-Mao generation, whose work has been seen in Sydney in recent exhibitions featuring <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sun Xun</strong>, <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Lu Yang</strong>, <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tianzhuo Chen</strong> and <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Geng Xue</strong>, was represented in the New York commercial gallery scene by <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Liao Guohe</strong>. Born in 1977, just after the end of the Cultural Revolution, he is a harbinger of the work of the new generation. Liao has cultivated a constructed persona, deliberately confusing hapless biographers with a CV featuring ‘alternative facts’. He was born in Calcutta, he says – or maybe in Changsha – and educated in California, or maybe not. His deliberately crude canvases and sheets of unstretched fabric in <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Burn Witches</em> at Boers-Li’s Manhattan space are covered with idiosyncratic symbols and scrawled Chinese characters.<br />
Sometimes described as the chief exponent of ‘bad painting’ in China, Liao’s scatological works are often very funny, but also filled with overwhelming anger at the injustices and absurdities of modern life. Painted mostly on cheap lengths of fabric purchased at Beijing wholesale markets (a response to the third forced demolition of his studio in the constant reconstruction of the city), they feature smiley faces and the repeated character ‘gan’, which may be translated as ‘work’ but is also obscene slang. Like jittery internet memes and the constant contortions of Chinese users of the ‘Chinternet’ to evade government censors, these paintings reflect Chinese society in coded ways.</div>
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<a href="http://theartlife.com.au/2018/new-york-postcard-bad-news-its-the-year-3018/thumbnail_13-zhang-xiaogang-mirror-no-2-2018/" rel="attachment wp-att-13940" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #193441; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px !important; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13940" height="434" sizes="(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px" src="https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/thumbnail_13-Zhang-Xiaogang-Mirror-No.2-2018-550x434.jpg" srcset="https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/thumbnail_13-Zhang-Xiaogang-Mirror-No.2-2018-550x434.jpg 550w, https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/thumbnail_13-Zhang-Xiaogang-Mirror-No.2-2018-300x237.jpg 300w, https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/thumbnail_13-Zhang-Xiaogang-Mirror-No.2-2018.jpg 608w" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; display: block; font: inherit; height: auto; margin: 0px auto 12px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="550" /></a></div>
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Zhang Xiaogang, <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mirror No. 2</em>, 2018. Oil on paper with paper and cotton rope collage, 142 x 112 cm, Courtesy of Pace Gallery New York.</div>
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<a href="http://theartlife.com.au/2018/new-york-postcard-bad-news-its-the-year-3018/thumbnail_11-zhang-xiaogang-bathtub-2018/" rel="attachment wp-att-13938" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #193441; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px !important; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13938" height="367" sizes="(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px" src="https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/thumbnail_11-Zhang-Xiaogang-Bathtub-2018-550x367.jpg" srcset="https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/thumbnail_11-Zhang-Xiaogang-Bathtub-2018-550x367.jpg 550w, https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/thumbnail_11-Zhang-Xiaogang-Bathtub-2018-300x200.jpg 300w, https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/thumbnail_11-Zhang-Xiaogang-Bathtub-2018.jpg 640w" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; display: block; font: inherit; height: auto; margin: 0px auto 12px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="550" /></a></div>
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Zhang Xiaogang, <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">B</em><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">athtub</em>, 2018. Oil on paper with magazine and cotton rope collage, 144 x 203 cm. Courtesy of Pace Gallery New York</div>
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In contrast<a href="https://www.pacegallery.com/artists/528/zhang-xiaogang" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #193441; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px !important; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, Pace Gallery showed new work by Zhang Xiaogang</strong> </a>(b. 1958), one of the major figures from the generation of painters who exploded onto the international art market in the 1990s. Political Pop and Cynical Realist artists created bleakly satirical images as a response to their experiences of the Cultural Revolution and their unease at the tidal wave of western influences transforming Chinese society. Sometimes unfairly accused of ‘self-orientalising’, creating an art ‘brand’ to seduce foreign curators and collectors, artists such as Zhang now struggle to break free of socialist imagery. The works in this show, painted on paper with hand-torn, uneven edges and layers of collage, represent that shift. They are still, however, directly related to his famous ‘Bloodline’ series inspired by melancholy family photographs from the Cultural Revolution.<br />
In some cases, Zhang’s earlier work is referenced directly. Mirror No. 2 recalls a locket opened to reveal its secret photographs, or a mirror that reflects a memory. On the right oval a woman, perhaps Zhang Xiaogang’s mother, is painted in sombre monochrome except for the artist’s characteristic patch of translucent red, like a birthmark. On the right a bourgeois chandelier hangs over a bathtub, against a background of mottled wallpaper. The bathtub image recurs too, in a painting depicting three small children seated in a bath filled to the brim, their heads held above rubber rings, their gaze averted. It is a disturbing image, suggesting institutional life in hospitals or orphanages. Another painting depicts thermos flasks of the kind now acquired as nostalgic souvenirs, but once holding hot water in every Chinese home and workplace. For Zhang Xiaogang, the melancholia and recurring memories of the ‘Bloodline’ series remain, even to the threads that meander across the surface of the works.</div>
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<a href="http://theartlife.com.au/2018/forever-young-three-chinese-artists-in-manhattan/hyperfocal-0-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-13956" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #193441; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px !important; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="size-large wp-image-13956" height="154" sizes="(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px" src="https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Shang-Yang-Decayed-Landscape-Number-2-550x154.jpg" srcset="https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Shang-Yang-Decayed-Landscape-Number-2-550x154.jpg 550w, https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Shang-Yang-Decayed-Landscape-Number-2-300x84.jpg 300w" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="550" /></a></div>
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Shang Yang, <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Decayed Landscape No.2</em></strong>, 2018. Mixed media on canvas,122 x 436 cm (48 x 171 3/4 in), Courtesy of the artist and Chambers Fine Art</div>
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<a href="http://theartlife.com.au/2018/forever-young-three-chinese-artists-in-manhattan/larger/" rel="attachment wp-att-13960" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #193441; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px !important; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13960" height="120" sizes="(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px" src="https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/larger-550x120.jpg" srcset="https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/larger-550x120.jpg 550w, https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/larger-300x66.jpg 300w, https://theartlife.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/larger.jpg 1024w" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; display: block; font: inherit; height: auto; margin: 0px auto 12px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="550" /></a></div>
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Shang Yang,<strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Decayed Landscape No.3</em></strong><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, </strong>2018, Mixed media on canvas, 168 x 777 cm (66 x 305 1/2 in). Courtesy of the artist and Chambers Fine Art</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.chambersfineart.com/artists/shang-yang?view=slider#2" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #193441; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px !important; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At Chambers Fine Art a third solo show featured an artist of an older generation</a></strong>. As yet little known outside China, <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shang Yang</strong> was born in 1942 and graduated from the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in 1965, where he had been trained in the mandatory Soviet-style Socialist Realism. As an impoverished young artist he could barely afford to buy paint or canvas, prompting his use of found materials and bitumen, a practice he continues. I met Shang in Beijing in April, and in a long conversation over cups of tea in his studio he said, ‘I think, looking back at my career, I have done only two things. One thing is to paint water, one thing is to paint mountains.’</div>
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Shang’s large canvases, representing scarred, damaged landscapes, suggest looming environmental disasters. A rich seam of art historical references underpins his mature style; Shang loves Song Dynasty painter <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fan Kuan</strong>’s lyrical images of mountains and streams, but also references<strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Anselm Kiefer</strong> and <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cy Twombly</strong>. Seamlessly embedding his deep knowledge of Chinese and western art history and aesthetics into his own practice, he works tirelessly in his Beijing studio, driven by dismay and sorrow at the wasteful consumerist society he now inhabits. In April, looking at the canvases arrayed around the walls of his studio, I asked him, ‘Do you see your work as a wake-up call, a warning to humanity about where we are heading if we don’t take heed of our relationship with nature?’ Shang replied: ‘Yes, that is my purpose. I have been focusing on this theme for two or three decades. I want to warn the whole world.’</div>
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Shang Yang sees the damage wrought to the natural environment, in China and everywhere, as an irreversible catastrophe. Since the 1990s he has obsessively painted totemic mountains: the <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dong Qichang Project</em> series <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(Dong Qichang Project 38</em> is now in the White Rabbit Collection) and the <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Decayed Landscap</em>e emerged from his dawning realisation that the rapid transformation of Chinese society into a market economy requiring ever-increasing urbanisation would have unforeseen consequences. D<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ecayed Landscape No.2</em> reveals Shang’s characteristic syntax of triangular volcano-like forms, the essence of ‘mountain’, like a pictograph. It’s a powerful, minimalist language of form and mark, an almost brutal surface that yet suggests immense sorrow and regret. The empty spaces in Shang’s vast canvases are as important as the dark, brooding mountains.<br />
The work of three artists born into very different periods of modern Chinese history evokes an overwhelming melancholy, as well as an emphatic avowal of the continuing significance of painting in contemporary art. The idea, often expressed now, that the old guard of artists in China are no longer relevant and should move over to make way for new blood strikes false. Shang Yang’s compelling canvases distill a lifetime dedicated to painting, experimentation, teaching, study and clear-eyed observation of his society. Perhaps the last word goes to a collaged paper scrap in one of Zhang Xiaogang’s canvases – a newspaper clipping reporting on <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Bob Dylan</strong>’s 30th anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden, with the headline ‘Forever Young’.<br />
See my other articles in The Art Life <a href="http://theartlife.com.au/author/luise-guest/" target="_blank">HERE</a><br />
Check back soon: at some point in the near future I'll write about my visit to Lin Yan's studio in Long Island City.</div>
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An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-90022500724556036132018-07-27T05:29:00.000-07:002018-07-27T05:29:09.849-07:00The measure of all things: learning Chinese measure wordsI'm re-posting a wonderful piece by Madeleine Thien from the Guardian, about measure words in Chinese. Having just finished 2 hours of Chinese homework that left me more than usually bamboozled and despondent, reading this made me remember how much I love this wonderful and infuriating language, where every character seems to have several possible meanings and one meaning can often be conveyed by several different characters. Measure words are the bane of the Chinese language learner but they give you a glimpse of a whole different way of seeing the world. I rarely remember the correct ones in conversation and resort to the foreigner's all-purpose 'ge'. But anyhow, read and enjoy. (And also read Thien's marvellous book 'Do Not Say We Have Nothing').<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">tiáo </span><span style="font-family: "MS Mincho";">条</span></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</figure><div style="background-color: white; color: #121212; font-family: "Guardian Text Egyptian Web", Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; margin-bottom: 1rem; padding: 0px;">
How do we categorise or classify things, thereby imagining them as one thing and not another? Unlike French or German, gender does not provide categories in Chinese, which groups things by something else entirely: shape.</div>
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Tiáo is one of at least 140 classifiers and measure words in the Chinese language. It’s a measure word for long-narrow-shape things. For example, bed sheets, fish, ships, bars of soap, cartons of cigarettes, avenues, trousers, dragons, rivers.</div>
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These measure words embrace the ways in which shape imprints itself upon us, while playfully noticing the relationships between all things. The measure word kē 颗 (kernel) is used for small, roundish things, or objects that appear small: pearls, teeth, bullets and seeds, as well as distant stars and satellites.</div>
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Gēn 根, for thin-slender objects, will appear before needles, bananas, fried chicken legs, lollipops, chopsticks, guitar strings and matches, among a thousand other things. “Flower-like” objects gather under the word duo 朵: bunches of flowers, clouds, mushrooms and ears.</div>
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It’s endlessly fascinating to me how we attempt to group anything or anyone together, and how formations change. Philosopher Wang Lianqing charts how tiáo<em> </em>was first applied to objects we can pick up by hand (belts, branches, string) and then expanded outward (streets, rivers, mountain ranges).</div>
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And finally<strong> </strong>tiáo extended metaphorically. News and events are also classified with tiáo, perhaps because news was written in long vertical lines, and events, as the 7th-century scholar Yan Shigu wrote, arrive in lists “one by one, as (arranging) long-shaped twigs”.</div>
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Onwards the idea broadened, so that an idea or opinion is also “long-shaped news,” and in the 14th century, tiáo was used for spirit, which was imagined as straight, high and lofty. In language, another geometry is at work, gathering recurrences through time and space. </div>
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<b>The whole article can be seen <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/27/10-of-the-best-words-in-the-world-that-dont-translate-into-english?CMP=fb_gu" target="_blank">HERE</a></b></div>
An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-5550379433247663992018-06-03T01:39:00.000-07:002018-06-04T01:49:45.612-07:00Sworn Sisters: 结拜姊妹 I've been a long time away from this blog, regretfully: writing full time about Chinese contemporary art, and (because, clearly, I'm insane) undertaking a PhD on top of that full-time job has taken all the time I have. There are not enough hours in the day. Sometimes lately I have to remind myself to breathe. But....<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQK8cxYlWi9LSnua3XCNUHbgozr5bGoh3y7CzI_mzvIftTUErXa1Zl0bod9DoMYUObB8G64bMBsqMtKwrEmQYhzSz_qm3LVCwebyc1XEm_xEnDeGWvVjcvDsxU015Xw8fNIc_FYPqfYvw/s1600/Luo+Yang+Xie+Yue+%2528from+the+series+GIRLS%2529+2015+digital+print+on+fine+art+paper+70x100cm+%2528unique+edition%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1008" data-original-width="1600" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQK8cxYlWi9LSnua3XCNUHbgozr5bGoh3y7CzI_mzvIftTUErXa1Zl0bod9DoMYUObB8G64bMBsqMtKwrEmQYhzSz_qm3LVCwebyc1XEm_xEnDeGWvVjcvDsxU015Xw8fNIc_FYPqfYvw/s400/Luo+Yang+Xie+Yue+%2528from+the+series+GIRLS%2529+2015+digital+print+on+fine+art+paper+70x100cm+%2528unique+edition%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Luo Yang, 'Xie Yue' (from the series GIRLS) 2015 digital print on fine art paper 70x100cm (unique edition)<br />
image courtesy Vermilion Art</td></tr>
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An event last week in Sydney is not something that I can let pass without comment. <a href="http://www.vermilionart.com.au/" target="_blank">Vermilion Art </a>bravely showed the first exhibition of Chinese women artists in Australia, curated by former Australian Ambassador to China, Geoff Raby. I say 'bravely' because the history of all-women exhibitions inside and outside of China is contested and complicated. And I say that, too, as someone who has curated one: 'Half the Sky' at Beijing's Red Gate Gallery in 2016 was an exhibition I organised with Tony Scott to coincide with the launch of my book of the same name. I had decided that the only possible curatorial premise was a very simple one: a selection of interesting work by women who featured in my book. I did not apply any over-arching conceptual premise to connect them, although several possible themes and tendencies did emerge. Most of these were ignored by reporters, though, who only wanted to ask me about my views of the 'leftover women' phenomenon and what people in Australia thought of it.Sigh.<br />
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In the 1990s in China there were a number of all-women exhibitions that left artists a little bruised and critics a little bemused. The reasons are sufficient for a whole doctoral thesis, but suffice it to say that one artist said to me, 'They don't have exhibitions and call them "exhibitions of mens' work", they're just exhibitions! Why should women be any different?' I don't agree with this, because of course the point is that there are still far too few women artists represented in the big curated shows - including the dismal statistic of 9 women in more than 72 artists in the recent Guggenheim exhibition, 'Art And China After 1989: Theater of the World'. But the conundrum of '<i>n<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">ü</span>xing yishu</i>' (womens' art) and what the term might imply is at the heart of my own research. Like everything else in China, it's complicated.<br />
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At Vermilion Art, though, 'Sworn Sisters' navigates these potential pitfalls in interesting ways, presenting the work of 9 very diverse artists who yet strangely complement each other. Xiao Lu, whose reputation as a 'bad girl' was forever cemented by her notorious performance in 1989 at the China/Avant-garde exhibition in Beijing, when she fired a pistol into her own installation, is represented by photographs and video of a recent performance work. No less transgressive, this performance resulted in a serious injury to the artist's hand as she cut and hacked her way out of a block of ice which gradually became stained with her blood.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7eEcbDQVBaNYIPeeywUPaeAjcONbcRGPtHTsi3SVOrtnh_1bpqiRGS9NXLvtzcVicX-FiMcMix74OpgetNwgNPOifPi_0DiiiOrLHChaUINDKsVUCkZtLjAk3vIh77AJmnbytHO8khGA/s1600/Xiao+Lu+Polar+Performance+art+23.10.2016+C-print+120x80cm+%252829%2529+Vermilion+Art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7eEcbDQVBaNYIPeeywUPaeAjcONbcRGPtHTsi3SVOrtnh_1bpqiRGS9NXLvtzcVicX-FiMcMix74OpgetNwgNPOifPi_0DiiiOrLHChaUINDKsVUCkZtLjAk3vIh77AJmnbytHO8khGA/s640/Xiao+Lu+Polar+Performance+art+23.10.2016+C-print+120x80cm+%252829%2529+Vermilion+Art.jpg" width="433" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Xiao Lu, 'Polar' documentation of performance, 2016, C-print, image courtesy Vermilion Art<br />
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'Polar' is one of a series of recent performances that employ ink, water and ice - and sometimes all three at once. They follow some years of the artist's struggle to come to terms with childlessness, menopause and ageing. Xiao underwent 'Tui Na' massage and wrote Tang Dynasty poetry with medicinal herbs, practising calligraphy every day and immersing herself once more in Chinese aesthetics and philosophical traditions. Here, though, ink and water are used to quite different ends, in punishing durational performances which are often very beautiful, albeit sometimes violent or self-destructive. The materiality of ink and water is particularly Chinese, and Xiao Lu is intentionally referring to the yin and yang binaries of Daoist philosophy. In the work below (not shown in the exhibition), frozen blocks of Chinese ink and water slowly melted and dripped over the white-robed figure of the artist, with photographs of the earlier blood-stained performance in the background.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWiqh1qg-CsWv0dv99t9m7HSBFj2piFU4FTZZYzlNlVcOHy3emg-Yoy5RVbNwQ6r5W2h7I7QKnhUVLQgbo1U8E3J_hZT3v2JBQ67zq6LdovuZsMtAnX5pD-8qDiHrSzGr1MttiUqxFsHQ/s1600/%25E3%2580%258A%25E6%2582%25AC%25E5%2586%25B0%25E3%2580%258B-5.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWiqh1qg-CsWv0dv99t9m7HSBFj2piFU4FTZZYzlNlVcOHy3emg-Yoy5RVbNwQ6r5W2h7I7QKnhUVLQgbo1U8E3J_hZT3v2JBQ67zq6LdovuZsMtAnX5pD-8qDiHrSzGr1MttiUqxFsHQ/s400/%25E3%2580%258A%25E6%2582%25AC%25E5%2586%25B0%25E3%2580%258B-5.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Xiao Lu, Hanging Ice (悬冰), 2017, performance and installation, image courtesy the artist</td></tr>
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The title of the exhibition alludes to the semi-secret 'women's language' of Nüshu, a script form once taught by mothers to their daughters in remote villages of Jiangyong County in Hunan Province - and, incidentally, another key element of my PhD research. Nüshu was used to embroider poems onto fans, belts, and into 'Third Day Missives', books given to young brides by their 'Sworn Sisters' as they left their parents and their village for an uncertain future. Men could not read Nüshu, and, according to the scholar Fei-Wen Liu, were not tempted to try: it was scorned as a vernacular for mere women, confined to the home, their feet bound, and denied education. It is tempting to think that the work of these contemporary artists is another kind of female coded language, similarly designed to represent aspects of female experience.<br />
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Other works in 'Sworn Sisters' include a print of one of Chen Qingqing's ethereal robes made of dried grasses, and a Joseph Cornell-style weathered timber drawer containing a little naked plastic doll, her blonde head weighed down as if by the intolerable weight of memory. Called <i>The Long March</i> (2014), it recalls Qingqing's own dramatic life story: sent away from her family to cadre school during the Cultural Revolution she drove tractors, worked as assistant to a barefoot doctor, and much later became a corporate executive working in Germany, before returning to China to join the burgeoning contemporary art movement centred on the 798 art district. You can see my story about Qingqing here:<a href="https://theculturetrip.com/asia/china/articles/the-sculptures-of-qing-qing-between-memory-and-metaphor/" target="_blank">Between Memory and Metaphor</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJcZw7eOUMvXM_OOtqvoEQqudQzYDmjeE0YRjQEqaT0iA86hCPsvyZ7jRWlwsGn5qDrO2nDz7_xSwn40G-hICy7ww-bIkJQibccJ2wjNfBn3QBzI5JayaRHBFkWp0gaUIwTSzeltmLI0c/s1600/Chen+Qingqing+A+long+march+2014+installation+54x30x15cm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1202" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJcZw7eOUMvXM_OOtqvoEQqudQzYDmjeE0YRjQEqaT0iA86hCPsvyZ7jRWlwsGn5qDrO2nDz7_xSwn40G-hICy7ww-bIkJQibccJ2wjNfBn3QBzI5JayaRHBFkWp0gaUIwTSzeltmLI0c/s640/Chen+Qingqing+A+long+march+2014+installation+54x30x15cm.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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It is wonderful to see more work from rising star Geng Xue, following the popular triumph of her installation and animation <i>Mr Sea</i> at White Rabbit Gallery in 'Ritual Spirit', an exhibition of her works on paper in the last show at Vermilion Art, and her selection for the Biennale of Sydney, where <i>The Poetry of Michelangelo</i> has been showing at Artspace. The conceptual artist is represented here by two earlier porcelain works; they are delicate and ethereal and I was immensely relieved that somebody in the enormous crowd on the opening night did not somehow back into their vitrines and destroy them!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMuzVbv-Qb-MzFQpaUhCZulYYlTBdbH9APnP7nwSkmnMqr5QapLiUxWSfT7I6zK1UwPKrPfr1HZkzEdabTYvvLDYBFbnQ8QyXyg9OBZx_yPlezGy5EK7hRL4tH0QYnP1CEFkfKSULUwZk/s1600/Geng+Xue+Untitled+2+porcelain+2016+25x25x25cm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1171" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMuzVbv-Qb-MzFQpaUhCZulYYlTBdbH9APnP7nwSkmnMqr5QapLiUxWSfT7I6zK1UwPKrPfr1HZkzEdabTYvvLDYBFbnQ8QyXyg9OBZx_yPlezGy5EK7hRL4tH0QYnP1CEFkfKSULUwZk/s400/Geng+Xue+Untitled+2+porcelain+2016+25x25x25cm.jpg" width="292" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Geng Xue, 'Untitled 2' porcelain 2016 25x25x25cm, image courtesy Vermilion Art</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhheXoQGyEfQWr1worSrPJSPKnugdNm_xgP7L2OF0NOrB5OKoZH1NLCaWVdrXcTUaZiIQuQlLEUqhYipgA-ndLvoiGCm1gb9x0DDb0j1V37SHDkIADXV_rf6z_kZRKctrTqu4OaUBoAdOQ/s1600/Geng+Xue+Untitled+1+porcelain+2015+45x35x35cm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhheXoQGyEfQWr1worSrPJSPKnugdNm_xgP7L2OF0NOrB5OKoZH1NLCaWVdrXcTUaZiIQuQlLEUqhYipgA-ndLvoiGCm1gb9x0DDb0j1V37SHDkIADXV_rf6z_kZRKctrTqu4OaUBoAdOQ/s400/Geng+Xue+Untitled+1+porcelain+2015+45x35x35cm.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Geng Xue, Untitled 1, porcelain 2015 45x35x35cm image courtesy Vermilion Art</td></tr>
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My current obsession is focused on contemporary adaptations and reinventions of Chinese ink, so I particularly enjoyed seeing Cindy Ng's works here. Surprisingly, it was in the British Museum's Chinese rooms that this Macau-born, Beijing based artist first explored the traditions of Chinese ink painting, while she was studying in London.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="background-color: white; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: justify;">In 1996, Ng moved to Taipei to continue her studies in contemporary ink painting and held a solo exhibition at the Taipei Fine Art Museum, before later moving to the mainland to live and work in Beijing. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: justify;">Her work is rooted in her knowledge of Song Dynasty ink painting, but in her paintings, videos and photographs ink is freed from its history as a vehicle for imagery - she experiments with digital forms, and new media as well as painting. Having seen Cindy Ng's work in a Shanghai gallery in 2011, when I was first beginning to study and write about Chinese contemporary art, I was delighted to see these beautiful works once again.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZx02zBtURFOcZniNaKTBMPUyCkH6-udMZNKXmRkB_vZkcFh6WKuZoPhTToGC9ealD2UgBOLEdxSjILFYjTXW477PE_wpxg_omObdbJDinDejMJbs3xjsBEu9dD4UCd3-v-f__QK9Dc3Y/s1600/Cindy+Ng+Ink+1711+2015+ink+acrylic+on+paper+30cm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1564" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZx02zBtURFOcZniNaKTBMPUyCkH6-udMZNKXmRkB_vZkcFh6WKuZoPhTToGC9ealD2UgBOLEdxSjILFYjTXW477PE_wpxg_omObdbJDinDejMJbs3xjsBEu9dD4UCd3-v-f__QK9Dc3Y/s400/Cindy+Ng+Ink+1711+2015+ink+acrylic+on+paper+30cm.jpg" width="390" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cindy Ng 'Ink 1711' 2015, ink acrylic on paper, 30cm, image courtesy Vermilion Art</td></tr>
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In his speech at the opening, which was attended by an astonishing 300 people, and included a performance by an opera singer and by artist Rose Wong, Geoff Raby said that his aim was to 'shatter stereotypes of Chinese women'. In a number of ways the works in 'Sworn Sisters' reveal women from different generations and backgrounds who subvert gendered expectations of what 'womens' art' - and, indeed, 'Chinese art' - might look like. And that can only be a good thing.</div>
An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-77863468744702649712018-03-09T18:15:00.000-08:002018-03-09T18:15:16.590-08:00Body Calligraphy: Ink and Breastmilk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm currently immersed in thinking about materiality and Chinese contemporary art - most especially in relation to ink, and how it is being used in performance works by women artists. So when I saw photographs of work by an artist called Xie Rong in a Hong Kong exhibition '家' at Galerie Huit last year, I wanted to find out more, thinking that I could perhaps interview her in China. I discovered that she lives in London, and goes by the name Echo Morgan. Serendipitously, I was visiting the UK for the first time in many years to present a paper at a conference - yes, about ink, and women artists - so we were able to meet. This account, published in The Art Life last week, was based on a very long conversation over many cups of coffee in the British Library tea room.<br />
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Body Calligraphy: the performance work of Echo Morgan</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCM9Q4HJg5ep-BO-TNPCGzr1Oo521vjp57cwAmY9dQaUqbb42KOnJjT8gdZfG8aC1dl61cqdp4xb7QrRGI3FgScLOt54lwIRUqWYgruH10Fh1yv507jhtZLS1BQXh_7MwekvYIYAhgJ1w/s1600/Image+1+echomorgan_hair_painting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="1000" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCM9Q4HJg5ep-BO-TNPCGzr1Oo521vjp57cwAmY9dQaUqbb42KOnJjT8gdZfG8aC1dl61cqdp4xb7QrRGI3FgScLOt54lwIRUqWYgruH10Fh1yv507jhtZLS1BQXh_7MwekvYIYAhgJ1w/s400/Image+1+echomorgan_hair_painting.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Echo Morgan (Xie Rong), <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hair Painting,</em> 2011, documentation of performance, image courtesy the artist</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Echo Morgan</strong> is the English name of <strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Xie Rong</strong>, a Chengdu-born, London-based, multi-disciplinary artist whose work is underpinned by a dark family story. She works with stereotypes of ‘Chineseness’ and femininity in order to subvert them. Morgan has written texts on her skin using red lipstick, black Chinese ink, white ‘ink’ made from jasmine tea, and her own breast milk after giving birth to her second child. She has played with tropes of Chinoiserie, painting her naked body to resemble blue and white porcelain, and then inviting the audience to violently wash the patterns away by hurling water-filled balloons at her. Her work mines her own experiences of childhood, family, marriage and motherhood – and those of her female ancestors. She is a story-teller.</div>
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Echo Morgan (Xie Rong), <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hair Painting,</em> 2011, ink on paper, image courtesy the artist</div>
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When I saw images from Morgan’s 2017 Hong Kong show, <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">家</em><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Home</em>, I was intrigued. The exhibition featured a re-enactment of her 2011 work, <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I Am A Brush</em>, in which she ‘wrote’ calligraphy with Chinese ink using her own long hair. The result of the original performance was an 11-metre long scroll covered in abstract marks, later cut into five pieces for the exhibition. It’s a wry comment on the red-hot market for ink painting and the fashion for Chinese traditions, but it’s also the result of a very personal ritual of loss and sadness. I found Morgan through the Hong Kong gallery, and we met in London late last year. Over coffee in the hushed surrounds of the British Library tea room, she told me about her life and work.</div>
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Morgan’s performances incorporate gesture, voice, text and image. <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I Am A Brush</em> began when she was completing a master’s degree at the Royal College of Art in London. She had become interested in theories of female language, prompted in part by the breakdown of her first marriage to a husband who could not comprehend why his wife, then working as a designer for a major department store, would give up a good salary to become an impoverished art student. Morgan remembered how her mother had carefully brushed her long hair before her wedding, reciting a traditional bridal blessing. She wanted to make something using hair and text to express her sorrow. Hair, ink, and tears: in <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I Am A Brush</em> the traditionally masculine scholarly language of calligraphy becomes a female language of the body.</div>
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A woman’s hair is imbued with contradictory meanings – a ‘crowning glory’ that is also abject, a sexual fetish that is also terrifying, a source of power that also signifies vulnerability and subservience. Dipping her hair into dense black Chinese ink, Morgan ‘wrote’ out her heartbreak and her strength, her sadness about the end of her own marriage and those of her divorced mother and aunts. She thought of <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices</em> by Xinran (another Chinese woman who had made her home in England). Morgan told me of a line that resonated with her own experience: ‘Every family has a book but in China the book is glued with women’s tears.’ Her mother’s bitterness, and her own, seeped into the paper with the sweeping arcs of her hair. She said, ‘All the ink marks and dots were words, they were the stories of the women in my family.’</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Be Inside the Vase </em>was a multi-layered work performed in London in 2012 and documented by Morgan’s partner and collaborator, photographer Jamie Baker. It includes photographs, a film with a haunting monologue reflecting on her fraught relationship with her father, and the performance itself. The photographs of Morgan’s body, painted with floral motifs, are a challenge to orientalism, a self-reflexive examination of Chinoiserie, and a deliberate positioning of a Chinese body for a western gaze. The naked artist, painted white, has covered herself with a blue and white porcelain pattern of bamboo and cherry blossom. A branch of blossom trails across her face, covering her mouth, silencing her. The beauty of these photographs belies the much darker content of the performance from which they came.</div>
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Echo Morgan (Xie Rong), <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Be the Inside of the Vase</em>, 2012, documentation of performance, photograph by Jamie Baker, image courtesy the artist</div>
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The title references a Chinese saying that likens a beautiful woman to a vase – fragile, smooth, and hollow. Morgan’s abusive and emotionally volatile father was a gangster who operated in the grey areas of the rapidly opening Chinese economy in the 1980s; he ran nightclubs, brothels and casinos, and collected black market porcelain. He demanded that his daughter appear decorative and expensive, like a Song Dynasty vase. Morgan’s mother, in contrast, told her not to be like the surface of a pretty, empty vessel, but instead to be like the inside: ‘Be the quality!’ Divided into ‘chapters’, the first part of <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Be Inside the Vase</em> deals with the conflict and violence of her childhood. Morgan said, ‘The first story [<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Million Dollar Baby</em>] began with my father’s attempt to commit suicide. He owed everyone money.’</div>
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Echo Morgan (Xie Rong) <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You Have My Blood In You</em> , documentation of performance, image courtesy the artist</div>
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In the second part, <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Break the Vase</em>, the artist stood inside an enormous vessel made of paper and bamboo. She invited the audience to throw water-filled balloons at her in order to ‘break the vase’. At first people were hesitant, but soon the paper vase broke apart and the missiles smashed into the artist’s face. Morgan’s nude body was gradually revealed as the paint washed away and the bamboo structure was broken: a simmering undertone of violence became explicit and dangerous, the audience was made complicit. Juxtaposing English narration with Chinese traditional songs, Morgan plays with her complex hybrid identity and her difficult childhood. She explores the territory of translation: between two languages, between gesture and stillness, between her Chinese past and English present, between performance and image.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Echo Morgan (Xie Rong), </span><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You Have My Blood In You</em>, documentation of performance, image courtesy the artist</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You Have My Blood in You</em> is a further interrogation of her past – sent away at the age of four after her parents’ divorce to board at a much-hated ‘strict Communist kindergarten’, Morgan was shaped into a ‘<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">xiao hong hua’</em> (Little Red Flower), obedient and pliant. Later, she yearned to escape the cage of expectation and the weight of memory. When Morgan became a mother to sons, memories of her father threatened to overwhelm her. All his shady schemes came to nothing, and all his supposedly valuable Song Dynasty vases turned out to be worthless fakes – he died destitute. Underneath her white clothes, her body is painted with black ink that gradually seeps through, signifying a stain that cannot be washed away, and the blue pigment represents the blue and white glaze of porcelain.</div>
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Since the 1980s contemporary artists in China have deconstructed and reconstructed calligraphy in subversive ways, often – as with Xu Bing, Wu Shanzhuan or Gu Wenda, for example – to comment on meta-narratives of culture such as the power of the state or the sweeping forces of history. In Echo Morgan’s works her own body, her hair, even her breast milk, become a language; she is writing a woman’s story of suffering with a subtext of strength and courage. She says, ‘I do really respect the power and strength of women, but I think in my work you see a lot of fragility. And that is how I feel, as a daughter, as a wife, as a mother.’</div>
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An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-46444564955799547792017-12-29T22:11:00.000-08:002020-04-07T01:21:24.205-07:00六六大顺 or, 2017: Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Thinking about the usual end of year list (lazy writer's shortcut, I know), my plan was to write about six outstanding exhibitions. Six of the best, I thought, but when the phrase came to mind I shuddered: I remembered to my horror that it's what cane-wielding teachers said to boys they were about to beat when I was a child. Absolutely barbaric, and not what I meant at all! Although, come to think of it, I've seen some exhibitions, and some artworks, that could be described as painful this year. Hence the English title of this piece, 'Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other'. The Chinese title is uncharacteristically optimistic too, unlike most Chinese aphorisms: 'Liu Liu Da Shun' means that everything is running smoothly, an outcome devoutly to be wished as we approach the Year of the Dog. I'd much rather write about art that I loved than the much greater proportion of exhibitions and individual works that left me cold, so here are my top six art experiences for 2017 as this difficult and, yes, painful year comes to a close. Four exhibitions, and two encounters, in no particular order, and a quick gloss over the half dozen 'other'.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">S<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">ong Dong, <em style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #424242; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wisdom of the Poor: Song Dong’s Para-Pavilion</em><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #424242;">, Old house, old furniture, steel, Dimensions variable. 2011. Image courtesy Rockbund Art Museum</span></span></td></tr>
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<b>1. Song Dong, "I Don't Know the Mandate of Heaven" Rockbund Museum, Shanghai, April</b><br />
In Shanghai at the end of April I was lucky -- so lucky -- to catch the last weeks of this show, a survey of 30 years of Song Dong's work. From his earliest performance works, lying flat on the frozen ground in Tiananmen Square and breathing, or stamping the surface of the Lhasa River in Tibet with a seal carved with the character for 'water', to works based on his extended series of 'para-pavilions', architectural structures made from re-purposed furniture and building remnants, the show was a marvel across the six levels of the museum. For a review published in 'The Art Life', I described it like this:<br />
<div style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #424242; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 28.8px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I Don’t Know the Mandate of Heaven’</em> is a mature artist’s reflection on life’s joys, dreams, fears and disappointments. Beijing-based conceptual artist, Song Dong, responds to one of the Analects of Confucius, in which the sage suggests that by the age of 50, one ought to be sure of one’s place in the universe, should know ‘the mandate of heaven’. The getting of wisdom, if you like, should be done and dusted. Across six floors of Shanghai’s Rockbund Museum, and across its façade, rooftop balcony, stairwells and elevators, Song Dong responds to Confucius with all the uncertainty and anxiety of a more complicated age: ‘At 10, I was not worried. At 20, I was not restrained. At 30, I wasn’t established. At 40, I was perplexed and at 50, I don’t know the mandate of heaven.’</div>
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The exhibition is divided into seven ‘chapters’, one for each floor of the museum and the seventh for the exterior. Each chapter is represented by a Chinese character; together they form a line of a verse:</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jing </em>(mirror), <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ying </em><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</em>shadow), <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yan </em><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</em>word), <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jue </em><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</em>revelation),</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Li </em>(experience), <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wo </em>(self), and <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ming </em>(illumination).</div>
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Entering, you are immersed in a structure of re-purposed window frames and mirrors, a (literal) Daoist reflection on the fleeting nature of the physical world, beautiful and unsettling. Within the structure you find Song’s homage to Duchamp’s first readymade. <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Use of Uselessness: Bottle Rack Big Brother</em> (2016) is an enlarged version of Duchamp’s inverted bottle rack; on its prongs are discarded bottles that once held whiskey or powerful Chinese baijiu. Lit to resemble a fallen chandelier, they have been cleverly arranged to look a lot like the ubiquitous surveillance cameras that watch our every waking moment. This modern day panopticon has particularly chilling connotations in China, and the work reminds us that surveillance has been a recurring theme in Song’s work. To read more, click <a href="https://theartlife.com.au/2017/the-getting-of-wisdom-song-dongs-i-dont-know-the-mandate-of-heaven/" target="_blank">HERE</a></div>
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<b>2. "Jasper Johns, Something Resembling Truth", Royal Academy, London, October</b></div>
While I loved visiting old favourites on my blink-and-you'll-miss-it work trip to the UK in October (obligatory visit to Holbein's Ambassadors, the odd Titian and Raphael, and my favourite bizarre Annunciation by Carlo Crivelli) only one London exhibition really excited me, another survey. An artist of almost Chinese longevity, Jasper Johns has produced consistently interesting work since the late 1950s and this exhibition, the first comprehensive survey to be shown in the UK in 40 years, revealed the shifts and developments in his six decades of practice. Many works I had only seen before in reproduction, such as the Four Seasons paintings; other, more recent, work was completely new to me. Johns continues to experiment with form and content, defying stereotypes of the aging artist repeating the tropes of their youth. In the grand, hushed surrounds of the Royal Academy, visitors murmured discreetly, a very different experience from being amongst the young Chinese audience at Song Dong, taking selfies and giggling.<br />
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<b>3. Qiu Anxiong, "New Book of Mountains and Seas Part III" at Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, April</b><br />
Immersive and extraordinary, Qiu Anxiong's final work in this trilogy is a frighteningly dystopic twist on the present day. Adding a newly high-tech gloss to Qiu's technique of animating his ink drawings, the work conveys themes of twenty-first century anxiety and alienation expressed through the metaphor of the metropolis. It's probably no wonder that speculative fiction is big in China, although I often feel that nothing could be stranger than reality.<br />
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<b>4. Zhou Li, Yuz Museum, Shanghai, April</b><br />
In her first solo exhibition for many years, Zhou Li's works completely seduced me. In a darkened space on the upper level of the huge Yuz Museum on the West Bund, her abstract canvases glowed. Floating shapes hover on soft grounds of grey, or occasionally, of vivid red or pink. Linear forms overlap, abut and coalesce, suggesting the constant rhythms of the universe. Zhou, like many contemporary Chinese artists, is interested in Daoist philosophy: the push and pull of yin and yang are discernible in her juxtapositions of line, colour and form.<br />
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Here's a description of the show from <a href="https://www.artforum.com/picks/id=68463" target="_blank">ARTFORUM</a><br />
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In 2017 I have been fortunate to have conversations with many artists, both in Sydney and in China. As part of an archive project for the White Rabbit Collection, I have recorded interviews with <b>Guo Jian, Song Yongping, Lu Xinjian, Xiao Lu, Lin Yan, Song Jianshu, Xia Hang, Cang Xin, Wang Zhiyuan, Huang Hua-Chen and Shen Jiawei</b>. You can find these videos <a href="https://vimeo.com/whiterabbitcollection" target="_blank">HERE</a>. For my own ongoing research project I have re-interviewed <b>Xiao Lu, Ma Yanling</b> and <b>Tao Aimin</b> in Beijing, and for yet another project I've met with <b>Shi Yong</b> in Shanghai. Courtesy of the Vermilion Art stand at Sydney Contemporary, I engaged <b>Cang Xin </b>in conversation about his life and work as a post-89 conceptual artist. All of these conversations have been fascinating, but two that have been especially memorable were my second visit to the studios shared by <b>Yu Hong and Liu Xiaodong</b>, in Beijing, and a long conversation over cups of coffee in the British Library Cafe with performance artist <b>Echo Morgan</b> (aka Xie Rong).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6xM5X0l_I4lHyEQ48mK70iOaGaL2BwI5YCHLTjfe7B6JWfHGdKf22JavXsNLsQiRaXgHSjfFxn1WjCPAoh5KPsmaZYd6Rtbi_KJPcsa0u7gMI5GLixL0VpUokCywwdrsBms_hmN35bQQ/s1600/2011++one+hundred+years+of+repose+418x600cm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1600" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6xM5X0l_I4lHyEQ48mK70iOaGaL2BwI5YCHLTjfe7B6JWfHGdKf22JavXsNLsQiRaXgHSjfFxn1WjCPAoh5KPsmaZYd6Rtbi_KJPcsa0u7gMI5GLixL0VpUokCywwdrsBms_hmN35bQQ/s400/2011++one+hundred+years+of+repose+418x600cm.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yu Hong, One Hundred Years of Repose, 2011, Acrylic and gold leaf on canvas, Image courtesy the artist</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP9L-vHxNfXS6x3t4IrkbDdI8ksNmLne3QO3Ez3_INEkFuzR7rfafpsRBXGQsQb2PeWthS5aNyBwJmWx0GTzJsmpbwC1NIWOjyuXQ_kf37XERrMi1QfaWKg3_pAZafVtbhjA3V7C-mcrU/s1600/Yu+Hong+with+painting+on+easel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1190" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP9L-vHxNfXS6x3t4IrkbDdI8ksNmLne3QO3Ez3_INEkFuzR7rfafpsRBXGQsQb2PeWthS5aNyBwJmWx0GTzJsmpbwC1NIWOjyuXQ_kf37XERrMi1QfaWKg3_pAZafVtbhjA3V7C-mcrU/s640/Yu+Hong+with+painting+on+easel.jpg" width="474" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yu Hong in her Beijing studio in 2014, Photo: Luise Guest</td></tr>
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<b>5. Yu Hong</b> spoke about her work 'One Hundred Years of Repose', currently on view at the White Rabbit Gallery, and about her particular painting techniques, when we met in April in Beijing. I find Chinese artists of her generation especially interesting: they began their studies in an era of strict formalism and an approved style influenced by French Realism and Soviet Socialist Realism, and then graduated into a changing world in which avant-garde artists and critics were doing their best to shake everything up. My last conversation with the artist had taken place in the spring of 2014, while I was writing my book about Chinese women artists, 'Half the Sky', and we sat in her studio drinking cups of tea in front of that painting. I had been amused when I arrived that time to find a kerfuffle of TV camera crews and cars outside the studio: she had been painting a portrait of tennis star Li Na, commissioned for a Tiffany ad campaign. Inside the studio was a different, and much quieter, more reflective world. And so it was again in 2017, as we drank tea and spoke about her love for the physicality of paint, behind us on large easels a multi-panelled work appropriating Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" from the Sistine ceiling, the figure of God now a Chinese Immortal.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpaUCnsAInBrN32x1FvLyUsg13BA59MfFd86f06iIRMctDQV2Qu70kHveHvWMtKvpuhvZSgW9gmoZ2qqNw_Bl7FXFOPKWpUDeJBACTxLFhCn6VPKJTP1asvmNJd4njKfA0Juh5rswtKMw/s1600/Rong+Xie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpaUCnsAInBrN32x1FvLyUsg13BA59MfFd86f06iIRMctDQV2Qu70kHveHvWMtKvpuhvZSgW9gmoZ2qqNw_Bl7FXFOPKWpUDeJBACTxLFhCn6VPKJTP1asvmNJd4njKfA0Juh5rswtKMw/s640/Rong+Xie.jpg" width="426" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Echo Morgan, Be the Inside of the Vase, 2012, Performance Still, image courtesy the artist</td></tr>
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6. With <b>Echo Morgan</b> in London, our conversation ranged across her dramatic and difficult childhood, shaped by her resilient mother as much as by her gambling, gangster father, and an eventful journey towards a life in the UK. I'm thinking about her work in relation to my interest in how women artists are using ink and their bodies. More soon.<br />
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And the 'Half a Dozen of the Other'?<br />
Best not to dwell. Disappointments in 2017, apart from the sense of impending doom shared by all sentient beings in a time of Trump, included the David Hockney exhibition at the NGV, some lacklustre shows at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and a truly awful exhibition by ''KAWS" at the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, to which the only possible response was "WTF". I'm sad not to have been able to see THAT Chinese show at the Guggenheim, nor the earlier "Tales of Our Time", but, hey, you can't see everything. Onward to 2018, to a new Biennale of Sydney, curated by Mami Kataoka, to a visit to Melbourne to the first NGV Triennial, the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial in November, some exciting shows coming up at White Rabbit Gallery, building on the beautifully curated 'The Dark Matters' and 'Ritual Spirit', and to further adventures in China and elsewhere. And a heartfelt New Year's resolution to work harder on my Chinese. We'll see. Meanwhile, a happy and prosperous 2018 to all readers of this blog!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil5STRyAjfYNOCR09DhyphenhyphenI1qdZ44QZtsAHI4n4cDoOPUZ8AvWoIKh3cYmlyE32mI6W-Np3s9u0xj8C_iMNurDjppCV5yqZgIUuZSd5qHRrZMQb2q5jHIS57EKp6A19aplkmkz1wAQeIdvo/s1600/IMG_20170909_180536_080.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil5STRyAjfYNOCR09DhyphenhyphenI1qdZ44QZtsAHI4n4cDoOPUZ8AvWoIKh3cYmlyE32mI6W-Np3s9u0xj8C_iMNurDjppCV5yqZgIUuZSd5qHRrZMQb2q5jHIS57EKp6A19aplkmkz1wAQeIdvo/s400/IMG_20170909_180536_080.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With Cang Xin, courtesy of Vermilion Art, at Sydney Contemporary (we did not exchange clothing!)</td></tr>
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<br />An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-76024924021049953802017-12-14T17:30:00.000-08:002017-12-14T17:30:28.220-08:00Subterranean Feminism: Tao Aimin, Gao Rong and Dong Yuan<div class=" flex_vbox" id="comp-j5jung81_SinglePostMediaTop_MediaPost__0_0_def_6" style="-webkit-box-orient: vertical; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; flex-direction: column; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0.01em 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span style="font-size: small;">My article for WAGIC (Women and Gender in China) published last week:</span></h1>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Secret Language of Women: ‘Subterranean Feminism’ in the Work of Three Chinese Artists</span></h1>
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<div class="s_usaAWRichTextClickableSkin_richTextContainer s_usaAWRichTextClickableSkinrichTextContainer" id="5a2bc9d74a59e96c3c4c9b4acomp-j5jung81_SinglePostMediaTop_MediaPost__0_0_mediaTextrichTextContainer" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; height: 5497px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 550px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<div class="s_heNoSkinPhoto" data-content-padding-horizontal="0" data-content-padding-vertical="0" data-exact-height="326.7804878048781" id="innercomp_txtMedia21ux" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; clear: both; height: 327px; margin: 10px auto; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: static; vertical-align: baseline; width: 363px;" title="Tao Aimin, The Secret Language of Women 女书, 2008, 8 x hand-printed books, ink on paper, acrylic cover, washboards, video, 126 x 126 x 31 1/2 in. Image courtesy the artist">
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<img alt="" data-type="image" id="innercomp_txtMedia21uximgimage" src="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/c2b122_6287a1561fee42a3a9b098eda49a8236~mv2_d_2706_2436_s_4_2.jpg/v1/fill/w_363,h_327,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/c2b122_6287a1561fee42a3a9b098eda49a8236~mv2_d_2706_2436_s_4_2.webp" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; height: 327px; margin: 0px; object-fit: contain; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 363px;" /></div>
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<div class="font_9" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: arial, "ms pゴシック", "ms pgothic", 돋움, dotum, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="transparent" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tao Aimin, The Secret Language of Women 女书, Book 3, Text 11, 2008, ink on paper, acrylic cover. Image courtesy the artist</span></span></span></div>
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<div class="font_9" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: arial, "ms pゴシック", "ms pgothic", 돋움, dotum, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="transparent" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The ‘F-word’ – <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">feminism</span>, that is – can be a minefield for non-Chinese writers in conversations with Chinese women, something I discovered whilst researching <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-content="https://piperpress.com.au/products/half-the-sky" data-type="external" href="https://piperpress.com.au/products/half-the-sky" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">a book about women artists</a></span>. An interpreter assisting me at first refused to translate the term, adamant that there was no such Chinese equivalent. The term ‘gender’, albeit much debated, is widely used, but the term for ‘feminism’ – variously, ‘<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">nüxing zhuyi</span>’ or '<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">nüquan zhuyi’</span> – frequently causes ‘lost in translation’ moments. Over time I learned not to make assumptions from a <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-content="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Asian_Modernities.html?id=LUs5QwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y" data-type="external" href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Asian_Modernities.html?id=LUs5QwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Euramerican</a></span> feminist paradigm, and I discovered a Chinese feminist history. The problem for writers and curators, of course, is how to present the work of artists who do not identify with feminism, yet appear to be making feminist work, without speaking ‘for’ them, or orientalising their work. In ‘Toward Transnational Feminisms’, for the exhibition <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-content="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/521560?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" data-type="external" href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/521560?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art</span></a></span> in 2007, Maura Reilly drew on the work of Ella Shohat to describe the work of such artists as a form of ‘<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-content="http://www.maurareilly.com/pdf/essays/Reilly_GlobalFems_Intro.pdf" data-type="external" href="http://www.maurareilly.com/pdf/essays/Reilly_GlobalFems_Intro.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">subterranean feminism</a></span>’. How do artists whose identification with feminism is complicated by their perception of an East/West divide navigate this somewhat treacherous territory?</span></span></div>
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<div class="font_9" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: arial, "ms pゴシック", "ms pgothic", 돋움, dotum, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="transparent" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The work of three women who examine hidden female histories reveals a gendered language of materiality and imagery. Tao Aimin (陶艾民) collected wooden washboards from hundreds of rural women to re-present as sculptural objects and surfaces from which to make prints and rubbings. Gao Rong (高蓉) applies embroidery to ambitious, padded fabric installations. Dong Yuan (董媛) paints tiny details of interior spaces, creating installations made up of separate canvases. In their work, the domestic and the humble are memorialised, the unsung labour of women is honoured, and the fast-vanishing world of an earlier generation of women is given physical form. They do not explicitly identify their work as feminist, but rather as exploring highly personal histories and individual responses to a rapidly changing world. From artists emerging into the aspirational present from the collectivist past, this emphasis is unsurprising.</span></span></div>
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<div class="font_9" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: arial, "ms pゴシック", "ms pgothic", 돋움, dotum, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="transparent" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The history of feminism in China explains the deep ambivalence many artists, writers and intellectuals feel about the term. Their unease with the feminist label reflects the suspicion of many towards the state-sponsored feminism of the recent past, epitomised by the <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-content="http://www.womenofchina.cn/" data-type="external" href="http://www.womenofchina.cn/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">All China Women’s Federation</a></span>. After 1949 the explicit policy of the state was the erasure of traditional ‘feudal’ gender distinctions and the equal participation of women in the great Socialist project: female comrades would ‘hold up half the sky’ as workers, soldiers and farmers. Feminism became enmeshed in, but always secondary to, the utopian visions of the Chinese Communist Party. The impact of this history on the work of women artists who emerged in the post-Mao period into a globalising art economy should not be underestimated.</span></span></div>
<div class="font_9" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: arial, "ms pゴシック", "ms pgothic", 돋움, dotum, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<div class="font_9" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: arial, "ms pゴシック", "ms pgothic", 돋움, dotum, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="transparent" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Identification as a feminist artist is as contentious in China as everywhere else, but here there is a particular art-world history. Exhibitions of women artists during the 1990s and early 2000s were focused on interiority and ‘womanliness’. Many women artists began to see them with a degree of suspicion, feeling (often quite rightly) that their work was trivialised by this curatorial separatism. In her catalogue essay for the 2013 exhibition <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-content="http://www.bowdoin.edu/art-museum/exhibitions/2013/breakthrough-contemporary-chinese-women-artists.shtml" data-type="external" href="http://www.bowdoin.edu/art-museum/exhibitions/2013/breakthrough-contemporary-chinese-women-artists.shtml" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Breakthrough: Work by Contemporary Chinese Women Artists</span></a></span>, Peggy Wang argues that in this late twentieth century history: ‘… "women's art" served less as a rallying call for female artists, and more as the start of a set of thorny parameters against which to navigate and negotiate.’ In <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-content="http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-9515-9780824840037.aspx" data-type="external" href="http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-9515-9780824840037.aspx" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gendered Bodies: Toward a Women's Visual Art in Contemporary China</span></a></span>, Shuqin Cui characterises these exhibitions as “entangled in misconceptions” about feminism and femaleness. The disavowal of political activism continues: in 2017, curator Ai Lai’er insisted that her aim was not to reveal a ‘collective female identity’ but rather, ‘a “hint” towards a non-determinable factor’. In Beijing, where exhibitions of women’s art risk being closed by the authorities, this carefully vague and apolitical stance is understandable. (See, for example, T<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-content="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/26/beijing-shuts-down-art-exhibition-on-violence-against-women" data-type="external" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/26/beijing-shuts-down-art-exhibition-on-violence-against-women" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">he Guardian’s report</a></span> on the closure of an exhibition focused on violence against women in 2015.) Ai, like others, perceives <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-content="http://artradarjournal.com/2017/03/15/beijing-contemporary-art-galleries-celebrate-international-womens-day-in-pictures/" data-type="external" href="http://artradarjournal.com/2017/03/15/beijing-contemporary-art-galleries-celebrate-international-womens-day-in-pictures/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">a shift from discussions of gender identity to an emphasis on the individual.</a></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<div class="font_9" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: arial, "ms pゴシック", "ms pgothic", 돋움, dotum, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="transparent" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tao Aimin, Gao Rong and Dong Yuan express considerable doubt about the word ‘feminist’ but they are deeply invested in female histories. Tao Aimin’s installations, paintings and books present the traces left by applying ink to wooden washboards collected from rural women. Choosing the ancient female script of <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nüshu</span> (女书) as her calligraphy, she inserts a language invented by anonymous rural women into the canon of the <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><a data-content="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/clpg/hd_clpg.htm" data-type="external" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/clpg/hd_clpg.htm" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">literati tradition</a></span>, bringing an unacknowledged history into the light of day. Taught by mothers to daughters in remote villages of Hunan Province, the <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nüshu</span> script was used to embroider texts onto fans and belts, written in ‘Third Day Missives’ (<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">San chao shu</span>, books given to brides on the third day of marriage) or used to record the ‘bridal laments’ sung for young women leaving their family homes for their husband’s village.</span></span></div>
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<span class="transparent" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPpwWx60Z-AIEmrC9QURXjdJocFp0tBih4pO8ZCrId8_1j79JA_YejMQhEW0m-XPZIs6ntUGIJeLB3fz8Syaa0fu09XamkwCv7bCzrQ16h0ciLKE-j0fUGufFrmAVcVIqbGoGzY3_-u1c/s1600/Tao+Aimin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="400" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPpwWx60Z-AIEmrC9QURXjdJocFp0tBih4pO8ZCrId8_1j79JA_YejMQhEW0m-XPZIs6ntUGIJeLB3fz8Syaa0fu09XamkwCv7bCzrQ16h0ciLKE-j0fUGufFrmAVcVIqbGoGzY3_-u1c/s400/Tao+Aimin.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tao Aimin, Women's Book, Installation of Washboards, Image courtesy the artist</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="font_9" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: arial, "ms pゴシック", "ms pgothic", 돋움, dotum, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="transparent" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="font_9" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: arial, "ms pゴシック", "ms pgothic", 돋움, dotum, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="transparent" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Click <a href="https://www.wagic.org/blank-2/2017/12/11/Secret-Language-of-Women-%E2%80%98Subterranean-Feminism%E2%80%99-in-the-Work-of-Three-Chinese-Artists" target="_blank">HERE</a> to read more</span></span></div>
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An Art Teacher in Chinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14500023876159590633noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063926262454682660.post-57510938671584309022017-12-08T02:40:00.000-08:002017-12-09T03:19:21.268-08:00The Self and the OtherLong overdue: A post that I entered in an artwriting award,so couldn't publish till it was all over -- didn't win, but that's OK! I wanted to review this particular show because I have long been interested in the work of Echo Morgan/Xie Rong. Since I wrote this piece, I've met and interviewed the artist in London, and I plan to write more about her performance work: she takes the notion of Chinoiserie and wrestles it into the ground. And the show included Angelica Mesiti - so what's not to like? It also seemed particularly apposite to post this the day after Australia's parliament finally -- finally! -- voted to legalise same-sex marriage.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-hL90sV2Mp3azNvf2JoAL5aCUxPFyOIcJwqyIXkjuPQ1fnD74QI8Fxixa3NU1zchn7k8nmPfSfJjAE6gnc0gKsODDccyDriR4t-Odmq3PVnXVxIkBpVMJ6WjxzPSAHOiQIeg-BO4EFi0/s1600/echo+morgan_+%2528002%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1018" data-original-width="1600" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-hL90sV2Mp3azNvf2JoAL5aCUxPFyOIcJwqyIXkjuPQ1fnD74QI8Fxixa3NU1zchn7k8nmPfSfJjAE6gnc0gKsODDccyDriR4t-Odmq3PVnXVxIkBpVMJ6WjxzPSAHOiQIeg-BO4EFi0/s400/echo+morgan_+%2528002%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Echo Morgan / Xie Rong, Be The Inside of the Vase, Documentation of Performance, Photograph, Jamie Baker<br />
Image courtesy the artist</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The
Self and the Other: ‘Engender’ at Alaska Projects</span></b></b></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">‘Love will
find its way through all languages on its own.’</span></i><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (Rumi)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLmn4uHLuj9ya_GOsGGGPCZNl2Sw6Zz3rAN73GSiTy0ndVtuYuW1nnigPLSyarwPMfbddq9RQIGXdvt_1ZaSlOl4frKO597GDYVCSWh8mhHen-GRHryQRblk3pJChcfP0FMnmEDFNrtpM/s1600/Tony+Albert+%2527Brother+%2528Our+Present%2529%2527+2013+pigment+on+paper+150x100cm+edition+of+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1068" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLmn4uHLuj9ya_GOsGGGPCZNl2Sw6Zz3rAN73GSiTy0ndVtuYuW1nnigPLSyarwPMfbddq9RQIGXdvt_1ZaSlOl4frKO597GDYVCSWh8mhHen-GRHryQRblk3pJChcfP0FMnmEDFNrtpM/s640/Tony+Albert+%2527Brother+%2528Our+Present%2529%2527+2013+pigment+on+paper+150x100cm+edition+of+3.jpg" width="426" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Tony Albert, <i>Brother (Our Present),</i> 2013, pigment print on paper, 150 x 100 cm,
edition of 3 + 2 A/P, image courtesy of Sullivan & Strumpf and the artist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sydney’s
Kings Cross was traditionally the territory of the marginalised demi-monde, notorious
for its seedy strip clubs, sex workers of every gender, sailors on shore leave,
drug deals, crooked cops and underworld ‘identities’ -- and artists. Today it’s
more like a tense demilitarised border zone between the respectable
beneficiaries of property boom gentrification and the ‘mad, bad, and dangerous
to know’. Here, in two disused spaces in a gloomy subterranean carpark, far
from the standard white cube of the art gallery as it is usually understood, is
Alaska Projects. The current show, ‘<i>Engender</i>’,
at this artist-run-initiative is appropriate to its gritty location. Curator Grace
Partridge selected work by seven artists, mostly but not all Australian, to
explore the messiness and malleability of gender. This would be interesting
curatorial premise enough, but ‘<i>Engender'</i> goes further, forcing us to consider the sometimes uncomfortable intersections
of gender, class, and race. To ‘engender’ is to cause something to happen: to
give rise to, to kindle, provoke, trigger or inspire. In the current context of
an impassioned, often irrational debate about the rights of same sex couples to
marry under Australian law, diverted by the ‘no’ campaign into fear-mongering
speculation about whether boys might be encouraged, or even required, to wear
dresses to school, the notion of ‘engendering’ is indeed provocative: the
kindling is well and truly alight. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
first work you see is Angelica Mesiti’s haunting ‘<i>Nakh Removed</i>’ (2015), projected on a large screen at the far end of
the first level of the carpark beyond parked cars and metres of oil-stained
concrete. Hypnotic and trance-like, the
video shows four women of Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian heritage re-enacting
a Berber dance that is traditionally performed by women at weddings and fertility-related
ceremonies. Their long hair flies across the screen as they dip and bend, tossing
their heads from side to side and around in dizzying circular patterns. The work speaks of sexuality, fecundity and
female power. Their pale shoulders emerge from darkness, white against black
clothing. Loops and skeins of hair swoop and swirl, and their slowed-down
movement evokes an ecstatic state. This is primal, powerful and extraordinarily
beautiful; the work challenges western stereotypes of Arab women. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ4ZNyefVCLvB4r0nqSflbNlHkHA2x9MbzWZvsXlmptzW5QZNB6R35n_JINfzMVcqMZyhwYfMK5o-Ddi1zGumFhnBReg6qj3FKWt1ThVpGJ_4kH-eeZQUnUj9xPc0pEBhsy2z3Ov7xKMo/s1600/Mesiti_2015_Nakh+Removed_hq3+%2528002%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ4ZNyefVCLvB4r0nqSflbNlHkHA2x9MbzWZvsXlmptzW5QZNB6R35n_JINfzMVcqMZyhwYfMK5o-Ddi1zGumFhnBReg6qj3FKWt1ThVpGJ_4kH-eeZQUnUj9xPc0pEBhsy2z3Ov7xKMo/s400/Mesiti_2015_Nakh+Removed_hq3+%2528002%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Angelica Mesiti, Nakh Removed (2015), video, image courtesy the artist and Alaska Projects</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />It
was filmed in Mesiti’s Paris studio, removed from the North African cultural
origins of the dance, so ‘<i>Nakh Removed’</i>
speaks, too, of the oppressive legacies of French colonialism. A migrant child who
grew up in Australia speaking one language at home and another at school,
Mesiti has always been interested in the slipperiness of language, how meanings
elide, slide away, and elude our grasp as we move from one subculture to
another. Her childhood experiences drew her to notions of ‘the other’, to those
on the periphery. Similarly, her experiences as a foreign child trying to ‘fit
in’ and to learn the unfamiliar linguistic and behavioural codes of a dominant
culture drew her to alternative languages of movement and dance. An earlier
work such as ‘<i>Rapture (Silent Anthem)</i>’
(2009) reveals her interest in ecstatic states: the video appeared to show a crowd of young people
transported by a religious experience: Mesiti actually shot the crowd in the
mosh pit at a rock concert from a hidden vantage point beneath the stage, then slowed
down the footage and removed the sound. Like Bill Viola, she has been able to
make video a medium through which she is able to convey powerfully transcendent
and inexplicable human experiences. Watching ‘<i>Nakh Removed’</i> we are drawn into the trance-like state that the
dancers themselves have entered. For just that moment, in the Stygian gloom of
a carpark – surely one of the most sinister ‘non-places’ of the contemporary
world – the membrane between peoples and cultures becomes just a little more
permeable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Echo Morgan, <i>Be The Inside of the Vase</i>, 2012, photograph by Jamie Baker<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Image courtesy the artist</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Performance
artist Echo Morgan (Xie Rong) was born and grew up in Chengdu but now lives in
London. Her work has often challenged a western gaze on Chinese women that
positions them as the exotic, oriental ‘other’; in the process she subverts
traditions of ink painting and porcelain production. Three photographs in this
show document ‘<i>Be the Inside of the Vase’</i>,
a work performed in London in 2012 and documented by photographer Jamie Morgan.
Without the performance these beautiful images may be read as a self-reflexive
examination of Chinoiserie, a positioning of a Chinese body for a western gaze.
The naked artist, completely painted white, has painted herself with a blue and
white porcelain pattern of bamboo and cherry blossom. A branch of blossom
travels across her face, covering her mouth and silencing her. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
title references a saying in which a beautiful women is likened to a vase – fragile,
smooth, and, presumably, hollow. Morgan’s abusive and emotionally volatile
father, a gangster who operated in the grey areas of the 1980s Chinese economy,
ran nightclubs, brothels and casinos, collected stolen porcelain; he demanded
that his daughter appear decorative and expensive. Her strong and resilient mother,
in contrast, told her not to be like the surface of a pretty, empty vessel, but
instead to be like the inside: ‘Be the quality!’ The beauty of the photographs
belies the much darker content of the performance from which they came. Divided
into two ‘chapters’, the first part deals with Morgan’s fraught relationship
with her father, and the conflict and violence of her childhood. </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Morgan
said, ‘The first story [<i>Million Dollar
Baby</i>] began with my father’s attempt to commit suicide. He owed everyone
money</span><span style="color: #4c4c4c; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In
the second part, ‘<i>Break the Vase’</i> the
artist is shown inside an enormous vessel made of paper and bamboo; we can only
see the top of her head. She invited the audience to throw water-filled
balloons at her in order to ‘break the vase’; at first a seemingly innocent
action, this soon became openly aggressive as the paper vase broke apart and
the missiles smashed into the artist’s face. Morgan’s nude body, painted in
blue and white to resemble Song Dynasty porcelain, is gradually revealed: the simmering
undertone of violence becomes explicit and dangerous, the audience is complicit.
Juxtaposing English narration with Chinese traditional songs, Morgan plays with
her complex hybrid identity and her difficult childhood. Like Mesiti, she is
interested in translation: between two languages, between gesture and
stillness, between performance and image. She is restless, moving between two
worlds, between her Chinese past and English present. The seductive beauty of
her painted self-image cannot conceal her pain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: -11.35pt; margin-right: 11.35pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Other
works, in particular those by Liam Benson, Tony Albert and Angela Yu, add
further depth and complexity to this curatorial narrative. Yu confronts the
audience with their voyeuristic impulse in ‘<i>Prudish
Boulder’</i> (2016). The artist’s nude body is seen from above, immersed in a
bath filled with flowers and herbs. She becomes a rock, the ‘boulder’ in the
title, a witty acknowledgement of how women have been so often represented in
art as feminine ‘nature’ to masculine ‘culture’. Like Mesiti, Morgan and Yu,
Benson plays with beauty and its inverse in ‘<i>The Executioner’</i> (2015). A large photographic print shows the
bearded artist, hooded, unflinchingly meeting our eyes. His executioner’s hood
is completely transparent, made of gauze: this is not the identity-concealing black
shroud of power, granting the perpetrator of judicial killing anonymity and,
perhaps, absolution. Beaded, adorned with pearls and embroidered with flowers,
the hood is instead rendered seductively beautiful. It is frivolous, charming, and
verging on the absurd. Yet Benson’s watchful gaze through eyeholes outlined in
beading engages us directly, forcing us to question past narratives of identity
and historical acts of injustice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Tony
Albert’s ‘<i>Brother (Our Present)</i>’
(2013) continues his ongoing examination of how indigenous Australians have
been represented and misrepresented, often subject to violence and police
brutality. The work emerged as a direct response to an incident in Kings Cross
in which young Aboriginal boys involved in a Saturday night car accident were
shot by police. In the resulting community anger and distress, Albert saw a
group of young men arrive at a rally shirtless, with targets painted on their
chests. He was struck by their combination of defiance, vulnerability and
pride, and made a series of portraits in their honour. Albert collaborated with
a Sydney hostel that provides accommodation for Aboriginal young men and boys
while they complete their schooling, shooting portraits that evoke the
otherworldly chiaroscuro of Caravaggio, yet also recall 19<sup>th</sup> century
ethnographic photographs of Aboriginal people in which they are viewed as
specimens for scientific examination, rather than as fully human. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Each
of the artists in this interesting and prescient show navigates complex and
contested identities and contemporary divides between race, class, language and
gender; their work is both tender and brutal, beautiful yet deeply disturbing,
and each reveals both vulnerability and strength. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<i><span style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Featured
artists include: Tony Albert, Angelica Mesiti, Liam Benson, Get To Work, Echo
Morgan, Angela Yu and Archie Barry. </span></i><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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