Light from Light

M A A P – M e d i a A r t A s i a P a c i f i c

Light from Light

M A A P — M e d i a A r t A s i a P a c i f i c

Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley (Australia)

Eugene Carchesio (Australia)

David Haines & Joyce Hinterding (Australia)

Lin Tianmiao (China)

Archie Moore (Australia)

Pak Sheung Chuen (Hong Kong, China)

Grant Stevens (Australia)

Josef Strau (New York)

Wang Gongxin (China)

Wang Peng (China)

Zhang Peili (China)

Editors Kim Machan & Madeleine KingDesign Paul BaiPublisher MAAP – Multimedia Art Asia Pacific Inc. GPO Box 2505 Brisbane, QLD 4001 Australiawww.maap.org.au

MAAP BoardZane Trow (chair), Dave Allen, Christopher Meakin, Paul O’Kane, Angela Reilly, Jeffery Sams

MAAP StaffKim Machan Director; Curator, Light from LightMadeleine King Research & Program Development ManagerPaul Bai China Project Manager

Supporting staff at host venues are acknowledged throughout the catalogue

© 2012 MAAP – Multimedia Art Asia Pacific Inc. All rights reserved Published December 2012 BrisbaneISBN 978-1-921858-15-4

Front cover image: Pak Sheung Chuen, Making Thousands of Suns 2010 (detail)Back cover image: Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, Light from Light 2010 (detail)

Light from Light has been supported by: the Queensland Government from art+place Queensland Public Art Fund; the

Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding body; the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through

the Australian International Cultural Council, the Australia China Council and Imagine Australia, Year of Australian Culture in

China. Light from Light has also been supported by project partners: main organising partner – the State Library of Queensland,

Shanghai Library, National Library of China, National Art Museum of China, Hangzhou Public Library, Griffith University

Queensland College of Art, China Academy of Art, Urban Art Projects, Rapid Concept Designs, South Bank Corporation, Kisun

Renewable Energy Distribution and Integrated Fine Arts Solutions. MAAP would like to thank the Australian Embassy, Beijing and

the Australian Consulate-General, Shanghai

State Library of Queensland

Shanghai Library

National Library of China

National Art Museum of China

Hangzhou Public Library

Light from Light symposium at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, 2010

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Foreword

Caroline Turner

Art changed dramatically in the late twentieth century with the emergence of new technologies and new media and at the same time globalisation and geopolitical change led to a shift of gravity from an art centred in Europe and America and towards regions such as Asia, transforming our world in the twenty-first century.

MAAP – Media Art Asia Pacific has specialised in ‘mapping’ contemporary media art in Australia and the Asian and Pacific region since 1998, the first organisation in the world to do so and, in the process, created an extraordinary artistic network with cross-cultural projects and partners in many countries. Working with over 500 artists as well as numerous institutions, MAAP has become one of Australia’s most important art connectors to the Asia-Pacific.

I became aware of MAAP when we collaborated on the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial in 1999. I was Project Director for the APT at that time and had approached MAAP’s Director Kim Machan because I believed we needed to include new media art in an exhibition with the theme ‘Beyond the Future’. The highly successful ‘Virtual Triennial’ revealed new media as a dynamic new source of art and communication. The on-line exhibition was one of the first art museum exhibitions of its kind. As Bronwyn Mahoney has said this helped create new spaces for art: http://www.mppb.eu/choreographing_chaos.php

What characterised that collaboration was what MAAP does superbly throughout its projects in the region: genuine partnership based on mutual respect, in-depth research, support for artists and experimental practice, critical and scholarly publications, exciting art that allows a fluid dialogue to emerge from audience engagement and a dedication to audiences. Cross-cultural dialogue is not easy. While new media techniques may be understood across countries, especially among those with high tech backgrounds and training, there are aspects of culture that require translation in local situations. I very much admire the way that MAAP has engaged with very broadly based audiences. The use of libraries as a venue for the brilliant bilingual Light from Light project in China and Australia reflects a depth of commitment to public art. The Shanghai Library, one of the venues and which receives over 2 million visitors a year, states on its website that the library ‘… styles itself in the shape of pyramids with escalating cubic blocks, which symbolizes the solid foundation of cultural heritage and the endless efforts by [the] human being in pursuit of knowledge’. Libraries are focussed on communities and knowledge sharing. The embedding of light-inspired and light-generating art in library spaces is a fascinating idea, combining as it does the concept that libraries are sources of enlightenment with the power of art to touch and inspire the individual imagination and to create cross-cultural dialogue.

Dr Caroline Turner is a Senior Research Fellow in the Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University and previously was Deputy Director of the Queensland Art Gallery and a co-founder of the Asia–Pacific Triennial.

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National Library of China, Beijing

Contents

List of Artists 3

Foreword by Caroline Turner 7

Kim Machan 11 — 14

What Happened in the Library?

Pauline J. Yao 17 — 21 Once Exhibited, Twice Removed:Artists and Institutions in Contemporary China

Brisbane 24 — 47

Shanghai 48 — 67

Beijing 68 — 91

Hangzhou 92 — 115 Artist Biographies 116 — 126

Acknowledgements 127

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Above: On the roof of the State Library of Queensland, artist Joyce Hinterding works with library staff to install an antenna that receives sounds of solar winds interacting with the earth’s atmosphereBelow: The Shanghai install team assembles Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley’s Light from Light

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What Happened in the Library?

Kim Machan

First conceived in 2009, Light from Light involved commissioning eleven artists to create site-specific artworks to be installed in public libraries in China and Australia. The Light from Light project was created as an extended exhibition that crossed into five major public institutions in a cross-cultural exploration of artistic opportunities, new partnerships, and audiences.

The first installation at the State Library of Queensland commenced 3 October 2010 – but before that first public presentation, artist residencies and project development had been initiated over a year earlier, offering artists some interesting and unusual situations. While the exhibition continued at the State Library of Queensland, the same works (as an edition of two) were subsequently mounted in the Shanghai Library, the National Library of China and the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) in Beijing and finally in the Hangzhou Public Library. The exhibition was de-installed from the library circuit in February 2012 and work commenced on a gallery exhibition that would summarise the project with a presentation of some of the artworks and abundant documentation. This publication, a culmination of the three-year project, coincides with the Light from Light: Reprise exhibition at MAAP SPACE in Brisbane, 6 December 2012 to 22 February 2013.

The decision to create Light from Light as a library-based project was due in part to past positive collaborations between MAAP – Media Art Asia Pacific (MAAP) and the State Library of Queensland1, and in part to a curiosity in the changing shape of public institutions in Australia and China, wherein libraries and art museums alike are adapting to changing demands and remits from the public, often centred around the increased desire for new technologies and new experiences. The idea of a library exhibition that directly linked Australian and Chinese institutions was a feasible proposition as the State Library of Queensland had a working relationship with Shanghai Library. The two progressive Directors, Lea Giles-Peters2 and Dr Wu Jianzhong, were open to the idea of working on a mutual project and not only that, but an experimental media art project with ambitious and unpredictable outcomes. It is MAAP’s long-held belief that strong partnerships are forged when the relationship is oriented around finding solutions to shared problems or challenges. Light from Light was the perfect opportunity to test whether the spirit of willing cooperation would prevail over the many logistical challenges inherent to the bilateral and cross-institutional nature of the project. To better understand the motivations and ambitions of this project, it is useful to be aware of MAAP’s exhibition history and relationships in the region.

In 1998 the MAAP organisation was formed to create new networks in Australia and the Asia Pacific regions linking artists using media technologies in a period when the internet and new technologies were seen as a common, crucial, emerging and experimental platform to be explored and critically connected. After making annual media art festivals in Brisbane from 1998 to 2001 the condition arose through relationships with artists in China to broker partnerships to achieve the MAAP in Beijing 2002: moist festival. The central exhibition was one of the first new media art exhibitions in China with official cooperation and notably, with financial contributions from Chinese government agencies. The core exhibition was held in the Art Museum of China Millennium Monument with additional organising partners being the China International Exhibitions Agency, the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing Gehua Cultural Development Group and the Australian Embassy. The central exhibition comprised nineteen major media art installations and five video

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programs installed in 6,000m2 gallery space. The first live internet artwork was successfully mounted (Jeffrey Shaw, Michael Gleich et al.’s Web of Life 2002) along with a range of ambitious and challenging works. The significance of the exhibition was that it further expanded the official boundaries of what art could be in China with state sanction. The mix of art with new technology is one that opens cooperation in the region because of the association with a fast developing, technologically sophisticated economy and consequently culture.

After this project MAAP continued to include Chinese artists in other projects and returned to China to participate in Synthetic Times in 2008, a major new media art exhibition that was part of the official Beijing Olympics cultural program at NAMOC. The condition of the art world in China had changed and for MAAP it was a new challenge to consider other exhibition models that might create alternative counterpoints to what was happening in the mainstream. To bring that context into focus, I commend to you Pauline Yao’s compelling essay in this catalogue that provides history and insight into the development of contemporary Chinese art. While MAAP has made new and ongoing partnerships in China through exhibition projects, so too in Australia MAAP aligned with unconventional partners to leverage new exhibition models.

Light from Light was conceived as a public art project that rather than being housed in a specific exhibitions area (as many libraries do have dedicated gallery space), the artworks were to be site-specific, dispersed in and around the collections and public reading areas. In this way the exhibition was experienced in a slow and low-key manner over a long period of time. Utilising the ‘library as site’ played on the presumption of an audience in a mindset of research and open thinking. It was hoped that this special condition inside the library might provide some accidental encounters with art that might not only be unexpected, but act as a provocative catalyst. The lapses from the tasks of research, the dilemma of procrastination, the drifts into oblique and seemingly unrelated ideas, are often reported conditions that lead to break-throughs into new and creative perspectives. It was intended and hoped that the artworks’ open-ended potential, their integration and unexpected placement within the library setting would spark curiosity and generate creative encounters.

As custodians of expanding knowledge and collectors of all forms of written expression, public libraries are precious and vital institutions. While the traditional role of the library as a repository for books and other documentary material is still a part of the 21st century institution, rapid changes have been underway since the exponential advancement of information and communications technology over the past two decades. These developments created opportunities for MAAP to creatively explore public libraries and newly created and connected public spaces, both real and virtual. The library has changed, though the context still provides an environment that represents and encourages very particular and positive behaviours. It is a place to research, to reflect and think openly. It is an egalitarian setting where people often spend long periods of time accommodated with seating, desks and quiet comfort.

The curatorial premise of the project synthesised a range of ideas and opportunities that could be contained in a reflection on the public library as a place of enlightenment. To borrow a philosophical entry from Immanuel Kant’s explanation of the Enlightenment – ‘Sapere aude! [Dare to be wise!] Have courage to make use of your own understanding’3. His advice dating from the 18th century was not simply to learn facts but to interpret, question and progress our knowledge.

To achieve the project, meetings and negotiations with the State Library of Queensland, Shanghai Library, the National Library of China and finally Hangzhou Public Library were as rewarding as they were challenging and involved. This is the substructure, the context, and the exhibition

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condition that was simultaneously developed with the artists as the artistic problem and brief. The artworks, as an edition of two, were simultaneously installed in Australia and China. In this way the libraries would have a commonality, allowing audiences in Australia and China to consider the other context and imaginatively project into another space. A visual presentation delivered on existing programming monitors within each library documented the pairing of the artworks in dual locations. This offered further explanation by drawing together the disparately located works.

The bilateral nature of the project raises questions as to how each artwork relates to and is understood in each location. How might audiences differ? Likely to be more exposed to contemporary art in public places, would audiences in Australia be more literate and confident with the exhibition, or indifferent and dismissive? How would audiences in China interact with the artworks – would they foster conversations or more private attitudes? How might the different approaches and attitudes of staff within the libraries affect the reception of the artworks and indeed affect relations between staff and library users? Would the exhibition change the culture of the library, affect its institutional disposition and would this be welcomed or resisted?

The exhibition was predominantly a quiet infiltration into library spaces counterbalanced with one outdoor work that was undeniably present. While Light from Light is described here predominantly as a public art project for libraries and library patrons, the project did make some more traditional links back to the art world. There were artists talks in Brisbane; a symposium at the China Academy of Art where artists spoke about their projects; and in Beijing the Light from Light Burchill & McCamley geodesic dome was installed at the front entrance of the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) with a didactic presentation about the exhibition inside the museum to extend awareness and link audiences across the institutions.

The Light from Light exhibition collected artists’ responses that reflect on the multi-dimensionality of light: the physical properties of light, the cultural associations, and light as a metaphor for spirituality and rational thought.

The artworks acted as islands to visit, mentally or physically. Returning to the idea of the artwork as a place to lapse from research, to contemplate and enter as places of free thought, Lin Tianmiao’s Private Reading Lamp was reported to be well occupied in the Chinese libraries, often showing protruding legs. The one-person retreat in Brisbane seems to have been not quite so popular to enter, though was a memorable and dramatic visual object, suspended from the 12m ceiling. Each of the artists’ works took on new qualities in each library, generating fresh stories from their public installation and occasionally antagonistic relationships with staff, who sometimes struggled to cope with the interventions grafted into their ordered space. Though it should be said there were as many if not more stories of expanded experience and gratitude from staff for the unusual requests that enabled their libraries to work in ways they hadn’t before.

I’d like to thank the artists – Wang Gongxin who infiltrated art into databases; Pak Sheung Chuen who explored light as a metaphor for the library’s knowledge systems; Josef Strau who made awkward and elegant lamps tell stories; Joyce Hinterding and David Haines who offered the sound of the sun hitting the earth’s atmosphere; Zhang Peili who illuminated in garish hues the functions and dysfunctions of language; Grant Stevens who offered an escape into the sunset; Wang Peng who used light to both train and confuse our gaze; Archie Moore who made a book out of shelves; Lin Tianmiao who made a private light; Eugene Carchesio who was the thief of light; and Janet Burchill with Jennifer McCamley who made light from light.

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The Light from Light project was immersed in an audience flow estimated to exceed two million people during its installation across the five venues. It is impossible to know what affect it had on audiences, aware or unsuspecting. The substantial documentation of the various installation settings builds a relatively instant snapshot of the otherwise slow art experience that infiltrated the libraries.

I wish to extend my gratitude to all in this extended collaboration who contributed over the three years of preparation and presentation – thank you.

Kim Machan is the director of MAAP, and curator of Light from Light.

1 MAAP and the State Library of Queensland have previously worked together on innovative media art projects: in 2004 an online net art project (MAAP in Singapore new media art project) was developed and delivered; and in 2006 a major international media art project (OUT OF THE INTERNET www.maap.org.au/OTTI) was presented with the cooperation and involvement of staff, especially ICTS Department Information Communication Technology Services, with the guiding support of Dave Allen. It was with this background that in 2009 discussions began to consider designing a project that would span between Australia and China. Tory Jones, Partnership Development and Design Director until 2011, was instrumental in advocating and promoting the collaboration.

2 Lea Giles Peters, State Librarian at State Library of Queensland, 2000-2011.

3 Gregor, Mary J. (trans. and ed.) 1996. Practical Philosophy/ Immanuel Kant. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Josef Strau, Theatre of the Lamps Talking in the Light of the Past 2010 (detail)

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Above: National Library of China, BeijingBelow: Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, Light from Light (detail)

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Once Exhibited, Twice Removed: Artists and Institutions in Contemporary China

Pauline J. Yao

There is a widely held consensus that contemporary art began in China in 1979. So precise is this view that the moment of inception is pinpointed to an exact day: September 27, 1979. This date coincides with the Stars Group’s first public exhibition – an infamous two-day affair that took place on the fences outside the National Art Gallery in Beijing. The landmark event, earmarked as an act of defiance and dissent, has become the measuring stick by which contemporary artists have looked to validate their status as critical outsiders to a State-run and autocratic art system and define their position vis-à-vis established arts institutions. The vanguard path for art that the Stars helped to put into motion, however, is far from a straightforward one. Instead it is characterized by internal conflicts and zigzags from noncompliance and resistance on the one side, to seeking acceptance, acknowledgement, and legitimization on the other. Still, their initial gesture of occupying public space, voicing their opinions, and using official channels to substantiate new art forms acts as a benchmark for nearly all following practices that explore art in public contexts or that proclaim a critical stance against the mainstream.

An exhibition like Light from Light represents just how far things have come since 1979 – a moment when artists were not accepted into the official domain, much less welcomed through the form of commissioned works in a publicly accessible non art-specific context. Witnessing this kind of exhibition has led to me to reflect on the recent history of Chinese art exhibitions and ongoing relationships between artists and the space of official (government sanctioned) art culture. Over the years these relationships have fluctuated from acceptance to rejection to – more recently – forms of instrumentalization and co-optation. As contemporary art in China grows in popularity and visibility among a wider section of the general public, there remain key underlying questions concerning art’s ability to function autonomously and to go against prescribed systems and institutional structures in the art world. Given that in China it has always been the established institutions that control the definition of art, the art exhibition therefore becomes the paramount form by which the categories and boundaries of art are articulated to a public. The exhibitions of the Stars Group remain crucial historical markers because they symbolize a moment when the approved definition of art – who can make it, what it should look like, where it can be shown and who can see it – was challenged. My interest in tracing the history of exhibitions in China comes from a desire to further understand what role exhibitions can play in defining art as well as contours of an autonomous space for artistic production.

Although it is often treated as the opening salvo for the Chinese avant-garde, it is worth remembering that the first Stars Art Exhibition did not occur in isolation, nor should its artists be viewed as renegade players willfully acting out of contempt for the established system. Their first exhibition did go through a process of approval, and in fact the Stars were granted subsequent exhibitions both inside and outside the esteemed National Art Gallery within a year of their initial outcry1. It is also revealing that in 1980 the Stars Group officially registered with the Beijing Artists’ Association2, effectively joining the ranks of the establishment and dissuading others from aspiring to set up a space of autonomous independence. From this perspective we might view the goals of the Stars as aligned with an anti-establishment stance more than an avant-garde one. Following John Clark, the former can be described as a type of loyal opposition that does not aim to subvert the establishment

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but to hopefully replace it through gradual positioning of its members among the established ranks.The avant-garde on the other hand, is concerned with returning art to a more direct relationship with life3. In the unstable context of China it is easy to conflate these two positions into one, putting the whole of current contemporary artistic practice, the experimental tendencies of the 1990s, and the avant-garde movement of the 1980s, on an equal trajectory with the Stars. In doing so the counter-establishment position that recognizes value in being part of the mainstream and seizing position and power becomes fused with the avant-gardist desire to dissolve the relationship between art and life. Acknowledging that the latter has proven unsuccessful in the face of rampant commercialism, contemporary art in China find itself twice removed – from its own history and from the sphere of everyday contemporary life.

What interests me is not that the initial actions of the Stars Group succeeded in registering their dismay with the current State-controlled art system, but that they did so by wittingly acknowledging the power of the exhibition as political currency. The import of the Stars Group has always been less about the advancement of certain artistic styles or theories than carving out a space for art that obfuscated the rigid divide between official and non-official realms. Their way of envisioning this space occurred not through genre-breaking experimentation and promoting taboo subjects but through utilizing and leveraging the exhibition form itself. I would argue that in the context of China, where exhibitions occurred in unstable and irregular conditions and where a great deal of attention has historically been paid to certifying artists, categorizing art and defining what is national art – the notion of the exhibition takes a special appeal as it epitomizes presentation of these ideals to a public audience and requires individuals to interact with larger social and political institutions. For the Stars the exhibition provided a conceptual framework though which they could express the modern ideals of freedom and democracy. For others, such as the Xiamen Dada artists or other collective undertakings, the exhibition became the work itself (especially in the case of ‘happenings’ events) – manifested through time-based interactions occurring in public space. Organizing exhibitions in China (or for that matter anywhere) is contingent upon building an intellectual base through which to negotiate with others and involves the act of defining oneself and ones motives in relation to the political and social conditions of the day.

Prior to 1979, art created outside the officially sanctioned institutions of art (or made by artists without links to the approved system) was not recognized by the State. Since the State controlled exhibition venues this also meant certain works that did not meet approval were not presented to members of the public. This is not quite the same as saying certain art did not exist, but merely that it was not made visible. Artworks may be created in the studio or fabricated in the factory, but traditionally we are accustomed to seeing works of art in exhibitions in museums and galleries. In an old-school Socialist system where the institutions of art are controlled by the State, these museums and venues constitute the only outlet for artists, and independent productions or displays that do not go through the process of permissions and approvals are unlawful. The inseparable links between exhibition production and audience reception illustrates important points about not just what kind of art is being made, but on what terms viewers see and encounter it. The institutions of art in China entrenched since the 1950s, consisted of State-run museums or exhibition halls, officially registered artist associations and art academies such as the National Art Gallery (known today as NAMOC), the Children’s Cultural Palace, The Worker’s Palace, or various temporary exhibition halls inside public parks4. These controlled environments could be counted on to feed audiences a steady diet of ink painting, oil painting, and sculpture in accepted (read Socialist Realism) styles and to keep audiences within the safe confines of Party ideology.

After 1979 as political policies relaxed and economic floodgates were opened, foreign artists and

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modern art forms started to appear in official contexts. Soon a crescendo of other spaces for art would come into play later during the 1980s. Since State-affiliated venues still dominated the scene and some works of radical or avant-garde styles were still unable to be exhibited openly, young artists distant from the official spheres of political art periodically gathered together and exhibited modern styled works of art in their personal ‘strongholds’ – namely family apartments or personal dwellings. These and other brief exhibitions organized by regional or local painting and photographic societies catered to a smaller, decidedly more ‘insider’ audience base. It should be noted that the growth of this audience (née community) would eventually morph into what is known as the Chinese avant-garde. Art of this period not only surpassed the early salon (huahui) and modernism painting styles, but entered into a new phase of ‘conceptual art’. The dawn of these new art forms in China – language-based installations, interventions and performance and video that borrowed heavily from western conceptualism – coincided with an influx of freshly translated philosophical and art historical texts from Europe and North America. These texts in turn spawned a spate of art collectives who organized shows and ad-hoc events or ‘happenings’ that took place in smaller, makeshift venues. It was this open and relaxed atmosphere, with no onus upon artists to make living from their craft and no art market, which fomented an idealist tenor that infected artists and intellectuals alike. To this day, the conditions of the1980s are still romanticized as ‘pure’, allowing a generation of artists to experiment with art in ways never possible before, or for that matter, since.

Marked by a genuine interest to understand their own position in the world, Chinese artists in the late 1980s explored any and all ways to execute and exhibit their work. Take for example Geng Jianyi’s conceptual work Forms and Certificates from 1988. Partially conceived as a covert way of testing his fellow avant-garde artists, the Hangzhou-based Geng piggybacked his project on the invitation letters sent out to participants of the Huangshan Conference, a forum called in 1988 to discuss the planning of the upcoming 1989 China Avant-Garde Modern Art Exhibition at the National Art Gallery (now NAMOC)5. The additional form Geng invented was inserted into the official invitations that were sent out by the organizing committee and included absurd questions such as “What is your favorite animal/food/music?” and “Do you like women?” Tellingly, after enduring years of Chinese bureaucratic systems nearly all duly completed the forms. When the participants gathered for the conference, Geng performed the second part of his work: handing out certificates of merit to reward those who had submitted properly completed forms. Such a project was aimed to reveal the ranks of conformity lurking within China and by extension, his so-called ‘avant-garde’ cohorts. Geng’s gesture also hints at the invisible indoctrination at hand as artists simultaneously claimed an avant-garde position while convening a highly structured and official event concerning a highly anticipated exhibition. Another work of this period, by Light from Light artist Zhang Peili provides clues about the structured process of viewing exhibitions. His Exhibition Procedures (which later evolved into Art Project No. 2) from 1987 consists of nineteen typed pages containing rules and regulations for how the project itself is to be constructed. Instructions outline both the artwork and the manner of its exhibition, mimicking forms legal language and conditional restrictions about who can enter the space of the exhibition wearing what kinds of clothes and so on. Laying out these terms in typical bureaucratic-speak, Zhang turns the systems of regulation into the focus of attention, displacing the visual in favor of the verbal and textual. These are just some examples of how the sphere of exhibition making and institutionalized behaviors collided with artistic practices during the 1980s.

The decade following the disastrous events of Tiananmen Square in 1989 brought back a familiar struggle between official and unofficial spheres of art. The China Avant-Garde Modern Art Exhibition staged in February of that year did little to improve the position of the participating artists and

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their unorthodox approaches, and in fact brought negative attention from government officials who were wary of the escalating interest in ‘experimental’ art forms. Viewed as subversive elements, experimental artists and exhibitions featuring experimental art were largely forced underground or abroad during the 1990s. Self-organized exhibitions – lasting anywhere from a few hours to two weeks, staged in out of the way, rented locations with little or no publicity – became popular but many of these more closely resembled events than affairs of static display. The clandestine nature of these shows fostered an insider audience of like-minded individuals, most of whom carried personal connections to organizers or participating artists. In the climate of heightened political sensitivity and under the watchful eyes of censors these underground ‘shows’ were entirely divorced from a public context. Wu Hung has characterized this period as a ‘domestic turn’ in contemporary art whereby artists turned inward and focused on issues of self and identity, but it would be just as easy to characterize this period as the moment when Chinese artists took the international stage and set their sights on grand concerns of nationhood and global politics. Communities of Chinese artists and intellectuals living overseas who were not bound by the same limitations as those living inside China were taken in by international exhibitions and biennial circuit and celebrated widely by mainstream art media. The paradox of Chinese artists being embraced globally while persecuted domestically is one that plays out specifically through the channels of display and the politics of space. Metaphors of accessibility, admission and entrance are common themes found in artworks of this period – speaking to the delimitations of censorship at home and colonialist attitudes abroad. Light from Light artist Wang Peng staged a short-lived show 93: Wang Peng’s Installation Exhibition, at the Contemporary Art Gallery at 123 Longfusi Street in Beijing, which spoke precisely to these concerns. The Beijing artist exhibited only one work, entitled Wall, which consisted of a brick wall sealing off the entrance of the gallery. The exhibition opened on November 20, 1993 and continued until noon the following day. Visitors who attended could only see the obstructed gallery entrance, which was in fact the work itself. Finally the gallery owner asked Wang to tear Wall down and open up the sealed entrance, inadvertently giving Wang the chance to complete the work via an act of destruction.

The rapid influx of the art market, combined with exponential growth in private wealth made for a new set of circumstances in the early 2000s. Christening the Shanghai Biennial in 2000 with the appointment of its first international curator (Hou Hanru) and relaxing controls to allow for commercial galleries and private ventures sparked an influx of foreign buyers, wealthy patrons, and record-breaking auction figures. If artists of the 1980s and 1990s faced pressures from the central authorities and/or local law enforcement, in the 2000s they enjoyed relatively freedom and immunity from restrictive controls. Recognizing contemporary art’s more profitable side and potential for market development meant that experimental art forms were no longer something to condemn but rather something to cultivate and potentially capitalize upon. The wholehearted embrace of the art market evident to today has brought few novel developments to exhibition making however, as solo shows in commercial spaces or overblown installations in privately funded museums continue to cater to a well-heeled crowd of collectors and buyers instead of a broad-based public. Of particular note is this period’s unhindered development of specially allocated art districts and designated art zones, areas that contain art and impose a sort of ‘container aesthetics’ that favors the display of (easily commodifiable) art objects housed in pristine gallery spaces. The rapid territorial expansion of contemporary art occurring in Beijing in particular, has all but eradicated hard-nosed experimentation from experimental art, favoring object oriented and studio bound artistic processes and a pre-packaged, branded image of ‘contemporary Chinese art’. The phenomenon of self-contained ‘art zones’ such as Beijing’s 798 Art Zone are symptomatic of both a desire to segregate art from regular life and efforts to enhance art’s marketability by self-referencing its own legacy of success.

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With little balancing counterpoint or alternative spaces, contemporary art in this context is bereft of its critical capacity and left to be treated merely as a form of entertainment, a photo backdrop, or a money-making scheme for investors and status-seeking officials and socialites.

Contemporary art in China today suffers from a common predicament – it is cut off from traditions of the past on the one hand and from the life of the present on the other. This twice removed status has resulted in a scenario whereby contemporary art forms remain mostly unrecognized by mainstream culture, are only haltingly accepted into government-run institutions, are largely absent from average university art departments and go virtually unknown by the average citizen. That said, efforts to delink contemporary art from its enclave status have already begun. An exhibition like Light from Light, staged in a government-run space and featuring specially commissioned interactive works utilizing new technologies and materials, is but one example of how new models for making and displaying art in China can be realized. That such an event could reach approval at the highest levels offers an encouraging perspective on how art can exert its own energy upon a given environment or social context rather than simply becoming a byproduct of it.

If the recent explosion of economic prosperity in China has resulted in an unfettered growth of the art market and by result, the institutions of art, then the underlying question remains focused on how these institutions – especially those operating without direct State oversight – can steer art and artists towards a space of production and reception unencumbered by excessive external forces. As commercial interests increasingly over lap with artistic production, the factors threatening art are increasingly more economical than strictly political. The days of ‘outsider’ artists taking an organized stand against the establishment may become part of a distant past, but the form of the exhibition – once recognized as a valuable platform for redefining how art is understood and encountered by audiences or for forging new relationships between artists and institutions, has transitioned increasingly into a static showcase for commercial objects. In this light, the value of active art collectives, alternative art spaces and deterritorialized social and relational practices is not to be underestimated. Such practices can go a long way in restoring art’s capacity for unexpected, unplanned encounters that transcend passive viewer reception as well as carve out space for independently minded artistic production that can meaningfully reflect and participate in contemporary life. Without such emancipatory gestures, the generative qualities immanent to art cease to exist.

Pauline J. Yao is Curator at M+, Museum of Visual Culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong. She is a

co-founder of Arrow Factory, Beijing and the author of In Production Mode (2008).

1 The first exhibition organized by the Stars in Beihai Park was shut down prematurely due to complications with the local district police (they lacked the proper permit to use public space) and not with arts or culture-related bureaus. Subsequent vocalizations of dismay registered in open postings on the Democracy Wall and through organized street protests brought further attention to the Stars Group and helped to brand their image as outcast rebels.

2 The Beijing Artists’ Association is a branch of the larger Chinese Artists’ Association which is an official organization backed by the State.

3 See John Clark, Modern Asian Art, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988, pp.185-186.

4 The years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) should be viewed as an exception. During this time, not only was art was subsumed entirely by politics but schools were suspended and normal patterns of institutions and everyday life were disrupted.

5 The Huangshan conference, seen as a continuation Zhuhai Conference of 1986, was a pivotal event in the history of the Chinese avant-garde movement. Although designated as a conference, the event functioned more like a collective gathering attended by artists, curators and intellectuals active in the avant-garde scene. Artists were invited to contribute artworks, made speeches and formulated positions on future directions of art. The event in 1988 centered upon the planning of the Avant-Garde Modern Art Exhibition in 1989 which opened at the National Art Gallery (now NAMOC) on February 5, 1989. It remains one of the most important exhibitions of modern art in China.

22 This page & facing: Eugene Carchesio, Thief of Light 2010 (details)

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black light

This page & facing: Eugene Carchesio, Thief of Light 2010 (details)

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Brisbane State Library of Queensland1 October 2010 – 1 February 2012

State Librarian Lea Giles-Peters (2000-2011)Key Host Facilitators Tory Jones, Dave Allen, David Cranswick, Annika Shelley, Greg Carmichael, Grant Collins, Shane Bell, ICTS Department

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Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley

Light from Light 2010 self-powered geodesic dome, custom-built photovoltaic panels, acrylic, neon and aluminium frame

Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley have been working collaboratively since the mid 1980s. In a variety of modes they have pursued primarily semiotic concerns, referencing in particular the languages of art, design, popular culture and feminism.

Their self-powered sculpture Light from Light was commissioned for the exhibition and was the result of a MAAP residency held in Brisbane and Shanghai. Having worked with solar technologies previously through an artist residency at IASKA (International Art Space Kellerberrin Australia), the artists sought to expand their interests in the potential for photovoltaics as an artistic medium. In this work the artists use text illuminated in neon and light-emitting diodes to meditate on the poetic process of solar technology – making light from light.

Supporting and powering the neon work, Burchill and McCamley’s solar-harvesting geodesic structure is a direct tribute to Richard Buckminster Fuller’s original utopian design. Fuller’s simple geometric structure has been an enduring symbol of utopian thinking since it entered the popular imaginary of the future in the 1960s. Reimagining this iconic architectural form as a renewable energy structure, Burchill and McCamley reinvigorate Fuller’s commitment to design, engineering and science as the instruments of radical, visionary change. Their use of acrylic and neon, familiar to the artists’ collaborative body of work, is perhaps also a reference to the industrial materials embraced by techno-utopians like Fuller, as well as to the minimalist oeuvre.

As a monument to the redemptive promise of renewable energy, Light from Light is compromised by its own limited utility; namely, the scale of the solar-harvesting structure seems vastly disproportionate to the volume of power it generates. However it is the very implausibility of their solution to the problems of the present that reinforces their affectionate critique of the utopian tradition.

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In Brisbane, the Light from Light dome was elevated by 2.4m on a custom-built platform to meet site requirements. A webcam broadcast images of the dome continuously

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Eugene Carchesio

Thief of Light 2010 artist book, edition of 4, watercolour on archival paper, accompanied by electronic display

Space Light Transmission 2010 audio, 17:54 minutes

Volume 2010 single-channel video projection with sound, 4:29 minutes

With simple and unpretentious materials including paper, cardboard and watercolour, Eugene Carchesio’s works are continuous meditations on themes of geometry, figurative symbolism, the material and immaterial. Producing three works for the Light from Light exhibition, Carchesio demonstrates the breadth and interconnectedness of his interests in light, shape and sound.

Thief of Light, an artist book in watercolour on archival paper, was hand-produced and hand-bound in an edition of four at the Conservation Laboratory at the State Library of Queensland, as part of a special residency for the project. The 40 page text-based work references the illuminated manuscript, though aside from the sparing use of gold foil on the cover lettering, Carchesio’s minimal and non-decorative approach seems almost ascetic by comparison. In his hand-drawn sans-serif font, the artist riffs on notions of light, drawing together secular and spiritual notions of enlightenment through his rhythmically timed word play. In the exhibition, the book is accompanied by a digital text-only edition complete with Chinese translations, generating new layers of meaning, as well as formal contrasts between the analogue and digital.

Space Light Transmission is a sound work that was exhibited exclusively at the State Library of Queensland’s listening booths. With tongue in cheek, the artist’s instruction to ‘Listen to this until you see the lights of your inner mind’ suggests the work might transform the public space of the library’s busy second level into a site for a transcendental mode of consciousness. Continuing this project of generating reflection and meditation in the institutional environs, Volume is an audio-visual installation created with the library’s vacant auditorium spaces in mind. In this experimental foray into digital imagery, Carchesio merges his long-held interests in geometry, colour, rhythm, harmony and dissonance.

Space Light Transmission 2010, installed in the library’s existing audio station

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Volume 2010, the Edge Auditorium (SLQ)

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David Haines & Joyce Hinterding

Sunvalleyradio (Spherics and Fields; Live Broadcast from the Ionosphere) 2010

audio, hand-made antenna, directional speaker, headphones, ink on silk, computer, website

In a collaborative practice spanning photography, sound art, scent, installation and new media, Haines and Hinterding test the boundaries of the earth and the ether, the known and the unknowable. Drawing inspiration from figures on the radical fringes of science such as Wilhelm Reich, the duo appropriate scientific methodologies and aesthetics to ask artistic and philosophical questions of both observable and invisible phenomena.

Sunvalleyradio (Spherics and Fields; Live Broadcast from the Ionosphere) provides an expansive experience of the sun. Sound plays an integral role in the artists’ work, and with a hand-made an-tenna positioned on the roof of the State Library of Queensland, along with their own field record-ings captured in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, the pair present the rumbling, crackling sounds of solar winds interacting with the earth’s atmosphere.

The audio is presented in two ways for the exhibition: as Spherics and Fields, a combination of live and mixed solar sounds composed for special sonic environments in library spaces, and as Live Broadcast from the Ionosphere, an online audio stream broadcast live and unfiltered from the State Library antenna (http://www.sunvalleyradio.net/). Their installation combines these two components and gestures to the sublime with the backdrop of an ink-on-silk painting of saturated reds and golds; a visual mirror of their aural ambitions to channel the “radiant energy that reflects and refracts along the magnetic field lines of the earth” (Haines & Hinterding, 2010, Artist Statement. http://www.sunvalleyradio.net/?page_id=45). Documentation of the field recording process, presented on a purpose-built website accompanying the work, sees the pair roaming bushland with a range of hand-made antenna instruments. They appear on the one hand as rational artist-scientists, akin to the modern avant-garde, and on the other as esoteric diviners of the immaterial.

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Above: the antenna withstood cyclonic weather conditions on the roof of the library and continued broadcasting for over two years. Library goers could tune in to the sound of the sun via the website display (below)

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Lin Tianmiao

Private Reading Lamp 2010

fabric, steel frame, light globe, seat

When monitoring systems surveil almost every corner of public environments, it seems both difficult and funny to set up a private place for personal leisure, thinking, reading, reflecting or even fantasising. And in a time when personal thoughts and information are so readily shared and circulated through social media, Lin Tianmiao’s Private Reading Lamp seems strangely out of place. The work evokes another analogue sense of time, when the library and the book, the author and the reader, all revolved around a certain privacy of mind. Private Reading Lamp is also a sculpture for simple pleasure, for entertainment or even just for rest.

Reminiscent of Claes Oldenburg’s soft oversized sculptures, Lin’s Private Reading Lamp is made of cotton fabric over a stainless steel, spot-welded frame that also supports the internal lighting. The lampshade-shaped sculpture is made of scores of metres of sewn fabric strips, kept in place by the needlework of teams of women in both China and Australia who separately assembled the two-metre-high sculptures. In Australia, the sculpture was suspended from the ceiling to offer a seated position for western style comfort; while the installation in China was approached as a ‘floor lamp’ with generously comfortable internal cushions and was placed anywhere within the libraries’ public areas.

A signature quality to Lin Tianmiao’s work is her use of textiles, twine, and other mixed media assembled through hand-sewn processes to produce highly crafted artworks that can involve large teams of assistants contributing long and painstaking hours of labour to complete. The delicate and decisive use of thread has an implied gravity that is often rendered through the female figure or referenced to the body. Private Reading Lamp implicates the body through the invitation to enter and complete the artwork. The quiet performative spectacle that the work creates through its invitation to occupy is another dimension to ponder. The sculpture gently unfolds a sequence of vacant and occupied, absence and presence, as its private space is individu-ally reinterpreted and personalised.

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Archie Moore

East/West Bookcases 2010modified wooden bookshelves, wood, plastic

Working across various media, Archie Moore’s conceptual practice examines language and history through the prism of Aboriginal experience in Australia. In East/West Bookcases, Moore explores the cultural specificity of signs and symbols mediated through a familiar trope of globalisation, IKEA furniture. Two generic bookcases are remodelled to form the words ‘black’ in English and ‘white’ as the Chinese character, 白. The shelves house additional text, though not in the form of books. Letters and Chinese characters are glued directly to the shelves spelling out some common Anglo and Chinese cultural associations with these words. Some words like ‘showing profit’ seem innocuous while others, such as ‘evil’, have potent cultural significance.

Moore plays up word-associations that are familiar to each language group, creating both overlaps and deep contrasts in meaning for English and Chinese-speaking audiences. For example, while English-speaking audiences are familiar with the colour black’s symbolic connotations with death and mourning, for Chinese-speaking audiences Moore uses white, not black, to evoke these meanings in accordance with an aspect of Chinese cultural custom. A project central to his work, Moore points to the malevolent effects of language, particularly where harmful language is disguised through euphemism or the veil of neutrality, especially so in the context of racial vilification.

Each bookshelf presents a word and culture puzzle that tips into a far more complex commentary than the first obvious reading and consequently has no intention to be solved. East/West Book-cases stirs bilingual and cultural curiosity that exploits the dualistic nature of the exhibition being situated in Australia and China simultaneously. Within this staged dialogue, Moore exposes the opposing forces of cultural homogenisation, through globalisation in the use of the IKEA readymade; and rising cultural literacy, through his bespoke, nuanced and layered composition.

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Pak Sheung Chuen

Making Thousands of Suns 2010

vinyl, wooden shelf and books

Making Thousands of Suns is an installation that emerged from an invitation from MAAP for artist Pak Sheung Chuen to take part in a Brisbane residency. In the first stage of the project, Pak studied the State Library of Queensland, responding to the site, architecture, social environment and internal systems of the institution. Two features of the library in particular piqued the artist’s interest. One was the social and artistic potential of the interlibrary loans system, wherein public libraries across Queensland are able to exchange collections with the State Library. The other was the interplay of light in the library’s Red Box reading room – a window-wrapped space that nearly hovers over the Brisbane River.

In a poetic gesture quintessential to the artist’s practice, Pak sought to cast ‘thousands’ of suns into the library, using the sun as a source in a number of ways. As a starting point, Pak engaged public librarians across Queensland to contribute to his large-scale montage of book covers featuring images of the sun. The books were delivered to the State Library of Queensland via the interlibrary loans system, and later displayed as part of the work. The ellipses of his sun-montage were then rendered as the negative space of a window sticker, allowing light to permeate and create an array of sun-shapes on the floor below. In Brisbane, the work was featured on the bright

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west-facing window of the Red Box room, as Pak intended, while finding ideal light conditions proved more challenging in some of the building-locked high-rise libraries in China. Indeed, at the Hangzhou Public Library, the work found its place on the ceiling skylight, creating a new visual dynamic.

The project is not Pak’s first intervention into library spaces. Indeed, his permanent ‘solo exhibition’ at New York’s 58th Street Branch Library, Page 22 (Half Folded Library) was created by the folding of the twenty-second page of every second book in the library’s collection. In that work, as in Making Thousands of Suns, Pak attempts to reframe the contrasting dynamics of intimacy and institutional alienation experienced in the public library environment, in favour of his fine-tuned sense of the social and the poetic.

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Grant Stevens

Turtle Twilight II 2006 – 2011

three-channel digital video, 4:00 / 10:57 minutes

Grant Stevens’ video works are distinctive as interventions into the language and aesthetics of filmic, popular and online cultures. He recontextualises the familiar by directly appropriating found text and moving image (notoriously including blockbuster films), offering glimpses of profound insight amongst his studies of banality. In the three-channel video installation Turtle Twilight II Stevens mines the contemporary online phenomenon of holiday blogging. Originally a two-channel piece with English text, the work was developed for Light from Light with the addition of a third channel containing Chinese translations. In the centre channel, a kitsch image of a beach sunset suggests we are being taken to a tropical island destination, but also flags that the precise location is not so relevant – it is instead the timeworn island holiday of the popular imagination. The image is flanked by a text narrative lifted from an anonymous blogger’s beach-side holiday experiences, the highlight being turtles at sundown. The imagery, sensations and insights described are, perhaps for both Western and Chinese audiences, familiar to the point of cliché.

There is always an uneasiness surrounding Stevens’ repurposing of others’ intimate sentiment. On the one hand, the text used in this video piece is already in the public domain; in posting their diaristic reflections online, the author submits to share with a broader audience. On the other hand, however, the exaggerated mode of public display in the library or museum context confers to audiences an unshakeable sense of voyeurism. Further complicating the matter, this new context also confers to the author’s own sentiments a charge of inauthenticity – a dismissal of their lived experiences as cliché, archetype or copy. Turtle Twilight II thus epitomises private experience in the age of public online identity. The author’s narrative is viewed through the frame of our collective and individual projections of the tropical holiday experience, as much as the author’s own experience was always already framed by these projections.

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Josef Strau

Theatre of the Lamps Talking in the Light of the Past 2010modified floor lamps, speakers, computer, A2 poster

Josef Strau is an artist and a writer. Over recent years he has conflated the two disciplines into what could be thought of as art and bespoke publishing. Strau’s work often includes sculptures using modified domestic lamps in a highly subjective manner. The lamps’ elegant and awkward personas are provoked with selective combinations including paint, coloured pens, fabric and sometimes directly applied text as another way to present and distribute his writing. However the unconventional tight dense layouts make for no ordinary reading experience. Ant-like fonts draw the reader’s face close to fully immerse into the stream of consciousness prose. Bundling up an oversized poster giveaway ensures the writing can be fully appreciated in a conventional manner, while the visual installation can be recalled as another kind of experience.

In the Theatre of the Lamps Talking in the Light of the Past, Strau has given further voice to the lamps to broadcast his writing. Each of the seven lamps has a small speaker wired inside the shade and is connected to a computer that prompts each lamp to tell a story in turn. The English text stories were fed through voice generating software to produce a scratchy, difficult to hear if not annoying ‘robot’ voice in seven different tones. The audio level and sound quality makes it necessary to be drawn intimately close to decipher the words. All seven stories were studiously translated into Chinese and recorded by librarians at the Shanghai Library to create the Mandarin speaking lamps accompanied by the Chinese character A2 poster.

The installation enjoyed three locations over the sixteen months it was installed at the State Library of Queensland in Brisbane. The final installation was within an internal garden enclosure, fenced with rich stained timber with a view into the library café. In this setting, the lamps appeared to have their personalities fully developed, confidently interacting with those who cared to listen or happened to eavesdrop.

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This morning I wasted away, as I did with so many mornings, feeling the pure procrastination of daylight like wearing an old pancake on my head shade and then waiting for the big moment to come out of it hopefully with some energy. Slowly, at least slowly, the afternoon came over our neighborhood and I still followed the thoughts in the middle of the days blankness, until finally “something” would be going on with these thin strings in the vast empty space ahead of me. Not much, but it was as if I arrived in some slightly denser region of my introspective days journey. But it was just the voice of the landlord in his backyard garden below my window like last summer with endless daylight, when I, lazy as possible from the endless days, used to listen to his endless monologues.

Like listening again to one of the visitors very long ago, who sometimes spoke polish too. He came by each winter and he would say, the germans, they killed and they killed. He told more about what happened before he was transported to the huge camp, then actually about it. Like he would have said to us, that they put many people together in some square, and he was one of them, and the nazis asked the doctors and teachers to get separated from the rest and go over to the other part of the square, and one of the teachers said, I knew it, they will need us, and so they stood together and the germans killed them after that. It took them some time, they killed more and then the rest were taken away to the camp. He often looked at me particularly, and now I start to understand, what it might have meant to him, maybe he wanted that particularly I hear him and know what happened, and that I will be testimony of the story and tell it later. That way he looked at me and explained that they killed everywhere and anywhere, they came to every new town, they just killed and killed that same way.

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Wang Gongxin

Book Dream 2010

single-channel video displayed as screen saver

Wang Gongxin’s practice centres on a sculptural and conceptual approach to video, video installation and sometimes photography. The artist often integrates three-dimensional objects with projection or monitors in his extensive use of mixed media with ambitious and technically precise installations.

When invited to participate in the Light from Light project, Wang Gongxin considered the everyday use of monitors within the library and focused in on the multitude of public access computers that are used to explore the library’s databases of books and other research media. Book Dream infiltrates the existing hardware systems of the library in a surrealist gesture created by the installation of dislocated imagery and sound into the standard computer interface. The three-part video shows a sequence of Chinese books that are rhythmically animated to jiggle-zoom-and-fade in and out, all the while accompanied by the odd and comical sound of snoring. The looping video sequence replaces the screen saver mode of the computer, so whenever the computer lies dormant the ‘dream’ commences. Conversely when the computer is accessed to search for a book, the Book Dream imagery abruptly disappears reverting back into the library’s very practical reality.

This work was intended to seamlessly integrate into the library and was assumed to be the simplest work to deploy. Ironically, the work met with the most resistance and was in fact the most technically difficult to achieve. The public access computers in each location are by design a most basic computer system that is extremely challenging to augment with any additional software. Language complications compounded IT complications. Librarians found the computers’ digital snoring difficult to accept, while it was also reported that playful library patrons would covertly increase the volume. Wang’s intervention inadvertently intruded to cause great friction in a very sensitive zone between inherent library conventions and creative innovations that contemporary libraries strive for.

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Book Dream installed on Public Access Computers in all available locations within the library

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Wang Peng

Distance 2011

single-channel video, 5:00 minutes

Distance deals with perception. Two pictorial planes are presented side-by-side: one portrays a moving dot of light against a black empty space; the other an array of imagery shot at close range including urban streetscapes, logos of luxury brands like Channel and Gucci, a stone statue, a tea cup, a pot plant. The images are recorded at night or in dark settings, partially revealed and edited through selective illumination. A light dot appears to mirror and trace the camera lens point-of-view, following the movement and zoom variations as the camera records the objects and spaces with a systematic yet poetic logic. The viewer’s gaze darts back and forth between the dual visuals in an attempt to compare, contrast and reconcile the imagery. The viewer strives to uncover the artist’s thought processes, to equate and understand the serial associations. This work evokes a poesis of distance – the artist creates and questions distances between reality and illusion, abstraction and realism, future and present, ideal and truth.

Above: video still

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Wang Peng works across video, performance, photography, painting and installation. His work is often critically reflexive on the state of art in China, particularly the context of censorship and the growing culture of materialism. The artist’s work constantly toys with dichotomies, no matter what medium he employs. As another example, his 1993 site-specific installation in Beijing titled 93: Wang Peng’s Installation Exhibition contained just one work titled Wall. The entrance of the gallery was completely sealed with bricks, making the gallery impossible to enter, leaving people to gather outside on the street for the opening night. Later the wall was removed, allowing viewers to enter the empty gallery. Again, Wang Peng visits two sides of the equation, prompting the sense of dichotomy to activate our experience at many levels. This was demonstrated through the details of the art project that came to include the design of the poster, both representational and abstract; the status of the wall’s presence and absence; and the gallerist’s reaction and contribution.

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Zhang Peili

Standard Translation 2008 – 2010LED high–definition full colour monitor, computer

Zhang Peili responds to the library-as-site with a work that is immersed in language and the authority of the written word. Standard Translation visually elevates text and disintegrates meaning in a process that typifies the artist’s hallmark deconstruction of both media and language.

The artwork is activated on an LED high definition full colour monitor. Custom built to the artist’s specifications, the screen evokes the running text displays commonly used to present news headlines, informative announcements and stock market share price information. Subverting this business orientated globalised information medium, the artist uses the common computer translation software, Google Translate, to process the meaning of a Chinese axiom.

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Specifically, Standard Translation dispassionately disintegrates the meaning of the culturally rich and nuanced Chinese proverb ‘好汉不吃眼前亏’, which refers to the heroic personal attribute of perseverance in the face of challenges and set-backs. The first translation generates the phrase into English as ‘heroes do not eat the immediate loss’ and while each individual character has been technically translated, the cultural meaning is absurdly skewed. As the phrase is fed through the software into nearly twenty languages, the original meaning is further obliterated in a display of improbable phrases until finally, it returns to the proper Chinese proverb.

An unsettling combination of digital hues is used in a strict two colour display regime – one for the font, another for the background. The effect is at times difficult to read, uncomfortable to the eye and edges toward nauseating with prolonged attention. The ‘off-beat’ colours and swift movement of text across the screen adds to a visual confusion and unease as we struggle to arrest some meaning in the multilingual parade of phrases.

Standard Translation replaced the existing news headline LED display at the Tim Fairfax Newspaper Reading Room

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Director Dr Wu JianzhongKey Host Facilitators Shen Li Yun, Dennie Lee, Mr Xu

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Shanghai 3 November 2010 – 7 February 2011 Shanghai Library

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Light from Light 2010 self-powered geodesic dome, custom-built photovoltaic panels, acrylic, LED lighting and aluminium frame

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Eugene Carchesio

Thief of Light 2010

artist book, edition of 4, watercolour on archival paper, accompanied by electronic display

Volume 2010

single-channel video projection with sound, 4:29 minutes

Volume was installed on six existing computers in a triangular formation at a media and technology reading room of the library

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The artist book and electronic display Thief of Light were placed in a glass cabinet

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audio, hand-made antenna, directional speaker, headphones, ink on silk, computer, website

Guests at the opening of Light from Light at the Shanghai Library, pictured in front of Sunvalleyradio

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Lin Tianmiao

Private Reading Lamp 2010fabric, steel, frame, light globe, cushions

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Archie Moore

East/West Bookcases 2010

modified wooden bookshelves, wood, plastic

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Pak Sheung Chuen


vinyl

Librarians from Queensland public libraries participate in the Making of Thousands of Suns project by selecting a book from their collection. Pictured (this page from top, clockwise): Norell Binslar, Mackay Library; Robyn Scutt, Ravenshoe Library; Trina Morris, Kawana Library; Joel Kelly, Dalby Library; (facing page): Hero Macdonald, Capalaba Library; Jennifer Semple, Logan City Council Libraries

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Josef Strau

Theatre of the Lamps Talking in the Light of the Past 2010

modified floor lamps, speakers, computer, A2 poster

Librarians at the Shanghai Library were recorded reading the Chinese-translated ‘7 Lamp Memoirs’, used in the installation throughout China

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我到这里以前曾经在德国的一家药店里度过了一个漫长的冬

季。事实上这里的药店也很舒适。在我们的药店里有三个巨

大独立的、上面带柜台的玻璃展柜。我第一天在药店里站柜

台的时候，我看到每个展柜旁都站着的一个人，但他们的姿

势都很奇怪。他们的腿在展柜前面，但身体的其它部分深深

地弯下去，他们的整个上半身大大咧咧地趴在展柜上。我想

他们也许真的是很累，需要在所有这些可爱的、做装饰的毛

绒玩具熊中间休息。对在这里工作的人来说，这种行为显然

是非常正常的。我等了一会儿才凑近了看他们。当然我是看

不到他们的脸的，因为多数人的头都藏在典型柏林式的、像

毯子一样的围巾里了。开始我以为他们可能视力不好又丢了

眼镜，而试着凑近柜台来隔着玻璃读不同药品上的说明，并

对比他们自己可能患的病。然而后来我就意识到了他们只是

在一边休息，一边跟药剂师慢慢地讲自己的公寓等等事情，

可能仅仅为了在这个温暖漂亮的房间里多待一会儿，用我全

部的光来掩盖他们典型的坏情绪和无精打采。

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Strau’s posters were translated into Chinese. In the first two days, 400 posters were collected by Shanghai library-goers

Before I came here I used be staying for a long winter season at a pharmacy in Germany. Actually pharmacies are very comfy places here too. Inside our pharmacy are three big individual vitrines with the counter on it. When I stood my first day in the pharmacy I saw on each vitrine one person in a strange position. Their legs stood normally in front of the vitrine, but the rest of the body was deeply bowed down, the whole upper part of their bodies was shamelessly lying on the vitrine. Maybe they were really very tired I believed and needed rest between all the typical sweet decorative stuffed bears next to them. To the people working here it obviously seemed to be very normal behaviour. I waited for a while until I looked closer. I could of course not see their faces because most of the heads were hidden under blanket-like scarves in the usual Berlin fashion. First I thought that they would be maybe bad sighted and have lost their glasses and tried to look closely to read the descriptions on the different medicines under the glass surface and compare them with their own possible sicknesses. But then I realized they just rested and slowly talked to the pharmacists about their apartments and other things, probably just in order to prolong their stay in the beautiful and warm room with all my light to cover their typical dark mood and low energy attitude.

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Wang Gongxin

Book Dream 2010single-channel video displayed as screen saver

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Zhang Peili

Standard Translation 2008 – 2010LED high–definition full colour monitor, computer

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Beijing 29 April 2011 – 30 June 2011


Director Mr Zhou HepingDeputy Director Chang PijunKey Host Facilitators Wang Xiaofei, Yan Xiangdong, Chen Ning

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Director Fan Di’anKey Host Facilitators Christine Li, Cui Guangwu

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Light from Light 2010 self-powered geodesic dome, custom-built photovoltaic panels, acrylic, neon and aluminium frame

The Light from Light dome was hosted and supported by the National Art Museum of China whilst the remaining works in the exhibition were on display at the National Library of China. Arising from an initially practical concern, the two sites enriched the project by grounding it in an art context, building awareness across two major Beijing institutions, and attracting an art audience to the works at the library site. A didactic presentation within the art museum further established the link between the two venues in Beijing, and the library site in Australia.

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Eugene Carchesio

Thief of Light 2010artist book, edition of 4, watercolour on archival paper, digital monitor

Facing page: excerpts from the electronic display, featuring Chinese translations of the artist’s text

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hand-made antenna, audio, headphones, computer, website, ink on silk

A dedicated computer station was reserved for Sunvalleyradio

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Lin Tianmiao

Private Reading Lamp 2010fabric, steel, frame, light globe, cushions

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Archie Moore

East/West Bookcases 2010modified wooden bookshelves, wood, plastic

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Pak Sheung Chuen


vinyl

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Grant Stevens



We arrived at 4am and waited overcoffee until the guys came at 6am. The six Swedes were tired from their trip so we exchanged few words before making the bus ride to the docks.

I decided to have a nap because I hadn’t slept in over a day and it looked like it’d be a long night. I awoke to find that Bob and Irene had arrived bringing another shipmate from Scotland by the name of Kelly

It turned out that I had met one of her best mates, Anna, while I was in Amsterdam. Just one more reason to visit Glasgow.

This page and facing: Text excerpts from Turtle Twilight II

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Kelly and I went to the beach and practiced yoga when we noticed a huge thunderstorm developing. We watched as sheets of pink lightening lit up the dark cloud formations which were moving in quickly.

It wasn’t more than 15 minutes before the clouds had taken a sudden shift and were heading straight for us. The lightening became more intense, illuminating the ominous clouds that were tumbling closer and closer.

Above: Turtle Twilight II installed in existing audio-visual display unit

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Josef Strau



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Wang Gongxin

Book Dream 2010

single-channel video displayed as screensaver

Book Dream was installed on Public Access Computers on Levels 1 & 2. Facing page: video still (below)

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Wang Peng

Distance 2011


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Above & below: video stills

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Zhang Peili

Standard Translation 2008 – 2010

LED high–definition full colour monitor, computer

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At the National Library of China, Zhang Peili addresses the press and audiences in front of his work Standard Translation

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HangzhouHangzhou Public Library14 July 2011 – 18 September 2011

Director Chu ShuqingKey Host Facilitators He Yu Ying, Elaine Wu, Ah De, Zhang Xiaochen

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Light from Light 2010 self-powered geodesic dome, custom-built photovoltaic panels, acrylic, LED lighting and aluminium frame

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Eugene Carchesio

Thief of Light 2010artist book, edition of 4, watercolour on archival paper, and digital monitor

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hand-made antenna, audio, headphones, computer, website, ink on silk

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Lin Tianmiao

Private Reading Lamp 2010

fabric, steel, frame, light globe, cushions

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Archie Moore

East/West Bookcases 2010

modified wooden bookshelves, wood, plastic

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104

Pak Sheung Chuen


vinyl

105

106

Grant Stevens



107

108

Josef Strau



109

ðâåðéíîìéí:ôðéäáøâùèééïìçï:ãåãæäáéùúìúíðéâåðéíáé,àîéåàáé,ðéâåðéíîæîåøéíùëåçéí.âøòéðéí,âøòéðéíðùàíìááé-òúääíòåìéíåöåîçéí.òúääíùåìçéíôàøåúáãîéùåøùéäíáòåø÷éùìåáéí,ðéâåðéêàáé,åùéøéêàîé,áãô÷éðòåøéíåùáéí.äðäààæéïùéøòøùéäøçå÷äáéòôéàíàìéáúäðäìéúæäøðäáãîòåùçå÷“àéëä”åæîéøåúùìùáú.ëìäâäéúíåëìöìéìéàìíáé÷åìëíäøçå÷ëééäí.òéðéàòöåíåäøéðéàúëíîòììçùëúäúäåí.áéãåàô÷éøøåçéáòúàéùïåàòéøäåòíøåçéâåéúéä’ìéåìààéøà.

7

110

Wang Gongxin

Book Dream 2010

single-channel video displayed as screensaver

111

Book Dream video stills

112

Wang Peng

Distance 2011


Facing page: video stills

113

114

Zhang Peili

Standard Translation 2008 – 2010

LED high–definition full colour monitor, computer

115

116

Artist Biographies


Janet Burchill born 1955, Melbourne, Australia. Jennifer McCamley born 1957, Brisbane, Australia. Both live in Melbourne, Australia

Selected solo exhibitions2012 Burchill/McCamley, David Pestorius Projects, Brisbane 2011 The Emily Dickinson Project continued, Shanthi Road Gallery, Bangalore, India2010 3 Works. Burchill/McCamley, Peloton, Sydney 2009 Janet Burchill: Equivalence, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne (solo exhibition, Janet Burchill) Imitation of Life, Shanti Road Gallery, Bangalore, India2008 Primary Views, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne Inland Empire – Solar Neon, IASKA, Kellerberrin2007 Combine: Janet Burchill, Jennifer McCamley & Melinda

Harper, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Burchill/McCamley – Super 8 Films, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne2006 Our level of delusion is awesome, Yuill/Crowley Gallery,

Sydney2005 NEON, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Repent and sin no more, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne2004 All That Rises Must Converge, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne2003 Three Neons, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne One location – Berlin 1992-1997, Art Gallery of New South

Wales, Sydney2001 Tip of the Iceberg: selected works 1985-2001, University Art

Museum, University of Queensland, Brisbane; Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, Melbourne

Selected group exhibitions2012 Louise Bourgeois and Australian Artists, Heide Museum of

Modern Art, Melbourne Ten Years, Shanthi Road Gallery, Bangalore, India Less is More, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Kindness, Udarta, (Australia India Cultural Exchange) India

Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India Colombo Art Biennale, Colombo, Sri Lanka In abstraction, the body, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney Forever Young: 30 Years of the Heide Collection, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne2011 Light from Light, National Art Museum of China, Beijing,

China; Hangzhou Public Library, Hangzhou, China The Phantasm, Foxy Production, New York A Different Temporality: Aspects of Australian Feminist Art

Practice 1975-1985, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne Simone Weil: Decreation, West Space, Melbourne Seeing to a distance: Single Channel Video Work from Australia, Level 17 Artspace, Victoria University, Melbourne 2010 Light from Light, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane;

Shanghai Library, Shanghai, China Extreme Beauty: Approaches to the Real, Y3K, Melbourne Change, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne Duetto, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide Affinities, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne2009 WORD, AnnaBio-Box, West Brunswick Sculpture Triennial,

Melbourne Bio-Box, West Brunswick Sculpture Triennial, Melbourne

Drawing Folio, Block Projects, Melbourne2008 Wonderlust, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth The Ecologies Project, Monash Museum of Modern Art,

Melbourne Flux Capacitor, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne NEON, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney2007 Regarding Fear and Hope, Monash University Art Museum,

Melbourne Devotee: the will to belong to the recent past, Cabinet Gallery,

London Door Slamming Festival, Neu Galerie, Berlin Raised by Wolves, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth2006 New to the Modern, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Turrbal-Jagera, University Art Museum, University of

Queensland, Brisbane New Social Commentaries 06, Warrnambool Art Gallery,

Warrnambool 21st Century Modern, 2006 Adelaide Biennale of Australian

Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide Heart & Mind, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville,

Victoria2005 There are no coincidences, David Pestorius Projects, Brisbane Slave, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Victorian College of the

Arts, Melbourne Interesting times, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney A Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Gertrude Contemporary Art

Spaces, Melbourne2004 Ed Kuepper’s Music for Len Lye, David Pestorius Projects,

Brisbane and toured internationally 1+1+1, Yuill/Crowley Gallery, Sydney This is not America, Queensland College of Art Gallery, Brisbane; Galerie Horst Schuler, Dusseldorf2003 O Bethaniendamm, David Pestorius Projects at Art Forum,

Berlin2002 Parallel Structures, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne;

South Bank, Brisbane2001 National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition, National Gallery of

Australia, Canberra

117

Eugene Carchesio

Born 1960, Brisbane, Australia. Lives in Brisbane, Australia

Solo Exhibitions2012 Eugene Carchesio, Everything Nothing Projects, Canberra2011 Stars ignite between the death of mountains, Sutton Gallery,

Melbourne Eugene Carchesio, KickArts Contemporary Arts, Cairns Circles. Squares. Mountains., Milani Gallery, Brisbane2010 Blood of Hercules, Milani Gallery, Brisbane On Nothing (with Masato Takasaka), Sutton Projects, Melbourne2009 Interplanetary light transmission drawings (volume two),

Sutton Gallery, Melbourne2008-9 Someone’s Universe: The Art of Eugene Carchesio, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane2008 Mysteries of the Self, Milani Gallery, Brisbane2007 the birth of saints, Bellas Milani Gallery, Brisbane 52 works ascending and descending, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Eugene Carchesio: ascending descending, Artspace Mackay,

Mackay2006 everything takes time takes everything, Institute of Modern

Art, Brisbane2005 Peace on Earth, Bellas Milani Gallery, Brisbane2004 The Empty House, Bellas Milani Gallery, Brisbane everything takes time takes everything, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra2003 Eugene Carchesio, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Mortal Kings, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne and Bellas Gallery,

Brisbane2002 Heliocentricities, University of Queensland Art Museum,

Brisbane New Work, The Church Gallery, Perth Cosmic Theories, Bellas Gallery, Brisbane2001 Australian Representative, 10th Triennale-India, New Dehli,

India Lift Project, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Eugene Carchesio, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne The Jon & Eugene show (collaboration with Jon Cattapan),

Bellas Gallery, Brisbane On Contemporary Silence, Artspace, Sydney and Institute of

Modern Art, Brisbane2000 dead leaves of tokyo, Bundaberg Art Gallery, Bundaberg from nothing, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne patterns and forces, Bellas Gallery, Brisbane

Selected group exhibitions2012 Basil Sellars Art Prize, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University

of Melbourne, Melbourne Sonic Spheres, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville Negotiating this world: Contemporary Australian Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Temperament Spectrum: The first twenty-one years 1992-

2012, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne2011 Ten Years of Contemporary Art: The James C Sourris AM Collection, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Remarks on Colour, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane Slowness, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne Uneasy Futures, Performance Space, Sydney Freehand: Recent Australian Drawing, Heide Museum of

Modern Art, Melbourne Light from Light, National Library of China, Beijing, China;

Hanghzhou Public Library, Hangzhou, China 2010 Hybrid & Folklore, National Gallery Victoria (performance) Super Deluxe, Artspace Sydney Biennale (performance)

(to) give time to time, Mildura Palimpsest, Mildura roundabout, City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand Light from Light, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane;

Shanghai Library, Shanghai; China Academy of Art, Hangzhou (performance)

Room 40, Kickarts Cairns (performance)2010 Beleura National Works on Paper, Mornington Peninsula

Regional Gallery, Mornington painthing (as one), Australian Experimental Art Foundation,

Adelaide Freehand: Recent Australian Drawing, Heide Museum of

Modern Art, Melbourne2009 I walk the line: New Australian Drawing, MCA, Sydney +/-, Faculty Gallery, Faculty of Art & Design Monash University, Melbourne; Switchback Gallery, Monash University Gippsland Campus, Gippsland Auckland Art Fair (represented by Sutton Gallery), Auckland, New Zealand2008 21:100:100 One Hundred Sound Works by One Hundred

Artists from the 21st Century, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne

Under the Influence: Art & Music, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane Look! New Perspectives on the Contemporary Collection,

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Onaroll, Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart On Paper, Bellas Milani Gallery, Brisbane2007 Slowing Down, Glen Eira City Council Gallery, Melbourne Who Let the Dogs Out, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery,

Lake Macquarie; Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, Sydney

2006 Multiplicity, Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne2005 Store 5 is…, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne2004 From the Ephemeral to the Eternal, University of South

Australia Art Museum, Adelaide Heavenly Creatures, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Temperature: Contemporary Queensland Sculpture, Museum of Brisbane, Brisbane Ed Kuepper’s MFLL, tour includes Sydney Opera House, Sydney, and Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art,

Paris, France Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye, QUT Art Museum,

Brisbane2003 Papercuts, Monash University Art Museum, Melbourne2002 Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane Australia at ARCO (represented by Sutton Gallery), Madrid,

Spain Box, Brisbane City Gallery, Brisbane L x W X D, Brisbane City Gallery, Brisbane Phenomena, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, Melbourne Contemporary Drawing, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Centre,

New York2001 The Australian Paper Art Awards, Victorian Arts Centre,

Melbourne Phenomena, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

118


David Haines born 1966, London, UK. Joyce Hinterding born 1958, Melbourne, Australia. Both live in the Blue Mountains, Australia. David Haines & Joyce Hinterding are both lecturers at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney, and are represented by Breenspace

Selected exhibitions & collaborations2012 TarraWarra Biennial 2012: Sonic Spheres, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville Sound Full, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand Orgasm, Breenspace, Sydney 2011 Monocline: white cube, Breenspace, Sydney Ann Lander New Media Art Award, Art Gallery of New South

Wales, Sydney Awfully Wonderful, Science Fiction in Contemporary Art,

Performance Space, Sydney Light from Light, National Library of China, Beijing;

Hangzhou Public Library, Hangzhou, China 2010 7th Aotearoa Digital Arts Network Symposium, Sargeant Gallery, Whanganui, New Zealand Light from Light, State Library Queensland, Brisbane;

Shanghai Library, Shanghai, China 2009 Prix Ars Electronica, Award of Distinction in the Hybrid Art

category Cyber Arts 09, Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz, Austria The Dwelling, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art,

Melbourne ENERGY, Art+Communication XI, Riga, Latvia2008 Telepathy, Performance Space, Sydney The Premier of Queensland’s National New Media Art Award,

Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Turn and Widen, The 5th Seoul International Media Art

Biennale, Seoul, South Korea CORE (Cosmic Orgone Research Engineering), IASKA: Inter-

national Art Space Kellerberrin Australia, Kellberrin Waves - The Art of the Electromagnetic Society, PHOENIX

Halle Dortmund, Germany Superlight: The 2nd Biennial 01SJ Art on the edge, San Jose

Museum Art, California, USA2007 The Visitors – Aliens and UFOs in Contemporary Art, Penrith

Regional Gallery & Lewers Bequest, Penrith (in)visible sounds, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands Zone_V2_, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan2006 Re:search – art collaboration between Australia and Japan,

Electromagnetique Composition for Building Plants and Stars, Sendai Mediatheque, Sendai, Japan

Waves, Art+Communication VIII, Riga, Latvia Under the Radar, FACT- Foundation for Art & Creative Technology, Liverpool, UK Two works for Wilhelm Reich, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth 2005 The Butterfly Effect, The Australian Museum, Sydney Experimenta Vanishing Point, Margaret Lawrence Gallery,

Victoria College of the Arts, Melbourne Purple Rain, Artspace, Sydney 2004 26th Bienal de Sao Paulo 2004: Image Smugglers in a Free

Territory, Sao Paulo, Brazil Lets talk about six, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin,

New Zealand 2003 Remembrance + The Moving Image: Persistence of Vision,

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne The Liquid Sea, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Deep Space: Immersion and Sensation, The Australian Centre

for the Moving Image, Melbourne 2002 MAAP in Beijing 2002: moist, Art Museum of China Millennium Monument, Beijing, China st@rt up: new interactive media, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand Deep Space: Immersion and Sensation, The Australian Centre

for the Moving Image, Melbourne 2001 Space Odysseys, Immersion And Sensation, Art Gallery of

New South Wales, Sydney; The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

2000 The Levitation Grounds, Artspace, Sydney

119

Lin Tianmiao

Born 1961, Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China. Lives in Beijing, China

Selected solo exhibitions2012 Bound Unbound: Lin Tianmiao, Asia Society Museum, New

York, USA Badges, Galerie Lelong, New York, USA 2011 The Same, Beijing Center for the Arts, Beijing, China 2010 Audi A5 Popcorn –The art of Lin Tianmiao, Audi Art Design

Award Opening, Beijing, China2009 Gazing Back –The Art of Lin Tianmiao, OCT Contemporary

Art Terminal of He Xiangning Art Museum, Shanghai, China2008 Mother’s!!!, Long March Space, Beijing, China Focus – Works on paper, Long March Space, Beijing, China Visions de Paysages, JGM Gallery, Paris, France2007 Focus on Paper, Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore Seeing Shadow, Art and Public Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland;

Loft Gallery, Paris, France2004 Non Zero, Tokyo Art Project, Beijing, China2002 Focus, The Courtyard Gallery, Beijing, China

Selected group exhibitions2011 Light from Light, National Library of China, Beijing, China;

Hangzhou Public Library, Hangzhou, China The Couple Show, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China Louise Bourgeois & a tribute to Louise Bourgeois: Lin Tian-

miao & Hu Xiaoyuan, James Cohan Gallery, Shanghai On Stage:The Art of Beijing Opera, Basel Museum of Cultures, Switzerland2010 JUNGLE- A Close-up Focus on Chinese Contemporary Art

Trends, Platform China, Beijing, China Light from Light, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane;

Shanghai Library, Shanghai, China Self-Image: Woman Art in China (1920 – 2010), CAFA Art

Museum, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China The Constructed Dimension-2010 Chinese Contemporary

Art Invitational Exhibition, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China

2009 Over Six Hundred Choices, Arrow Factory, Beijing, China Art In Use: Sculptural Objects, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong

Kong, China Metropolis Now! – A Selection of Chinese Contemporary Art,

Meridian International Centre, Washington DC, USA The State of Things – Brussels / Beijing, Centre for Fine Art,

Brussels2008 Four Season Group Exhibition, China Academy of Art,

Hangzhou, China Half Life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese Art from the

Logan Collection Group, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco USA

Where are we?, Beijing Center for the Arts, Beijing, China Beijing – Athens: Contemporary Art from China, City of Athens Technopolis, Athens, Greece Our Future – The Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation Collection, UCCA, Beijing, China2007 Multiplex: Direction in Art, 1970 to now, Museum of Modern

Art, New York, USA Global Feminism, Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA2006 Asian Contemporary Art In Print in Celebration of Asia

Society’s 50th Anniversary, Asia Society and Museum, New York, USA; the Gallery of Singapore Tyler Print Institute,

Singapore Martell Artist Of The Year 2006, National Gallery of China,

Beijing, China2005 Rapt: Austral-Asia Zero Five, Sherman Galleries, Sydney About Beauty, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany Shanghai Cool: Creative Reproduction, Shanghai Duolun

Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China The New Works of Wang Gongxin & Lin Tianmiao, Courtyard

Gallery Annex, Beijing, China Mahjong, Museum of Fine Arts Berne, Berne, Switzerland Xianfeng! – Chinese avant-garde sculpture, Museum Beelden

Aan Zee, The Hague, Netherlands Fairy Tales Forever, ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus,

Denmark2004 Between Past and Future, ICP & Museum of Asia Society,

New York; MoMa, Chicago; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, USA Concrete Horizons, Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University of

Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand Officina Asia, Gallery d’Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy Regeneration: Contemporary Chinese Art from China and the

US, Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University; Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, USA

Gwangju Biennale 2004, Gwangju, South Korea2003 Echigo –Tsumari Art Triennial, Niigata, Japan Arles Photography Festival, Arles, France New Zone Chinese Art, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland2002 2nd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial 2002, Fukuoka Asian Art

Museum, Fukuoka, Japan Gwangju Biennale 2002, Gwangju, South Korea eva International Biennial of Visual Art, Limerick City, Ireland Guangzhou Triennale 2002, Guangdong Museum of Art,

Guangzhou, China Shanghai Biennale 2002, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai,

China2001 Threads of Vision: Toward A New Feminine Poetics, Cleveland

Center for Contemporary Art, Ohio, USA Floating Chimeras, Edsvik Konst Och Kultur, Stockholm,

Sweden Translated acts, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany; Queens Museum of Art, New York, USA Wang Gongxin & Lin Tianmiao’s New Works, The Loft New

Media Art Space, Beijing, China The Digital Art Festival 2001, The Loft New Media Art Space,

Beijing, China Shout on the Face, Earl Lu Gallery Lasalle College of the Art,

Singapore The New-Media Art Festival: Non-Linear Narrative, Gallery

of China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China2000 At The New Century 1979-1999 – China Contemporary Art,

Chengdu Contemporary Art Museum, Chengdu, China Inside/Out – New Chinese Art, National Gallery of Australia,

Sydney; Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, China Home?, Contemporary Art Project, Shanghai, China Bed/Chair, Xuxian Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan

120

Archie Moore

Born 1970, Toowoomba, Australia. Lives in Brisbane, Australia

Selected solo exhibitions2012 [as yet untitled], The Commercial Gallery, Sydney Clover, Boxcopy, Brisbane Mussel, Higure Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Ten Missions From God, Spiro Grace Art Rooms, Brisbane2011 Three Strikes, PLATFORM: Public art installation (curated

by the Museum of Brisbane), Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital Busway Station, Brisbane

2010 Bennelong Way To The Top, The Cosmic Battle For Your Heart Gallery, Sydney

Dwelling, Accidentally Annie Street Space, Brisbane2009 Archie Moore: Club, Museum of Brisbane, Brisbane2006 Depth of Field, Ryan Renshaw Gallery, Brisbane2005 New Flames – Residency Exhibition, FireWorks Gallery,

Brisbane2003 Nympholepsy – A Survey of ‘Love’ Works, Palace Gallery,

Brisbane2002 Words I Learnt From The English Class, Black Peppers Gallery, Brisbane

Selected Group Exhibitions2012 Experimenta – Speak to me, 5th International Biennale of

Media Art, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne ONE/THREE – Agatha Gothe-Snape, Andrew Liversidge, Archie Moore, Robert Pulie, The Commercial Gallery, Sydney Transmission, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney Contemporary Australian Drawing 2: Drawing as notation,

text and discovery, University of the Arts, London Lie Of The Land: New Australian Landscapes, Australian

Embassy, Washington, D.C., USA Recycled Library: Altered books, Logan Art Gallery, Logan;

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney2011 The Rest Is Silence, Death Be Kind, Melbourne 28th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

Award Exhibition, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin

Recycled Library: Altered books, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, Wagga Wagga; Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Bathurst; Hervey Bay Regional Gallery, Hervey Bay; The Centre for Scenic Rim Art & Culture, Beaudesert

TPИ, various locations throughout Eastern Europe Grave But Not Serious, Pestorius Sweeney House, Brisbane Light from Light, National Library of China, Beijing, China;

Hangzhou Public Library, Hangzhou, China2010 Light from Light, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane;

Shanghai Library, Shanghai, China Last Words, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney Recycled Library: Altered books, Gladstone Regional Art

Gallery and Museum, Gladstone; Grafton Regional Gallery, Grafton; Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Morn-ington; Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo; Civic Hall Galleries, Port Lincoln; Port Pirie Regional Art Gallery, Port Pirie; Murray Bridge Regional Gallery, Murray Bridge

2009 Queensland Art, Pestorius Sweeney House, Brisbane Sculpture + Works on Paper, FireWorks Gallery, Brisbane Reality Check – Watching Sylvania Waters, Hazlehurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, Sydney Making it New: Focus on Australian Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Breaking Boundaries: Contemporary Indigenous Australian

Art from the Collection, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Recycled Library: Altered books, Artspace Mackay, Mackay;

Gladstone Regional Art Gallery & Museum, Gladstone 3 Degrees, Woolloongabba Art Gallery, Brisbane Colliding Islands, Contemporary Art Spaces Tasmania, Hobart2008 25th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander


les autres / the others, Tjibaou Cultural Centre, Nouméa, New Caledonia

Xstrata Coal Emerging Indigenous Art Award, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane

Pap Spears, 19 Karen Contemporary Artspace, Gold Coast One-Metre Eye Height, USQ Arts Gallery, Toowoomba Greatest Hits/Previously Unreleased Tracks, University Art

Gallery, University of Sydney Biennale of Sydney Online Venue L’Aboriginal Festival, Université d’Avignon, Avignon, France The Revenge of Genres – Contemporary Australian Art, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France2007 Funeral Songs, MOP, Sydney Greatest Hits/Previously Unreleased Tracks, Umbrella Studios, Townsville; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane The Revenge of Genres – Contemporary Australian Art, Les

Brasseurs, Liège, Belgium Where Whispers Walk, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane Topsy, Metro Arts, Brisbane2006 Turrbal-Jagera, University of Queensland, Brisbane The Other APT, RawSpace Galleries, Brisbane 23rd Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander


Two Way: artists and mentors, FireWorks Gallery, Brisbane2005 Top Ten, Gadens Lawyers, Brisbane 22nd Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander


Con:text, Metro Arts, Brisbane Crossings: A Gathering of Artists, SomArts Gallery, San Fran-

cisco, USA Still Moving, Colourised Festival, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane Dark and Light, FireWorks Gallery, Brisbane CALD, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane2004 Predominantly White, FireWorks Gallery, Brisbane2003 Prospect Portrait Prize Exhibition, Prospect Gallery, Prospect One Square Mile, Museum Of Brisbane, Brisbane Where Is It?, Black Peppers Gallery, Brisbane People, FireWorks Gallery, Brisbane Prime, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane Invitational 1+1, Studio 11, Brisbane Being Black, Black Peppers Gallery, Brisbane2002 Urban Blackness, Noosa Regional Gallery, Noosa Six Shades Of Black, FireWorks Gallery, Brisbane2001 Real World Art: Art by QUT Alumni, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane

121

Pak Sheung Chuen

Born 1977, Fujian, China. Lives in Hong Kong, China

Selected solo exhibitions2010 Hong Kong Diary, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong,

China Travel Without Visual Experience, Guangdong Museum of

Art, Guangzhou, China2009 Venice Biennale, Hong Kong Pavilion All Day(s) All Night(s), Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou,

China2008 From Everyday Objects to Eternity, Diogene Bivaco Urbano,

Turin, Italy Page 22, 58th Street Branch Library, New York, USA2006 Artysta z Hong Kongu, WAA Art Space, Warsaw, Poland

Selected group exhibitions2011 Vision of Nature, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong, China Power of Doubt, Times Museum (GZ), Guangzhou, China Measuring the City with the Body, St Paul St Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand Crystal City, Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand Somewhere Else, Nogueras Blanchard Gallery, Barcelona,

Spain Power of Doubt, Photo Espagna 2011, Madrid, Spain Driftwood, Horizon and Four Malay Stories, Vitamin Creative

Space at Art HK 2011, Hong Kong, China Roberto Chabet: To Be Continued, Osage Gallery, Hong Kong,

China A Wedding, Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong, China Encounter with the Passerby ABC, Juming Museum, New

Taipei City, Taiwan Light from Light, National Library of China, Beijing;

Hangzhou Public Library, Hangzhou, China2010 Twelve Chinese Artists, Iberia Center for Contemporary Art,

Beijing, China China Power Station, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli,

Turin, Italy Somnambulism: Phantasmagoric Fugue, Tina Keng Gallery,

Taipei, Taiwan Legacy and Creations - Art vs Art Exhibition, Shanghai MoCA, Shanghai, China Images Festival des Arts Visuels de Vevey, Vevey, Switzerland Light from Light, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane;

Shanghai Library, Shanghai, China Taipei Biennial 2010, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei,

Taiwan 18 Degrees of Acclimation, White Box Gallery, New York,

USA I’m Not Here, de Appel Curatorial Programme, Amsterdam,

Netherlands Biennale Cuvee 10, OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz,

Austria At the Crossroad, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts,

Taichung, Taiwan Jungle, Platform China, Beijing, China2009 Pak Sheung Chuen Solo Project, Vitamin Creative Space at

Frieze Art Fair 2009, London, UK One Degree of Separation, Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester,

UK Louis Vuitton: A Passion for Creation, Hong Kong Museum of

Art, Hong Kong, China The First Stop on the Super Highway, Nam June Paik Art

Center, Seoul, South Korea Charming Experience, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong

Kong, China The First Stop on the Super Highway, The Nam June Paik Art

Center, Seoul, South Korea Charming Experience, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong

Kong, China2008 Departure, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China Yokohama Triennale 2008, Shinko Pier, Yokohama, Japan The Third Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art,

Guangzhou, China Connection, Hanart Gallery, Beijing, China Map Games, Today Art Gallery, Beijing, China Du Dialogue Social, Motorenhalle, Dresden, Germany Ethnographies of the Future, Rotunda Gallery, New York,

USA China China China!!! Chinese Contemporary Art Beyond the

Global Market, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy Everyday Anomalies, Phoenix Art, Brighton, UK Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win, Deutsche Bank Gallery, New

York, USA2007 China Power Station: Part II, Astrup Fearnley Museum of

Modern Art, Oslo, Norway Time After Time, Hollywood Centre, Hong Kong, China Reversing Horizons, Artist Reflections of the Hong Kong

Handover 10th Anniversary, Museum Of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China

I Love Mongkok, Langham Place, Hong Kong, China Among others…, Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong, China Out Look Shenzhen, Coco Park, Shenzhen, China AIRPORT: Flying thought, Space E6, Shenzhen, China China’s Performance Art Photography, 798 Inter Art Center,

Beijing, China The Reading Records of Cities, 798 M Art Space, Beijing,

China Inside Looking Out, Osage Art Gallery, Hong Kong, China Stranger, Contemporary Art Factory, Tokyo, Japan2006 Arrivals and Departures: New Art Perspectives of Hong Kong,

Urbis, Manchester, UK hk.cityu.hk: An art exhibition by Luke Ching and Tozer Pak,

CityU Gallery, Hong Kong, China Busan Biennale 2006, Busan Contemporary Museum, Busan,

South Korea Yellow Box Art Project, Shanghai, China Art in Progress (Performance festival in Paris), France Realm with No Coordinates, NTUE Nan Hai Gallery, Taipei,

Taiwan Away, 1a Space, Hong Kong, China Fotanian 2006, Fotan Industrial Centre, Hong Kong, China2005 Inward Gazes – Documentaries of Chinese Performance Arts,

Macao Museum of Art, Macau, China Art Tube, Central MTR Station, Hong Kong, China Power Plays (Artists Challenge Authorities), Para/Site Art

Space, Hong Kong, China2004 Fotanian 2004, Fotan Industrial Centre, Hong Kong, China melbourneconnectionasia 2004, Urbanart group inc, Melbourne Toys’bout, Habitus Design Space, Hong Kong, China Man Made – A Project about Masculinity and Art, Para/Site

Art Space, Hong Kong China2003 A time like this … Zeiten wie diese…, Para/Site Art

Space, Hong Kong, China Fotanian 2003, Fotan Industrial Centre, Hong Kong, China2002 Invitational Exhibition by Department of Architecture,

Department of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

2001 Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition 2001, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, China Mission / Vision: an artistic dialogue with religion, Para/Site

Art Space, Hong Kong, China2000 Gordon Lo and Tozer Pak Joint Exhibition, Sir Run Run Shaw

Hall, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

122

Grant Stevens

Born 1980, Brisbane, Australia. Lives in Brisbane, Australia

Selected solo exhibitions2012 Seriously, Relax, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney2010 Horizons, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney Burst, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth2009 Fazed, Starkwhite, Auckland, New Zealand Wobbly, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney2008 Really Really, Contemporary Centre for Photography, Melbourne No Bad Days, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane2007 Education, Education, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney Cliché and Collusion, Museum of Art, Brigham Young University, Utah, USA Going Steady, Starkwhite, Auckland, New Zealand The Switch, Il Ponte Contemporanea, Rome2006 New Ideas for Cake, The Block, Brisbane Cut to the Cheese: Selected Works, Museum of Brisbane,

Brisbane The Switch, Lismore Regional Gallery, Lismore2005 I Like Ike, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney Like Two Ships, Elastic residence, London, UK When There’s Love, Metro Arts, Brisbane Like Two Ships, Kings ARI, Melbourne2004 Some Want It All, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney Dazed and Praised, David Pestorius Projects, Brisbane

Selected group exhibitions2012 Speak to Me, Experimenta 5th International Biennial of

Media Art, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne Greatest Hits Volume 3, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane2011 Let the Healing Begin, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane Light from Light, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane;

National Library of China, Beijing, China; Hangzhou Public Library, Hangzhou, China

New Age: New Media, Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing; Songzhuang Art Museum, Beijing; The Art Yard, Lhasa; Yuanboyuan Jinan International Art Exhibition Centre, Jinan; Art Hangzhou Expo, Hangzhou; Sichuan Fine Art Academy Art Gallery, Chongqing, China; Parer Place, Bris-bane; 146 ArtSpace, Hobart; Federation Square, Melbourne

VideoRow, The Torrence Art Museum, Los Angeles, USA heads, Utopia Art Sydney, Sydney Illuminations and bad faith, Bondi Pavilion Gallery, Sydney The New Arcadia, Lismore Regional Gallery, Lismore Life is Risk/Art is Risk, National Artists’ Self-Portrait Prize,

University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane2010 Big Tree Foot: The 5th OCAT International Art Residency

Exhibition, J & Z Gallery, Shenzhen, China (Australian) diversity, Songzhuan Art Festival Sunshine

International Art Museum, Beijing, China City of Hobart Art Prize, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gal-

lery, Hobart Kaldor Public Arts Projects Move: The Exhibition, Queens-

land Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Loveart, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney Starkwhite at Art Los Angeles Contemporary, Pacific Design

Center, Los Angeles2009 In Order Out, Anna Pappas Gallery, Melbourne LANGUE FROID - COLD LANGUAGE/COLD TONGUE, Conny

Dietzschold Gallery, Sydney Volume II, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane QUEENSLAND ART 2009, Pestorius Sweeney House, Brisbane Total Nowhere Emotion Expansion, Brisbane Festival,

Brisbane 58th Blake Prize, National Art School, Sydney (touring exhibition) Light Sensitive Material: works from the Verghis Collection,

Bathurst Regional Art Gallery Word, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney Some Text Missing, CAST, Hobart New Acquisitions 2009, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney The more you ignore me, the closer I get, University of

Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane Lean Towards Indifference!, Metro Arts, Brisbane Speaking in Tongues, Nature Morte, Berlin, Germany Play, Spruill Gallery, Atlanta, USA2008 Artisti, Il Ponte Contemporanea, Rome Ornament is a Crime, Gallery 1927, Los Angeles TYPECAST, Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne The Dating Show, Institute of Modern Art @ TCB, Brisbane GIFTED, DELL Gallery, Brisbane AS IF THIS LAND WERE YOURS, 29025 Eveningside Dr, Los Angeles neo goth: back in black, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane2007 I Want To Believe, Boxcopy Contemporary Art Space, Brisbane Bad Brains, a little blah blah, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam The Leisure Class, the Australian Cinematique, Queensland

Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Clip Art, Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney Projekt Video Art Archive, Geraldton Regional Art Gallery,

Geraldton New Deities, Devonport Regional Gallery, Devonport Flim Flam, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra Experimenta Vanishing Point, Ipswich Art Gallery, Ipswich2006 Anne Landa Award, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 21st Century Modern: 2006 Adelaide Biennial of Australian

Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (installation with Slave collective)

Low, MOP, Sydney Flaming Youth, Orange Regional Gallery, Orange2005 Prime05: New Art From Queensland, Queensland Art Gallery,

Brisbane BEOGRAD NEKAD I SAD, Prodajna Galerija, Beograd, Serbia

Terminus Projects, various train station platforms, Sydney There are no coincidences, David Pestorius Projects,

Brisbane ARC Biennial, Brisbane City Hall, Brisbane2004 2004, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Octopus 5, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne Zeitgeist, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney MAAP in Singapore 2004: GRAVITY, Singapore Art Museum,

Singapore 2003 OK Video: The Jakarta Video Art Festival, National Gallery of

Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia Fresh Cut, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane

123

Josef Strau

Born 1957, Vienna, Austria. Lives in New York, USA

Selected solo exhibitions2012 Exercises, Greene Naftali, New York, USA2011 3 Exercises: anrufen, bekennen, wegwerfen, Galerie Francesca Pia, Zürich, Switzerland2010 The Balalaika Moment, Dépendance, Brussels, Belgium The “Why does this all happen to me” Experience, House of

Gaga, Mexico City, Mexico Vienna and Jerusalem (with Martin Guttman), Pro Choice,

Vienna, Austria2009 The Oriental Therapies, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin,

Germany Vorschlag zur Erneuerung des Gedenkens an den Tod des

Autors und auch zur gleichzeitigen Erweiterung durch die Leselampe der Schreiber, WHITE HEAT, presented by Künstlerhaus Stuttgart / Hermes und der Pfau, Stuttgart, Germany

Iniquities Suspend, Rowley Kennerk Gallery, Chicago, USA2008 18 Iniqities, Greene Naftali, New York, USA A Dissidence Coincidence But WHCTLJS, Mälmo Konsthall,

Mälmo, Sweden (catalog) 2007 Voices and Substitutes, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam,

Netherlands Voices, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Germany The Tabernacle on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Institut im

Glaspavillon, Berlin, Germany “Why Doesn’t my Plant Grow Anymore?” and Other Works of Lament (…), Vilma Gold, London, UK; Dépendance, Brussels,

Belgium2006 Don’t Climb the Pyramids, Greene Naftali, New York, USA

c/o Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Berlin, Germany2002 Nazis of Suburbia, Greene Naftali, New York, USA

Group Exhibitions2012 La Demeure Joyeuse II, Galerie Francesca Pia, Zürich, Switzerland Counter-Production, Generali Foundation, Vienna, Austria Keine Zeit, 21er Haus, Vienna, Austria How do it know?, Essex Street, New York, USA Context Message, Zach Feuer, New York, USA2011 Alphabets and Instruments, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin,

Germany Nobody can tell the why of it, 1857, Oslo, Norway Dystopia, CAPC, Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux,

France Time Again, Sculpture Centre, New York, USA A Different Person, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany True Faith, Andersen’s Contemporary Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Light from Light, National Library of China, Beijing, China;

Hangzhou Public Library, Hangzhou, China2010 Light from Light, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane;

Shanghai Library, Shanghai, China The Milk Drop Coronet, Camera Austria, Graz, Austria Novel, Dépendance, Brussels, Belgium Today I made Nothing, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, USA The Pursuer, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York, USA The Evryali Score, David Zwirner, New York, USA The Baghdad Batteries, MoMA PS1, New York, USA At Home/Not At Home: Works from the Collection of Martin

and Rebecca Eisenberg, CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, New York, USA

Negation, Subtraction, Dissolution, Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles, USA Josef Strau and Clegg&Guttman, Pro Choice, Vienna, Austria

The Inhabitants, Vilma Gold, London, UK 2009 Collecting History: Highlighting Recent Acquisitions, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA Berlin-Los Angeles-A Tale of two (Other) Cities, Massimo de

Carlo, Milan, Italy On Top of the Whale, Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, USA My Summer Show, Galerie Lelong, New York, USA evas arche und der feminist (carte blanche), Contemporary

Art Museum St. Louis, St Louis, USA Scorpio´s Garden, Temoräre Kunsthalle, Berlin, Germany

The Space of Words, Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg

Looking Back, White Columns, New York, USA 2008 iamb: Through the Limbo of Vanity: R.H.Quaytman + Josef

Strau, Vilma Gold, London, UK; Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels, Belgium; and Dépendance, Brussels, Belgium

Works on Paper by Gallery Artists and Ricci Albenda, Greene Naftali, New York, USA

Manifesta 7, Trentino, Italy One Season in Hell, Mehringdamm 72, Berlin, Germany Neutre Intense. It´s gonna rain, Maison Populaire, Montreuil,

France 2007 Secret-Flix, Neue Alte Brucke, Frankfurt, Germany Years-In-Review-Installation, (organized by Josef Strau),

Vilma Gold, London, UK Door Slamming Festival, Mehringdamm 72, Berlin, Germany Tbilisi 4: Everyday is Saturday, Cumberto/Space, Tbilisi,

Georgia Dépendance at Galerie Neu, Galerie Neu, Berlin, Germany Wonderwall—Constructing the Sublime, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Shandyismus, Wiener Secession, Vienna, Austria; Kunsthaus,

Dresden, Germany Domestic Landscape, Kjubh Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany design by accident, Croy Nielsen, Berlin, Germany 2006 …:ICAL KRBBR PRDLY PRSNTS GART JAS, JON KLSY, JOSF

STRA, Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany Looking Back, White Columns, New York, USA Next to Kin, Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Germany Minotaur Blood, Galerie Fortescue Avenue, London, UK La maman et la putain, Air de Paris, Paris, France Our Marvellous Ambition, Vilma Gold Project Space, Berlin,

Germany Make Your Own Life: Artists In and Out of Cologne, Institute

of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA; Power Plant, Toronto, Canada; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, USA

Von der Abwesenheit des Lagers, Kunsthaus, Dresden, Germany 2005 The Gone Wait, Gagosian Gallery, Berlin, Germany Possession, Paul-Linke-Ufer, Berlin, Germany 2004 Müllberg, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Germany Quodlibet, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Germany Zeichnungen Werkleitzbiennale, Halle, Germany Für völligen Arbeitsschutz, Wandbilder, WBD, Berlin, Germany Editionen 4 Jahre, WBD, Berlin, Germany2003 Photo +, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York, USA Photo +, Prague Biennale 1, Prague, Czech Republic2002 The Nazis of Suburbia, (“Ökonomien der Zeit”), Museum

Ludwig, Cologne, Germany Picturing, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York, USA2000 The Inheritage, Video for Coal By Any Other Name, Colin De

Land Fine Art, New York, USA hey, international competition style, TENT, Rotterdam, Netherlands Produktivität und Existenz, Bethanienhaus, Berlin, Gemany Deutsche Kunst in Moskau, Central House of Artists, Moscow,

Russia Snowflake Office, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York, USA

124

Wang Gongxin

Born 1960, Beijing, China. Lives in Beijing, China

Selected solo exhibitions2012 Wang Gongxin: My Sun, Asia Society Museum, New York,

USA It’s About Relating – It’s About China, RedLine, Denver, USA2010 Relating – Wang Gongxin Solo Show, Platform China, Beijing, China 2009 It’s Not About the Neighbors, Arrow Factory, Beijing, China.2002 Wang Gongxin, The Contemporary Art Centre of South

Australia, Adelaide2001 My Sun, Art Space, Sydney, Australia. The New Works of Wang Gongxin & Lin Tianmiao, The Loft

New Media Art Space, Beijing, China

Selected group exhibitions2011 Social Mobility in Motion, Stern Gallery, Hebrew University

of Jerusalem, Israel Out Of The Box, GuangDong Times Museum, Guangzhou,

China; Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, China The Couple Show, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China Light from Light, National Library of China, Beijing, China;

Hangzhou Public Library, Hangzhou, China2010 ShanShui 2010: H2O, Beijing Center for the Arts, China The Constructed Dimension – 2010 Chinese Contemporary

Art Invitational Exhibition, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China

Jungle – a Close-Up Focus on Chinese Contemporary Art Trends, Platform China, Beijing, China

Reshaping History: Chinart from 2000 to 2009, China National Convention Center, Beijing, China Mu:Screen, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia Light from Light, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane; Shanghai Library, Shanghai, China2008 Four Season Group Exhibition, China Academy of Art,

Hangzhou, China Half-Life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese Art from the

Logan Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA

Christian Dior & Chinese Artists, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing Drawn in the clouds, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art,

Helsinki, Finland Where Are We?, Beijing Center for the Arts, Beijing, China Empty Orchestra, Justina M. Barnicke Art Gallery, Toronto,

Canada2007 China Contemporary Art – La lunga marcia

dell’Avanguardia, Museo d´Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce, Genoa, Italy

Whispering Wind, The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, USA

We Are Your Future, 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia All about Laughter, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan Art in Motion: Chinese Contemporary Art Meets the BMW Art

Cars, Long March Space, Beijing, China2006 Fiction@Love, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai,

China. The Moscow Photobiennale 2006, Moscow, Russia Projected Realities: Video Art from East Asia, Asia Society

and Museum, New York, USA Between Past and Future, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, USA Art in Motion, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai,

China2005 Rapt: Austral-Asia Zero Five, Sherman Galleries, Sydney ElectroScape, Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai,

China. Between Past and Future, Victoria and Albert Museum,

London, UK The New Works of Wang Gongxin & Lin Tianmiao, Courtyard

Gallery Ann ex, Beijing, China About Beauty, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany Soul, Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Bruges2004 All under Heaven, Museum for Contemporary Art Antwerp,

Antwerp, Belgium Le moine et Le demon, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon,

Lyon, France 2004 WWVF, Post CS, Amsterdam, Netherlands Between Past and Future, ICP and Museum of Asia Society,

New York, USA Visual Performance, Walsh Gallery, Chicago, USA Dialogues… Gu Dexin, Wang Gongxin and Zhang Peili,

Shanghai gallery of Art, Shanghai, China Officina Asia, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy2003 Cyber Asia – media art in the near future, Hiroshima City

Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2003, Japan. Arles Photography festival 2003, Arles, France Everyday – Contemporary art from China, Japan, Korea,

Thailand, Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen, Denmark New Zone – Chinese Art, Zacheta National Gallery of Art,

Warsaw, Poland2002 Metropolitan Iconographies – 25th Sao Paulo Biennial,

Brazil Welcome to The LOFT in Beijing – “PAUSE” 4th Gwangju

Biennial, Gwangju, South Korea Shanghai Biennial 2002, Shanghai Art Museum, China Guangzhou Triennial 2002, Guangzhou Art Museum, China Taipei Biennial 2002, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan Under Construction, Tokyo Opera City Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Synthetic Reality, East Modern Art Centre, Beijing, China. MAAP in Beijing 2002: moist, The Art Museum of China Millennium Monument, Beijing, China ChinArt, Museum Kuppersmuhle, Duisburg, Germany Beijing Afloat, Beijing-Tokyo Art Projects, Beijing, China2001 MAAP 2001: Excess, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane,

Australia Non-Linear Narrative, The China Academy of Art Gallery,

Hangzhou, China Dream, Atlantis Gallery, London, UK Living in Time, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany Translated Acts, Haus Der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany; Queens Museum of Art, New York, USA. Re:Duchamp, 49th Venice Biennale (travelling exhibition),

Venice, Italy Made in Asia?, The Duke University Museum of Art, USA The Edge, Earl Lu Gallery, Lasalle-SIA College of the Arts,

Singapore2000 Documentation of Chinese Avant-Garde Art in the 90s, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan At the New Century: 1979-1999 Chinese Contemporary Art,

Chengdu Contemporary Art Museum, Chengdu, China The Home?, Contemporary Art Project, Shanghai, China 18th WWVF(World Wide Video Festival), Amsterdam, Netherlands MAAP 2000: Presence and Place, Brisbane Powerhouse,

Brisbane Inside Out: New Chinese Art, National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra; Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong

125

Wang Peng

Born 1964, Shandong Province, China. Lives in Beijing, China

Selected solo exhibitions2007 Wang Peng Photo, Tra Gallery China, Beijing, China2005 Designed Meaninglessness, Platform China, Beijing, China2004 Breath, Performance Festival Dashanzi, 798, Beijing, China2001 Gate, Performance, MSG, Beijing, China Ourdesktop.org, Beijing, China

Selected group exhibitions2011 Light from Light, National Library of China, Beijing, China;

Hangzhou Public Library, Hangzhou, China2010 Out of the Box, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, China2009 The Same, 01100001 Gallery, Beijing, China2007 Chengdu Biennial, Chengdu, China The Real Thing: Contemporary Art from China, Tate Liver-

pool, Liverpool, UK2004 Is it Art? An Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Xi’an, China2003 Water, Beijing, China DNA Visual Exhibition, Beijing, China2002 MAAP in Beijing 2002: moist, Art Museum of China Millennium Monument, Beijing, China The 4th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea2001 Sound2, MSG, Beijing, China2000 Family, Shanghai, China1998 Inside Out: New Chinese Art Exhibition, P.S.1 Contemporary

Art Centre, New York, USA 1995 From the Central Kingdom: Chinese Avant-Garde Artists,

Centre d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain

126

Zhang Peili

Born 1957, Hangzhou, China. Lives in Hangzhou, China

Selected solo exhibitions2012 Zhang Peili, MAAP SPACE, Brisbane2011 CERTAIN PLEASURES/Zhang Peili Retrospective, Minsheng

Art Museum, Shanghai, China2010 38# Jianchang Hutong, Arrow Factory, Beijing2009 China in Four Seasons: Zhang Peili, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand2008 Zhang Peili, Tilton Gallery, New York, USA A Gust of Wind, BOERS-LI Gallery, Beijing Mute, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen, China2007 Best Artist (Tilton Gallery, New York), 07 Shanghai Art

Fair International Contemporary Art Exhibition, Shanghai Exhibition Centre, China

2006 Phrase, Currents/Art & Music, Beijing, China2005 Zhang Peili: Actor’s Line and Last Words, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia2000 Artist Project Rooms (Art & Public, Switzerland) Arco2000,

Madrid, Spain

Selected Group Exhibitions2011 Light from Light, National Library of China, Beijing, China;

Hangzhou Public Library, Hangzhou, China2010 Yi Yun, Today Art Museum, Beijing. Light from Light, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane;

Shanghai Library, Shanghai, China Not Only Time: Zhang Peili and Zhu Jia, REDCAT, Los Ange-

les, USA Jungle - A Close-up on Chinese Contemporary Art Trends,

Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing, China Looking Through Film: Traces of Cinema and Self-Constructs

in Contemporary Art, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen, China

2009 Intramoenia/Extra art, Castles of Puglia, Italy Bourgeoisified Proletariat, Songjiang Creative Studio,

Shanghai, China Yi Pai – Century Thinking, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China Timelapse, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China Avant-Garde China: 20 Years of Chinese Contemporary Art,

The National Museum of Art, Osaka; Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan

A Gift to Marco Polo, A Collateral Event for the 53rd Biennale di Venezia, Venice International University, Island

of San Servolo, Venice, Italy Blackboard, ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai, China eARTS BEYOND, 2009 Shanghai eArts Festival, Shanghai,

China2008 Insomnia, Bizart, Shanghai, China Where Are We?, Beijing Center for the Arts, Beijing, China Beijing-Athens/Contemporary Art from China, Technopolis

of the City of Athens, Greece Homesickness, T Space, Beijing, China Writing on the Wall/Chinese New Realism and Avant-Garde

in the Eighties and Nineties, Groninger Museum, Netherlands Avant-Garde China: 20 Years of Chinese Contemporary Art,

The National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan2007 We are your future (Video Box), 2nd Moscow Biennale,

Moscow, Russia Interact or Die!/ Dutch Electronic Art Festival, Rotterdam,

Netherlands Chinese Contemporary Art, Kunsthaus Graz, Austria China on Ward/The Estella Collection/ Chinese Contempo-

rary Art, 1966-2006, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Humlebæk, Denmark ’85 New Wave, The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China Forms of Concepts, 2nd Documentary Exhibition of Arts,

Wuhan, China2006 European Media Art Festival 2006, Osnabrueck, Germany China Power Station Part 1, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK Create History: Commemoration of Chinese Modern Art in

1980s, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen, China2005 L’ART DE PRODUIRE L’ART, Le Fresnoy-Studio National,

France Le invasioni barbariche, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano,

Italy Archaeology of the future, The Second Triennial of Chinese

Art, The Nanjing Museum, China2004 Techniques of the Visible/ Shanghai Biennale 2004, Shanghai

Art Museum, Shanghai, China Light as Fuck! Shanghai Assemblage 2000-2004, National

Museum of Contemporary Art Oslo, Norway BEYOND BOUNDARIES, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai,

China Zooming into Focus/ Contemporary Chinese Photography

& Video from the Haudenschild Collection, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China

China, Video Generation, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France Dialogues …/ Gu Dexin, Wang Gongxin, Zhang Peili, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China2003 Z.O.U - Zone of Urgency La Biennale di Venezia (50a Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte),Venice, Italy Happiness: a survival guide for art and life, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan 10th Biennial of Moving Images, Centre for Contemporary

Images, Geneva, Switzerland Alors, la Chine?, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France The First Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art,

Guangzhou, China Open Sky, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China2002 Pause, 4th Gwanju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea MAAP in Beijing 2002: moist, China Millennium Monument

Art Museum, Beijing, China The Third Space in The Fourth World, Eastlink Gallery,

Shanghai, China2001 Tele[visions], Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria Living in Time, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany China Art Now, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore Compound Eyes/ Contemporary Video Art from China, Earl

Lu Gallery, LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, Singapore2000 Open Ends, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA Mediacity Seoul 2000, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South

Korea Shanghai Biennale 2000, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai,

China Passe-murailles, Musee de Picardie, Amiens, France

127

THANK YOUThe Light from Light project was an extended collaboration that was generously supported by so many individuals and organisations. It is impossible to list everyone by name and so wish to extend MAAP’s gratitude to all those who helped over the three years of this project.

Sincere thanks to all of the artists for their enthusiastic participation and goodwill. Thanks to the MAAP Board members that offered their guidance and advice: Zane Trow, Angela Reilly, Dave Allen, Paul O’Kane, Jeffrey Sams, Christopher Meakin, Christine Peacock and Hugo King. Thanks to our collaborators and supporters in China including: Nils Jennrich, Matt Tobin, Elisha Whitchurch, Sam Webber, Dricus De Rooij, Professor Zhang Peili, Mr Wang Yudong, Ma Nan, Sara Zhan and MAAP intern Bai Yuyan. Thanks to our Brisbane project team, collaborators and supporters, including: Tory Jones, Dave Allen, Angela Reilly, Timothy Hill, Beh Wattenberg, Patrick King, Dr Rob Largent, and Brisbane Consul General of PRC Ren Gongping. Thanks to the efforts of staff in DFAT including: Anthony Taylor, Graeme Meehan, Jill Collins, Amanda Barry, Katie Tian, Zhang Naihong, Megan Jones, Alexandra Warnock, Dene Yeaman, Ariane Sainsbury, Li Hongwei and support from the Queensland Trade and Investment Shanghai office, Zhang Zijian, Angela Shi; staff in Arts Queensland: John Stafford, Marika Perrow, Evelyn Golding, the Art + Place program, Robyn Daw, Eliza Tee; Australia Council supporters: Kon Gouriotis, Kate Major; the Department of Linguistics Macquarie University; ACMI: Mark Bollenberg. Thanks to our committed and hard-working of volunteers in Brisbane and China, including: Rebecca Finnegan, Melanie Simsun, Caitlin Franzmann, Leena Riethmuller, Melissa Ryke, Annie Kabamba, Huang Songhao and Luo Jinhua. Thanks to Malcolm Nyst for his support of MAAP SPACE. Sincere appreciation to the MAAP key organisational staff, Paul Bai and Madeleine King, for their tireless support and contributions. And finally, all of the library and museum staff acknowledged through the catalogue made significant contributions and without their support this project would never have been possible – thank you.

Image creditsAll art works were photographed as they were installed at multiple Light from Light sites. Unless otherwise stated, the art work location correlates with the venue outlined in chapter titles.Copyright of art works remains with the artist unless otherwise stated. All photography © MAAP – Multimedia Art Asia Pacific Inc., excluding:Leif Ekstrom pp Front Cover, 27–28, 31B, 35, 37, 41, 43, 46–47Shane Bell & Grant Collins p 29BXu Li pp 8, 69–70, 71B, 72, 74–81, 83–87Ye Si pp 16B, 94–96, 99, 101–103, 106–109, 112, 114–115, Back CoverCarl Warner pp 26, 31T, 36, 39–40, 42, 45Courtesy the artists and Breenspace pp 31, 54–55, 74–75, 99(Top=T; Bottom=B)

A n E x h i b i t i o n o f C o n t e m p o r a r y M e d i a A r t 2 0 1 0 — 2 0 1 2

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Light from Light