半 边 天 : Half the Beijing Sky Part 2

Ming City Wall Park, Beijing

 Blue sky continues, the air is fresh(ish), and trees are in green leaf everywhere you look. Three reasons to be cheerful in Beijing. Only the apocalyptic traffic today could put a dampener on my mood, the day after the big book launch and "Half the Sky" exhibition opening at Red Gate Gallery. The exhibition is causing a bit of a buzz around town, I hear, and I am hoping there will be at least a few people turn up for my talk tomorrow evening at the Beijing Bookworm. It seems that "Half the Sky" has hit some kind of zeitgeist - people are definitely interested, and warmly enthusiastic.

Half the Sky opens at Red Gate Gallery

How interesting that shows of women artists are in the news again, with Hauser and Wirth in LA re-writing the history of abstract sculpture in America in ‘Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947 – 2016. Despite the apparent success of individual women - in that case Louise Bourgeois, or Lee Bontecou; in the Chinese context Cao Fei or Lin Tianmiao - they are still an absence in the larger narrative. The debate about the rightness or wrongness of all-women shows continues, and I must admit I had secret worries about whether it was a good strategy. But in the end, writing the book was a curatorial process, and an exhibition was a logical move.

Dong Yuan, Grandmother's Cabinet, installation view

When I began writing "Half the Sky" there were many anxious moments when I thought I must be mad. I continued to succumb to moments of doubt and despair throughout the process: was it a kind of hubris that made me think that I could - or should - write a book about artists in another culture, another language? But I really was determined to tell the story of this particular group of artists, representative in so many ways of the extraordinary phenomenon that is contemporary Chinese art.

Installing Gao Rong's "Sitting in a Chair and Thinking About My Future" - an armchair covered in embroidered mould, and lamp with knitted light rays

Installing Li Tingting works

Tao Aimin and Ma Yanling with Tao's "In an Instant" installation

In conversation with Lin Jingjing before the opening begins

  Visitors examining Dong Yuan's "Grandmother's Cabinet"

Tao Aimin, "In an Instant"

Brian Wallace, Red Gate director, with Xiao Lu and Guo Chen

With Dong Yuan

Gao Rong signs a copy of the book

Looking at Cui Xiuwen's "Existential Emptiness"

With Lin Jingjing

Brian Wallace introduces the Australian Ambassador at the opening

Australian Ambassador Jan Adams and a line-up of Chinese artists: 

L to R Zhou Hongbin, Cui Xiuwen, Li Tingting, Xie Qi, Jan Adams, Ma Yanling, myself, Bu Hua, Tony Scott, Bingyi, Xiao Lu, Lin Jingjing, Han Yajuan, Gao Ping. Not pictured: Gao Rong, Tao Aimin, Dong Yuan and Huang Yajuan

Chinese - Tai Nan Le! - 太难了!

Laurens Tan, 'Kuai Le Wan Ju', image courtesy the artist

I have been giving myself a number of self-imposed deadlines, writing in a fast and furious fashion about my interviews with Chinese artists; reviewing exhibitions; reading numerous books (often several at a time) in an attempt to make sense of my kaleidoscopic impressions of the fast-changing Chinese artworld on my last visits to Beijing and Shanghai. At times it seems like a form of insanity. But the topic continues to fascinate. I have been reading a new book of essays, 'My First Trip to China' in which scholars, diplomats and journalists reflect on their first encounters with China - it contains some wonderful insights and fabulous anecdotes from the 1950s to today. Jerome A. Cohen, who went on a US diplomatic and scientific delegation in 1972 and met Zhou Enlai, finished his account by observing that he agreed with the humourist Art Buchwald that, after a stomach-full of China watching, an hour later you're hungry for more. I can only concur!

I am  beginning to plan a trip for later this year, when I will be staying in Beijing for a couple of months to write, research and explore artists' studios, galleries and China in general. I am hoping to go beyond Beijing and Shanghai this time, and see more of China than the view visible from the windows of the high-speed train. Although this too was completely fascinating to me.

As I write this I should be at my Chinese class. But am not. Oh dear."Tai Nan Le! Too hard! - 太难了!" I am feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of trying to learn this difficult language and feel that I will never improve beyond the stumbling baby Chinese that I can manage right now. And as for character reading, forget it! My strategy today turns out to be one of avoidance. Probably not recommended. Next week, I WILL do the homework and go to class, I tell myself sternly. We'll see.... 

Laurens Tan, Beng Beng Prototype,Made in China.
 Fiberglass, Steel, Acrylic, Plastic, Wood, Baked Enamel, 62 x 30 x 11 cm, edition of 8, image courtesy of the artist.

Meanwhile, my interview with the wonderful Beijing/Las Vegas/Sydney based artist Laurens Tan has been published on The Artlife web site. I love the way that his work also deals with the traps and slippages of communication across language barriers. His is a practice that is absolutely unique. Tan went to China in 2006 speaking little Mandarin, and discovered a way to use Chinese characters as both the form and symbolic coding in his sculptural, digital and screen-based work. "There are different ways of operating as an artist but essentially I think art is always about embracing risk and letting go. And that’s the hardest part," he told me in a wide-ranging conversation in the (very noisy) cafe of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.  For my account of the interview, 'Laurens Tan, Art as a Vehicle for Thinking" - click HERE 

Laurens Tan, Babalogic II, Installation View. Computer-cut ABS, Light, Custom Sanlunche, Dual-Channel Projection, Variable Dimensions, image courtesy of the artist

Another article (previously published in a longer, slightly different form on Artspace China) about the continuing influence of traditions of calligraphy and ink painting on Chinese contemporary painters has been republished on The Culture Trip as 'Constancy and Change in Contemporary Chinese Ink Painting' - featuring the work of three very interesting young women artists - Li Tingting and Gao Ping from Beijing, and Shi Zhiying from Shanghai. Click HERE to see the article.

Li Tingting, Chandelier, Ink on Chinese paper, image courtesy the artist

Recently, too, my interview with Hong Kong based artist Lam Tung-pang appeared on 'Daily Serving'. Lam is currently in new York on an Asia Council fellowship and residency, continuing a discourse about ink painting traditions and making new work in a number of US cities. For the interview, click this link: Things Happened on the Island: Lam Tung-pang's Floating World

Lam Tung-pang in his Hong Kong studio, photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artist

And my conversations with two emerging women artists in Beijing, Dong Yuan and Gao Rong, were published by Randian Online - click 'In Grandmother's House' to see the article.

Dong Yuan, Daily Scenes, oil on 42 separate canvases, image courtesy of the artist and White Rabbit Gallery

Dong Yuan, Hui Hua Chi Fan, oil on separate canvases, installation view, image courtesy the artist

My problem is not being able to type fast enough, nor go without sleep for long enough, to read, write and research as much as I want to. I should at least thank my mother for making me learn touch-typing when I was 16. She said, "Anyone who wants to work in the arts had better have something to fall back on", imagining, no doubt, a life of secretarial drudgery in an office, rather than adventures hiking around Beijing with a laptop.

Upcoming - an article about performance artist and painter Monika Lin and Beijing-based Huang Xu and Dai Dan Dan - 'Landmines in the Garden of the Literati' - watch this space!

Huang Xu, Plastic Bag No. 28, C-print, reproduced courtesy the artist and China Art Projects

With ink and brush - a tradition reinvented

Shi Zhiying, 'Mr Palomar', Chinese ink on paper, image reproduced courtesy of the artist

I have been thinking, reading, writing, eating, drinking, breathing Chinese art since my return from Beijing and Shanghai. Even more than usual, that is. I returned with my head bursting with ideas and quite overwhelmed with information about the artists I had met and interviewed. What to do with all this material has been the dilemma. I am developing a new blog for art teachers and art students, with separate pages and posts representing possible case studies about specific contemporary Chinese artists. And planning a book. And impatiently planning my next trip to Beijing. And ordering a ridiculous number of new Chinese art books online. And making a New Year's Resolution to study Chinese for one hour every day - a resolution I had abandoned by January 3. And reluctantly facing the realities of life, such as earning a living!

In the meantime I have been reviewing exhibitions, and writing some pieces based on my Chinese artist interviews - here is the start of one of them, posted by Sydney University's 'Artspace China' this week. Of course I am secretly hoping that if you read the beginning you'll want to read all of it, so here goes...

Extract of Article posted on Artspace China  in which I look at how three young artists are re-interpreting the traditions of the ink-painting masters of the past

I sat in the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane last week, resting my weary art gallery feet after many hours traversing the Asia Pacific Triennial, and watched a charming Chinese animation for children, called Where is Mama?. Created in 1960 at Shanghai Film Studios under the guidance of the legendary animator Te Wei, it tells the story of a group of tadpoles searching for their mother. They plaintively question goldfish, shrimp, turtles and other creatures on their journey through a watery landscape. Each frame is rendered in deft, minimal brushstrokes with ink and wash, influenced by the watercolour paintings of Qi Baishi.

[ If you want to see the film, click on the title Where is Mama?]

In these digital days its artistry and simplicity were a revelation. Art historian Lin Ci speaks of the ways in which scholar painting techniques which vividly evoke, not an exact likeness, but a “spiritual resemblance” to aspects of nature such as plum blossom, birds, bamboo, stone, withered trees and orchids allowed the artists to “play the game of inks” better. For scholar officials trying to distance themselves from the realpolitik of the imperial court, these freehand ink paintings of birds and flowers could “bring comforts to their hearts” he says, evoking an endearing image of the lonely scholar contemplating his garden and disregarding the painting conventions of his imperial masters. (Lin Ci, ‘Chinese Painting: Capturing the Spirit of Nature with Brushes’) Watching this little film certainly brought “comforts to my hearts” after a somewhat disappointing APT experience.

It may seem a long distance between a sweet animated film and the great masters of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, however, the adherence to the beauty and discipline of calligraphy and ink painting so evident in every frame of Where is Mama? is the very thing that so often joins past and present in Chinese art. In a catalogue essay for Ink – the Art of China at the Saatchi Gallery in London in June 2012, Dominique Narhas had this to say: “Ink painting brings us into contact with an immersive intimacy in which humanistic themes of man’s relation to himself, to nature and to the other are played out against the great backdrop of constancy and change.” It is precisely this notion of constancy and change, the intertwining of past and present, which distinguishes contemporary Chinese art in the global marketplace and results in works which are able to reference tradition and convention yet speak to the contemporary world and an international audience.

Current discourses about the significance of ink-painting in contemporary art practices acknowledge its central importance. Keith Wallace, writing in Yishu, said, “A growing number of exhibitions [feature] artists who… explore and even push the parameters of what ink-painting should represent…a concerted effort by historians, curators, and critics not to let ink-painting slip into the abyss of historical dinosaurs, but to encourage ways in which its practice can continue to contribute to contemporary art.” (Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, July-August 2011 volume 10 no. 4) The mass circulation print media have noted this phenomenon too. A recent New York Times article quoted Britta Erickson, a curator and scholar who teaches courses on the history of ink painting at Stanford University. “Today, there’s ink on paper; there’s ink by itself; there’s the gesture without the ink; there’s just the paper, or there’s the performance of the gesture, and there’s video and installation art too.” (Nina Siegel, ‘Ancient Art Tells China’s Modern Tale’, New York Times October 31, 2012)

Gao Ping, Untitled, Oil on Canvas, image reproduced courtesy of the artist and China Art Projects

So, how are contemporary artists re-imagining and transforming an archaic tradition? From Xu Bing’s iconic Book from the Sky and Gu Wenda’s human hair frozen with adhesive into translucent curtains of unreadable language, from Song Dong’s calligraphy written with water on a stone slab in ‘Writing Diary with Water’ to the digital multimedia works of Yang Yongliang, to conceptual works by Zhang Huan and Qiu Zhijie, a generation of Chinese artists have been reinventing traditional forms to represent ideas and observations about their contemporary world. Last summer we saw He Xiangyu’s extraordinary Cola Project at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art here in Sydney, in which he appropriated Song Dynasty masterworks using ink mixed with litres of Coca Cola. Indeed, one of the key elements underpinning the inventiveness and innovation of contemporary art in China is, perhaps paradoxically, a deep knowledge of and respect for traditional forms. Chinese artists revere their cultural heritage and art traditions yet at the same time freely experiment with them. Almost every artist will tell you that they learned calligraphy and ink painting as a child, and they speak knowledgeably about historical ink painting masters. This results in works of great depth and layered meaning. In the hands of some artists this reinvention leads to transgressive works of social critique, even savage satire, whilst others reflect on elements of their world in a quieter, more personal or meditative manner. I recently spoke with a number of artists in Beijing and Shanghai about the way in which their practice is informed by their study of traditional Chinese painting – these are just three of those stories.

Shi Zhiying, Mr Palomar, Chinese ink on rice paper, image reproduced courtesy of the artist

If you want to know more about the ways in which Gao Ping, Li Tingting and Shi Zhiying are reinventing this ancient visual language you can read the whole article from Artspace China here !

Zhe Shi Beijing: 4 artist studios and a private villa

4 Signs seen from a Beijing taxi:

• The Dongxinghua Bilingual Art Kindergarten (everything seems to have the word 'art' attached as a sales pitch, I have also seen an 'art' Polo Club)
• The Soluxe Winterless Hotel ( at a temperature of minus 3 degrees I was tempted)
• The Sparkle Glitter World Shopping Mall (build it and they will come)
• and, finally, the Beijing Stomatological Hospital (possibly what I needed after eating sea cucumber)

 3 Items from the China Daily:

• 14 dead in fire caused by gasleak in hotpot restaurant
• high speed trains forced to slow down as people insist on smoking in the carriages
• Men's groups welcome the election of an all-male Politbureau Standing Committee as a 'step in the right direction'

Beijing continues to fascinate, delight and appall in equal measures.

Intersection in what was until recently a small village

I spent this morning with the artist Lin Tianmiao, whose work I had seen recently in a big retrospective show at the Asia Society Museum in New York. We drove for over an hour through a post-apocalyptic wasteland of cleared farmland, fields of grey rubble, construction sites and brand spanking new apartment blocks in row upon row as far as the eye can see. Finally, down a private tree lined street in Songzhuang Artist Village, to a fortress-like villa, the home of Lin Tianmiao and her husband the video artist Wang Gongxin. Five huge dogs in the garden of the villa across the street leapt at the fence, snarling and barking in a most disconcerting manner.

Living space in studio of Lin Tianmiao and Wang Gongxin

Once inside, the private spaces and light filled studio are extraordinary and wonderful. As we sat and waited for Lin Tianmiao and her assistant, we listened to the finches in a huge birdcage and the splashing of goldfish in a pool. Two large dogs roamed the garden outside the windows, with trees covered for the winter. Finally I realised that the strange shuffling noise I was hearing was a large tortoise in the corner of the room, emerging briefly and moving towards us, then retreating into its shell. I had time to look at the contents of the floor to ceiling bookshelves. DVDs ranging from Dr Doolittle 3 to Zhang Yimou revealed a broad and eclectic taste. Books on the coffee table with beautiful tea cups and bowls included Susan Sontag, a Foto Folio collection of potraits of New York artists in the 1980s and 1990s, and a book on Georgia O' Keeffe's houses.

Living space in studio of Lin Tianmiao and Wang Gongxin

So strange to sit for half an hour in someone else's space, a space which revealed so much of the life lived therein. Artworks were everywhere, from Wang Gongxin's new digital animations to works by Lin Tianmiao herself and many other artists both Chinese and Western. A shelf of photographs includes recent snapshots and family photographs from the Cultural Revolution period.

The studio is a revelation - a white calm space filled with works in progress, and a staff of maybe 20 studio assistants working silently - winding colourful silk thread around synthetic bones or stitching the 'badges' similar to those currently showing at Galerie Lelong New York. Other workers  assemble the sculptures of bones connected to tools, bound with thread. Lin Tianmiao walks quietly through and makes adjustments. I asked her if, in the years she worked as a graphic designer in New York before her return to China and emergence as an artist to be reckoned with, she could have imagined all this. She shakes her head. The New York years, were hard, she says, although she loved the energy of that city she herself was not left with the energy to think about becoming an artist. Returning to China was also hard, but she thinks China now has the creative energy that New York may have lost.

Works in progress, Lin Tianmiao

Assistant working on 'badges', Lin Tianmiao studio

Studio View, Lin Tianmiao studio

Studio View, Lin Tianmiao's studio

We talk over tiny, delicate cups of tea about the use of thread, hair, felt and other textiles in her work. She tells me that in her childhood, her mother was 'sent to the countryside' (read into that what you will) for three years, and it was there that she remembers her mother learning how to spin and sew. The basic, physical nature of the materials which connect us to the natural world and to bodily realities are what interests her. I am fascinated but not surprised that she nominates Louise Bourgeois as an artist she admires.

Lin Tianmiao in her studio, December 6 2013,
photograph Luise Guest reproduced with the permission of the artist

She rejects the feminist label with which she is often identified, believing that feminism is a western thing and that China is not yet at that point. So many other pressing problems, she says: food safety, pollution, corruption, politics....She also rejects the idea that she may be a role model or inspiration for younger female artists, stating bluntly that every artist must forge their own path. Art is a personal and spontaneous thing, she tells me. However, she does acknowledge that when women have children they change, become stronger and yet also more vulnerable. It is this paradox that her work most beautifully explores.

I think of some of the other women I have met in the last few days:

• Gao Ping whose work ranges from tiny, delicate fragile ink drawings of lonely toys, furniture and household appliances to the most wonderful, strong paintings in a palette of subtle grisaille.

Gao Ping in her studio, December 5 2012,
photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artist

• Dai Dan Dan who I found applying sequins and sparkly beads to 'scholar rocks' sourced in the Beijing fish and bird market. With her husband, Huang Xu, she created an exhibition installation shown in Shanghai and Hong Kong with the enviably fabulous title of 'Mr and Mrs Huang in the Humble Administrator's Garden'.

Dai Dandan and Huang Xu (Mr and Mrs Huang) in their shared studio
December 5 2012,
Photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artists

• Li Tingting who works quietly to reinvent the traditions of ink painting and develop her own visual language of line, mark and drip, reflecting on her immediate domestic and feminine world.

Li Tingting with her work at 798, December 2 2012,
Photograph Luise Guest reproduced with the permission of the artist

• Chu Haina who takes her camera on lonely walks around the streets and parks of northern Beijing, seeking images that echo her feelings.

Chu Haina at Egg Gallery Beijing, December 4,
Photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artist

Chu Haina, Hidden Landscape No 1, Digital Print

All these women are both strong and vulnerable. The thing I have most loved about talking to them is their absolute lack of self conscious 'cool' or the adopting of personae. They talk with evident sincerity, seriousness and thoughtfulness about their work. There is no posturing. That is something very refreshing!


See my review of the Lin Tianmiao show at the Asia Society Museum in New York here: The Art Life: masculinity and femininity in new york

See my review of Gao Ping's Australian show at Stella Downer Fine Art here: http://theartlife.com.au/2012/still-life-girls/

Jiving at the Temple of Heaven

Snack vendor selling doufu

Water Calligrapher at the Temple of Heaven

When I walked out onto the street this morning into a temperature of minus 5 degrees, a white sky and a drifting fog, all my memories of Beijing came flooding back with the first three wheeled bicycle that sailed past, its tray loaded up with firewood, ridden by an ancient man wearing an old army greatcoat and a hat with fur earflaps. Then I smelt the mixture of coal burning stoves and roast chestnuts from the street snack vendor and it all seemed new and strange - last time I was here it was spring, and now it's well and truly winter. Tomorrow it may snow. 

Sunday morning Jive Session near the Temple of Heaven

Apart from eating sea cucumber for the first (and very likely the last) time in my life, today has been filled with a mixture of the strange, the wondrous and the amusing. I walked through the park surrounding the Temple of Heaven, shamelessly and voyeuristically watching the ballroom dancers twirling and circling to recordings of weirdly Chinese versions of the Cha Cha Cha and the Foxtrot.  I found a group doing a somewhat slow and stately jive next to the Eastern Gate. I was persuaded to have a go at Tai Chi with bats and a ball with long streamers attached, and then avoided the vendors trying to sell me the bats and balls. I found old men playing dominoes and old ladies playing cards, and a very large group of senior citizens singing vigorously, accompanied by a brass band of both western and chinese instruments. When I asked what they were singing, my companion said, "Oh they're old people, they're singing about Chairman Mao", in a rather derisive tone. I think they were about my age, so that was a bit mortifying.

I felt a little voyeuristic, too, walking through one of the remaining hutong neighbourhoods and peering into doorways and down tiny narrow alleys, but the people are so friendly, responding with good-natured amusement to my fractured Chinese - and it is a truth universally acknowledged that if you make friends with people's dogs, they warm to you quickly, even if you are a large and curious westerner in a horrible red hat!

Old men playing dominoes at the Temple of Heaven

Later in the afternoon I met with young artist Li Tingting, whose ink on paper works are in the White Rabbit collection in Sydney. In 2004, having made a serious study of the traditions of ink painting and calligraphy since her teens, she realised that she could apply these ancient cultural practices to making art that reflected contemporary life: in particular, her own life as a young woman. Her work at that time was in traditional scroll form, using delicate shades of pink, and she selected subject matter that related to her own immediate world - hundreds of disposable plastic water bottles in one work, or beautiful stiletto shoes in another. She told me with some amusement that people asked her if she was an environmentalist, or a feminist, so I was a bit hesitant to then ask the same obvious question. I said, 'But surely in choosing to paint delicate high-heeled shoes you were on some level making a comment about the expectations for women to look a certain way, dress a certain way?' Tingting denies that interpretation of her work, however, telling me that she wanted to celebrate aspects of her own life, not make a cultural critique. 

Since that time, her new work has developed in an interesting and unexpected way since she encountered the work of Cy Twombly in a German art museum. Large ink paintings of pieces of solid furniture, or ornate and opulent chandeliers, feature drips and stains of pigment in a manner that links literati paintings of mountainous misty landscapes with American expressionism. I am intrigued by her work, especially as I see a connection with Gao Ping, an artist of the same generation of young Chinese women carving a path for themselves in the testosterone-fuelled Chinese artworld. Gao Ping is also an ink painter reinventing Chinese traditions to reveal her own inner and outer worlds. And, incidentally, she too paints furniture. Interesting....

As I found every day last time I was in China, tradition underpins modern life in so many ways, both obvious and subtle. And the two constantly collide, like the dancers jiving and waltzing in the place where the Emperor once performed  sacrificial rites. 

In this street, for example, men were at work this afternoon laying down cable for better internet services..... 

And here the song birds in their tiny cages hang from the power lines.....