Major Chinese portraiture show in Australia

Having rubbished the latest London Chinese art exhibition, what would Ai Weiwei make of the Aussie one?

We wonder whether Phaidon author, contemporary artist and dissident, Ai Weiwei, would criticise Go Figure! in the same way as he tore apart the Hayward Gallery's Art of Change: New Directions from China. “In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights,” he wrote in an article for the Guardian newspaper, published earlier this month, “anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence.”
Already one work - a nude, dead sculpture of Mao entitled The Great Corpse by a Chinese Australian artist, Shen Shaomin - has been pulled from this Australian exhibition, having been deemed too "politically sensitive".

Nevertheless, a sculpture by Ai of the show's chief benefactor, former Swiss ambassador to China turned Chinese art collector, Uli Sigg, greets visitors at the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, where the Sydney portion of the exhibition is being held. On June 12, Sigg donated 1,463 works from his collection to Hong Kong's new M+ contemporary art museum, which is due to open in 2017. Meanwhile, 55 works from Sigg's collection are on show in Australia until the end of November, at Canberra's National Portrait Gallery and the aforementioned SCAF in Sydney.

So, what would Ai say? Well, the Australian show doesn't make the kind of grand claims that the Hayward show did. Its title, Go Figure!, encourages the viewer to make his or her mind up as to whether this is significant stuff.

Meanwhile, some of the exhibits sound very interesting. We were pleased to note the reappearance of Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s, Old People’s Home. Last seen in Britain at a Saatchi gallery show of Chinese works in 2008, this piece consists of 13 full-scale motorised wheelchairs, carrying lifelike dummies of elderly political icons, such as Fidel Castro, Karl Marx and Yasser Arafat. The chairs whiz about, while their occupants snooze through the action. Is that how the CCP sees Western politics? Watch the video and judge for yourselves. If you've been to either show, please let us know what you thought. If you're unable to make them, then consider our Ai Weiwei book, the first monograph on this key figure in Chinese art.

Ai WeiweiSurvey by Karen Smith, Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Focus by Bernard Fibicher

Price T45.00

Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) is truly an artist for the twenty-first century. In his sculptures he refashions artefacts and antiques into surprising, sometimes monumental constructions such as Template (2007): hundreds of wooden doors and windows taken from demolished Ming and Qing dynasty temples and arranged into a massive outdoor sculpture. As much as these materials look to the past, they also speak of the present, because never before (and probably never again) have they been available in such abundance. Like his benches carved from centuries-old temple beams, Template is a sly commentary on the speed with which China's building boom is obliterating its past. (When Template collapsed in a rainstorm two weeks after its unveiling at Documenta 12, the artist embraced its demise as a clever artistic twist.)

In China today, making art that's critical of current cultural and economic policies is not a particularly safe career move. But Ai's father, the poet Ai Qing, walked a similar path, absorbing European avant-garde styles while studying in 1930s Paris and later standing by them in the face of Communist opposition, a move that eventually led to his exile to the distant provincial town where his son Weiwei came to be born and raised. In the late 1970s Ai Weiwei moved to Beijing, banding together with other pro-democracy artists in a loose collective known as the Stars Group. In 1981, following government retaliation against one of their exhibitions, Ai moved to New York, where he attended art school and lived the life of the bohemian for twelve years, his East Village apartment serving as a base for countless visiting Chinese artists. When his father became ill in 1993 Ai returned to China, settling in Beijing and finally taking up his art career in earnest.

Weiwei's artistic forebears belong primarily to the Western modernist avant-garde (Duchamp and Beuys are particularly relevant). But Ai has equally and increasingly been influenced by modernist architecture and contemporary urban planning, citing the need for an ideal for living in a country where runaway economic development has shown little regard for the everyday life of the individual. In stark contrast to the glass-and-steel high-rises going up around Beijing, the art galleries, ateliers and homes Ai designs are boxy and modest, made from brick and other vernacular materials. Their resolution of Eastern and Western styles is a fitting parallel to his antique readymade sculptures.

At a time when the West is finally discovering Chinese contemporary art, Ai is one of the few to have transcended the label 'Chinese artist'. In part thanks to his gallery Urs Meile (Lucerne and Beijing), Ai has won the support of strong European collectors. His work is increasingly being shown at major venues around the world (Kunsthalle Bern, Kunsthaus Graz, Tate Liverpool) and included in major international exhibitions (the Moscow Biennial, the Guangzhou Triennale, Documenta). A complex, multi-faceted artist, Ai is poised to make a deep impact on contemporary art far beyond China's borders.

In the interview Hans Ulrich Obrist discusses Ai Weiwei’s life and motivations, his childhood in a rural province close to the Russian border, his underground political work, his move to New York in the 80s and consequent return to China in the 90s, and his break within the art world.

Karen Smith’s survey examines the evolution of Ai Weiwei’s work from the early paintings, drawings, and sculptures pieces through his most recent installations and architectural work, including the cotton-made sculpture World Map (Biennale of Sydney, 2006), the wooden doors and windows structure Template (Documenta 12, 2007) and his collaboration with the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron for the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Bernard Fibicher focuses on Working Progress (Fountain of Light) (2007), a site-specific sculpture for Tate Liverpool inspired by Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International (1919) and that takes the form of a spectacular chandelier.

Specifications:

Format: Paperback
Size: 290 × 250 mm (11 3/8 × 9 7/8 in)
Pages: 160 pp
Illustrations: 200 illustrations
ISBN: 9780714848891

Karen Smith is a curator and writer based in Beijing.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery, London.

Bernard Fibicher is Director of the Musée Cantonal des Beaux Art in Lausanne.

On the Contemporary Artists Series

"The boldest, best executed, and most far-reaching publishing project devoted to contemporary art. These books will revolutionize the way contemporary art is presented and written about."—Artforum

"The combination of intelligent analysis, personal insight, useful facts and plentiful pictures is a superb format invaluable for specialists but also interesting for casual readers, it makes these books a must for the library of anyone who cares about contemporary art."—Time Out

"A unique series of informative monographs on individual artists."—The Sunday Times

"Gives the reader the impression of a personal encounter with the artists. Apart from the writing which is lucid and illuminating, it is undoubtedly the wealth of lavish illustrations which makes looking at these books a satisfying entertainment."—The Art Book