Tag: Chinese art
White Rabbit: I Am the People
Saturday, August 12th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,In China, art is constantly flirting with politics. It’s a game of approach-and-retreat everywhere in evidence in the new White Rabbit exhibition, I Am the People, which features 27 artists or groups of artists. It’s one of curator, David Williams’s most ambitious, most overtly political shows – perhaps not as attractive or spectacular as some […]
The Return of Hong Kong
Tuesday, April 4th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Roll the clock back four years to 2019. In Hong Kong, Art Basel was consolidating the island’s reputation as the heart of the international art market in Asia. The gargantuan West Kowloon Cultural District was starting to emerge but was still largely a building site. The world’s leading commercial galleries were opening branches, hoping to […]
White Rabbit: Shuo Shu
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,In pre-literate societies the storyteller had everyone’s attention. The role grew in importance as communities became more cultivated, with public recitations being valued as forms of education and entertainment. The ancient Greeks, for instance, had their rhapsodes who would recite Homer to enthusiastic audiences. The Chinese have a long tradition of public storytelling, often accompanied […]
Ultra Unreal
Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Things have been quiet at the Museum of Contemporary Art this year, but Ultra Unreal aims at a reboot. It’s an exhibition that pushes beyond the contemporary, drawing us into virtual realms, both futuristic and animistic. These imaginary worlds have been created by new technology and populated with supernatural beings. It all sounds breathlessly exciting. […]
White Rabbit: I Loved You
Tuesday, July 26th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Anybody who has seen the Marriage Market in Shanghai’s People Park will never imagine the Chinese as a nation of desperate romantics. Every weekend the Market is swarming with parents eager secure an advantageous match for their son or daughter. One gets the impression that marriage is primarily an economic transaction, with love being a […]
White Rabbit: Big in China
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,It seems that everything is big in China apart from the Olympic flame. In a country in which the number of people and the staggering pace of development are overwhelming, it was surprising that the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics ended with two athletes placing a teensy-weensy flame into a giant-sized snowflake. I […]
The Way We Eat
Tuesday, November 9th, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,In the western world we greet someone with the words: “How are you?” but in China they say: “Have you eaten?” It testifies to the central importance of food in Chinese culture – and perhaps the difficulties of getting enough of it over the past 5,000 years. The Way We Eat at the Art Gallery […]
White Rabbit: Lumen
Tuesday, May 25th, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Lumens may sound like alien beings from a science fiction novel but they are units of measurement for “the total quantity of visible light emitted by a source per unit of time.” Any light source may be measured in this way but lumens are usually spoken about in relation to projectors. By titling its current […]
Michael Zavros, Gunybi Ganambarr, Li Jin
Tuesday, November 10th, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Michael Zavros is a very 21st century artist. Known for a fastidious, hyperreal style of painting and a preoccupation with fashion and luxury goods, he would have been anathema in those days when the avant-garde strove to make art that was not a marketable commodity. Marketability is Zavros’s great and abiding theme, although he comes […]
White Rabbit: And Now
Thursday, June 18th, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,As art in Sydney creeps back into the light, White Rabbit Gallery is embarking on its second decade. Over its first ten years, Judith Neilson’s private museum of contemporary Chinese art has charted the social, political and cultural changes in a turbulent country. The collection now includes more than 3,000 works by 700 artists, all […]