Tag: White Rabbit Gallery
White Rabbit: Shuo Shu
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023 Art 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 […]
White Rabbit: I Loved You
Tuesday, July 26th, 2022 Art 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: Lumen
Tuesday, May 25th, 2021 Art 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 […]
White Rabbit: And Now
Thursday, June 18th, 2020 Art 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 […]
White Rabbit: The Sleeper Awakes
Friday, June 8th, 2018 Art Column,H.G.Wells published his novel, The Sleeper Awakes, in 1910. The Russian uprising of 1905 had been put down, and the Revolution of 1917 was but a rumble on the horizon. It’s the story of a sleeper who wakes 200 years into the future – in 2100 to be precise – to find a world ruled […]
Xu Zhen
Friday, December 8th, 2017 Blog,In 2009 Xu Zhen decided he would “set aside his identity as an individual artist” and become a corporate entity. For the next four years, MadeIn Company (as in “Made in China”) would produce a dazzling variety of work for international museums and galleries. In 2013, its booming success encouraged the Company to release its […]
White Rabbit: Ritual Spirit
Friday, October 6th, 2017 Art Column,Last week I was in China meeting artists from each end of the contemporary art spectrum. In Suzhou I saw a breathtaking show of brush-and-ink painting by Li Huayi (b.1948) an artist who has divided his life between China and San Francisco. In Shanghai I visited Xu Zhen (b.1977), one of the most successful artists […]
White Rabbit: The Dark Matters
Saturday, April 29th, 2017 Art Column,Contemporary culture puts a premium on instant gratification but ancient Chinese thinkers found the greatest value in the contemplation of eternal things. This was brought home to me by Tang Nannan’s Dao-inspired, wide-screen video, Billenium Waves (2015) at the White Rabbit Gallery. It’s nothing more than a four-minute close-up of waves lapping under a dark […]
White Rabbit: Vile Bodies
Friday, November 11th, 2016 Art Column,Vile Bodies is a catchy title but there are very few points of comparison between Evelyn Waugh’s novel about the party-going lifestyles of young Londoners in the 1920s, and the current exhibition at the White Rabbit Gallery. In a Chinese context the word “party” takes on an entirely different connotation, and unless you’re on the […]
White Rabbit: Heavy Artillery & Cang Xin
Friday, May 20th, 2016 Art Column,There has never been a centralised, authoritarian form of government that encourages diversity. This is why alarm bells should start ringing when our own leaders want to keep centralising power – amalgamating local councils under the leadership of unelected administrators; putting a town’s art gallery, museum and theatre under the jurisdiction of a single “cultural […]