10,000 Things: Reflecting on a Year almost Gone

Cai Guo-Qiang's 10,000 suspended porcelain birds at the NGV. Photograph Luise Guest

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.

Poster design for the talk at Women's University, Beijing, in April 2019, featuring a work by Hong Kong artist Firenze Lai

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 HERE); the publication of an article in the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (HERE); an article in Art Monthly Australasia and a Quarterly Essay about Jingdezhen and porcelain for Garland (HERE); an essay for an NGV publication, ‘The Centre – On Art and Urbanism in China’; 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.

Yan Ping, Still Life, 2011, image courtesy the artist

A work from 2001 reveals Yan Ping's recurring theme of mother and child, and her influences from European modernism. Image courtesy the artist.

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.

Yan Ping loves to paint theatre and opera troupes, acrobats and musician, often in behind-the-scenes moments.
Image courtesy the artist

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 HERE) 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’. 

Zhu Jinshi 'The Ship of Time', installation view at Tang Contemporary, Beijing, 2018. Photograph Luise Guest

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 'Invasive Species and Global Trade Routes: A Conversation with Chen Hangfeng' for The Art Life HERE. 

Shanghai's former French Concession in Spring - bicycles, washing lines, and  neighbours chatting in leafy streets. Photographs Luise Guest

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! 

My translator, Jane, and kind-hearted driver Mr Zhang, at dinner at Shengyongxing in Beijing

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):

Qiu Zhijie, 'Mappa Mundi' (detail), UCCA April 2019

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.

A detail of Qiu Zhijie's obsessively detailed map of China's modern and contemporary art history

2. In Shanghai, at ShanghART Westbund, the installation work of Ouyang Chun in which every piece was constructed with objects retrieved from junk 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. I wrote a review of this exhibition, and an account of his work, in 'Reconstructing Memory: Ouyang Chun’s ‘The Mortals’ at ShanghART Gallery' for The Art Life. Find the article HERE

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

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'. 

4. 'Remapping Reality' 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.' 

Pang Tao (detail), installation view at Pearl Lam, Shanghai

Portrait of a teenage Lin Yan preparing to enter CAFA when it re-opened after the Cultural Revolution, by Pang Tao

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, 'Lin Yan: A Tale of Three Cities' in The Art Life HERE.

Lin Yan, paper installation in 'Material Lineage' at Pearl Lam Shanghai.

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).

Cai Guo-Qiang's porcelain birds at the NGV.

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 Musée  Guimet, and must return there one day.

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! Xinnian Kuai Le! and a Happy New Year to all.

Tang Dynasty polo-playing lady from the collection of the Musée Guimet, Paris

This is not a List: My Year in Chinese Art

Yang Fudong film set - a new epic in production at the Long Museum, Shanghai, April 2017

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.

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 Sinica Podcast and editor at SupChina - 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'.

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 Chen Zhe and Geng Xue to pioneers such as Wang Jianwei and Feng Mengbo, every conversation was filled with rich and often unexpected treasures of information. Seeing the scale of Sun Xun'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.

One rainy afternoon was spent recording a two-hour conversation with Shang Yang, 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 HERE if you want to read more.

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. 

Perhaps the biggest thrill for me in Beijing, though, was meeting Xu Bing. 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.

Of all the exhibitions in Beijing galleries large and small, two standouts were Liu Wei's monumental installation and Zhu Jinshi'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.

The next week, in Shanghai, my encounters continued, in studio visits with Jin Feng, Ni Youyu, Liu Jianhua and Chen Yujun. Once again I had the opportunity to meet an artist whose work I had taught since the 1990s. Gu Wenda 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.

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. 

I enjoyed a long talk with Liu Jianhua 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 HERE.

Of all the many exhibitions seen in Shanghai, I especially loved Yang Shen'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.

Back home, work continued on the establishment of the new Dangrove White Rabbit Collection Research Library 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 Gonkar Gyatso, Wang Guofeng, Cao Hui, Sun Xun, Yang Wei-Lin. and (forthcoming) Hou I-Ting, Guo Jian and Gao Xiaowu.  The wonderful painters Yu Hong and Liu Xiaodong 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 HERE on the White Rabbit Collection Vimeo site, where you will also find many others.

Later in the year, in New York, I visited Lin Yan in her Long Island studio, went to the launch of Barbara Pollack's new book 'Brand New Art from China' (and greatly enjoyed my conversations with her), and saw exhibitions of Zhang Xiaogang, Shang Yang, and Liao Guohe. The Guggenheim show from young star curator Xiaoyu Weng featured Cao Fei’s evocation of a post-human future, Wong Ping’s fabulously eccentric digital tale of an elderly porno addict and new works by Lin Yilin, Samson Young and Duan Jianyu. The famous koan, ‘one hand clapping’, says the Guggenheim, is a metaphor for how meaning is destabilised in a globalised world.

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:
"Thank you all the artists I’ve ever known who made me think the way I think."

Conversations

After so many years of my long conversations with Chinese artists in their studios in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Xi'an and Guangzhou, as well as in Hong Kong and Taiwan, I've been able to bring the conversations closer to home. For the White Rabbit Artist Interview series, I've been able to record interviews with each artist from the collection who visits Sydney, shared via Vimeo. We're building up quite an archive.

Here is a sample selection - firstly, a 'teaser' for my longer conversation with Cang Xin earlier this year:

Cang Xin Trailer from White Rabbit Collection on Vimeo.

And a longer conversation with the wonderful New York-based Lin Yan:

Lin Yan in conversation with White Rabbit from White Rabbit Collection on Vimeo.

Check out our conversations with Shen Jiawei, Lu Xinjian, Song Yongping, Wang Zhiyuan, Xiao Lu, Xia Hang and Guo Jian. In the editing room right now: Song Jianshu and Huang Hua-Chen. And keep an eye on White Rabbit 's Vimeo Collection early next year for some VERY exciting additions!
White Rabbit Collection Vimeo

Lin Yan: Ink and Paper

Lin Yan,'Sky 2', 2016, installation view in Taipei, image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Collection

Last week I interviewed artist Lin Yan about her life and work. She is the daughter and grand-daughter (and wife) of artists, born into one of those extraordinary dynasties of artists that you find more often in China than elsewhere. She reflected on her life of journeying, from Beijing, to Paris to New York where she now lives and works. Her beautiful ink and paper installation Sky 2 is currently installed for 'The Dark Matters' exhibition at Sydney's White Rabbit Gallery. Soon I will post the video of our interview. In the meantime, here is part of the abridged version published today, very appopriately in time for International Women's Day in the Northern Hemisphere:

Three cities, three histories, and three artistic languages co-exist in the work of Chinese artist Lin Yan, who was raised in Beijing and studied in Paris before moving to the USA, where she now lives and works in New York.

Lin was born in 1961 to a family with a distinguished artistic lineage —both her parents and two grandparents were famous artists. Like other intellectuals, writers, artists and teachers, they suffered through the changing political winds of twentieth century China. Lin studied at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, entering in 1980, only two years after it had re-opened at the end of the Cultural Revolution. After graduation, she followed in the footsteps of her mother and grandfather, studying in Paris before moving to the United States in 1986. Today, she works in her Long Island City studio, travelling back and forth between New York and Beijing several times each year.

Lin Yan's parents, Lin Gang and Pang Tao, in 1958, image courtesy the artist

Best known for working with paper, Lin Yan bridges the divide between two and three dimensions (she calls it working in ‘two and a half dimensions’), and between Chinese and Western philosophies and aesthetics. She blurs boundaries, embraces paradox, and juxtaposes past and present. I wanted to learn more about her journey from one culture and visual language to another, and to discover how her beautiful, fragile works encompass past and present. While the artist was in Sydney to install her work at the White Rabbit Gallery we spoke about her early life in Beijing, and how she thinks about her practice: what follows is an abridged and edited account of a much longer conversation.

Luise Guest: I’d like to ask about your early life, growing up in a family of artists in Beijing. Your parents were modernist artists and influential teachers; I know that your mother, a printmaker who had also studied in Paris, at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, was Xu Bing’s teacher, for example, and your father, Lin Gang, had studied in the Soviet Union. Your grandfather, Pang Xunqin, was a very famous modernist artist. How do you think these early experiences influenced you? And what are some of your most vivid memories of your early childhood growing up in this artistic milieu?

Lin Yan with her mother, artist Pang Tao, in Beijing in 1963, image courtesy the artist

Lin Yan: I saw my parents doing paintings a lot when I was young, but not my grandfather, because he was accused of being a Rightist in 1957 before I was born. [Mao’s Anti-Rightist campaigns began in 1957: more than half a million intellectuals, students, artists and ‘dissidents’ were persecuted. Many were executed, imprisoned or sent to labour camps. Lin Yan’s grandfather was made to clean toilets and forbidden to make art, blacklisted for more than twenty years.] Actually, I didn’t really meet him until I was ten or eleven years old. Of course, I had met him when I was a baby, but I couldn’t remember that, I just saw the pictures. My earliest memory of him is from the time during the Cultural Revolution when my parents had been sent to a labour camp along with all the other professors from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and I was staying behind in Beijing, living with neighbours. On my way home from school one day I saw an old man with white hair standing in front of the gate … he was staring at me. I asked if he was looking for someone, or if he wanted to come into the yard, and he said, ‘Are you Pang Tao’s daughter? I am your grandfather.’

Lin Yan as a student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, in 1982, image courtesy the artist

...Lin Yan pleats, drapes, folds, sheaves, crumples, cuts and layers soft handmade Xuan paper. Sometimes stained, even saturated, with black ink, her works remind us that ink and paper are the essential Chinese materials for both art and writing. Floating in the gallery space, suspended by fragile threads, the crumpled, twisted, grey and black forms of Sky 2 evoke brooding grey skies over polluted Chinese cities. They contrast with sheaves of pleated white paper that hang behind them, a curtain that shifts gently in every current of air, as if breathing. Overhead, the soft, hollow forms of paper stained with black ink loom like storm clouds.

Lin Yan, Inhale, 2014, ink, plastic bag, light and Xuan paper installation, 765x508x190cm, image courtesy the artist, photo: Jiaxi Yang

Lin Yan with her work Sky 2 at White Rabbit Gallery, image courtesy White Rabbit Collection, photograph: David Roche

TO read the rest of the article on The Art Life website, click HERE