The following conversation took place on 18 May 2021 during a panel discussion to coincide with m... more The following conversation took place on 18 May 2021 during a panel discussion to coincide with marking the six months since the opening of the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney, along with the annual occurrence of International Museum Day.
This article counters the prevailing and frequently disparaging economic and diplomatic associati... more This article counters the prevailing and frequently disparaging economic and diplomatic associations of the term ‘export’ in discussions of contemporary Chinese art, and especially those artists who live and work outside China. Drawing attention to the previously underacknowledged political, social and affective aspects of this term, the article offers a new reading of foundational works by Huang Yong Ping (1954‐2019), resident in Paris from 1989 until his death; Ni Haifeng (b. 1964), resident in Amsterdam since 1994; and Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957), resident in Tokyo from 1986 to 1995, then subsequently in New York. The article also highlights a concern shared by these artists with the persistence of colonial legacies in contemporary global capital, the connections uniting past and present modes of production and consumption and the essentializing impulses of chinoiserie, Pan-Asianism and related cultural trends. The combined study of these themes is intended to introduce a renewed foc...
This paper identifies an aesthetic of deformation in contemporary porcelain sculptures by Hong Ko... more This paper identifies an aesthetic of deformation in contemporary porcelain sculptures by Hong Kong-born, New York-based artist Sin-ying Ho. A selection of these are discussed with reference to three historic case-studies in ceramic deformity: wares that have been malformed when fired due to negligence, lack of vigilance, or misfortune; wares that have transformed in the kiln due to allegedly mysterious powers; and the eighteenth-century fashion for chinoiserie as a style of the monstrous, deformed and obscene. With reference to these case studies, it is argued that Sin-ying Ho’s ceramic sculptures represent deformity as something to be celebrated, endorsing an emancipatory narrative of diversity and open-minded tolerance.
This paper considers Australian artist Guan Wei’s use of Aboriginal Australian-inspired motifs in... more This paper considers Australian artist Guan Wei’s use of Aboriginal Australian-inspired motifs in seven related series of porcelain vases and dishes created in 2012 and 2014 in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, once considered China’s ‘Porcelain Capital’. Although significant for their quantity and their transposition of his signature style to a new medium, neither these ceramics nor the artist’s engagement with Aboriginal Australia in these and earlier works have received substantial critical attention. As one of the most prominent representatives of the ‘post-Tiananmen generation’ of Chinese émigrés who arrived in Australia after 1989, Guan Wei’s art has instead been consistently tied to a multiculturalist identity politics that foregrounds his combinations of Chinese and Euro-American iconographies. In contrast to this critical prevailing perspective, his ceramics create an idiosyncratic and exotic vision of Australia in which White Australians are either absent or appear as malign intruders. Like the eighteenth-century fashion for Chinoiserie once inspired by export ware manufactured in Jingdezhen, this ‘Australerie’ aesthetic blurs fact and fiction, East and West, to uncover a site of imagined encounter that exceeds the binary bind of identity politics, beyond the censure or control of White Australian viewers.
View: Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, 2020
This paper identifies an aesthetic of deformation in contemporary porcelain sculptures by Hong Ko... more This paper identifies an aesthetic of deformation in contemporary porcelain sculptures by Hong Kong-born, New York-based artist Sin-ying Ho. A selection of these are discussed with reference to three historic case-studies in ceramic deformity: wares that have been malformed when fired due to negligence, lack of vigilance, or misfortune; wares that have transformed in the kiln due to allegedly mysterious powers; and the eighteenth-century fashion for chinoiserie as a style of the monstrous, deformed and obscene. With reference to these case-studies, it is argued that Sin-ying Ho’s ceramic sculptures represent deformity as something to be celebrated, endorsing an emancipatory narrative of diversity and open-minded tolerance.
In 2007, Chinese artist Liu Jianhua (b. 1962) presented his work for the first time in the United... more In 2007, Chinese artist Liu Jianhua (b. 1962) presented his work for the first time in the United Kingdom with an installation of porcelain pieces at Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk. Following successful displays of this installation at the Singapore Biennale (2006), MC1 International Biennial of Contemporary Chinese Art (2005), and 50th Venice Biennale (2003), the exhibition seemed predestined to succeed. Yet Liu Jianhua: Regular/Fragile attracted more criticism than acclaim, so ardent that curator Sook-Kyung Lee was forced to close the display four weeks earlier than anticipated. This paper offers one possible answer to the question: why did Liu Jianhua: Regular/Fragile attract such criticism? The motivations identified uncover an impulse central to the parallel activities of collecting and curating: the desire to impose order on accumulations of objects that might otherwise be disorganised, chaotic and disruptive, and the need to contain a potentially threatening alterity within defined limits. By positioning the exhibition as a contemporary manifestation of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century massed porcelain displays, as well as their dissolution in public auctions of the same era, it is proposed that Liu Jianhua: Regular/Fragile provoked public complaint because it revealed an essential inability to impose boundaries on material, conceptual and cultural excess.
Art residencies are promoted as catalysts for artistic, cultural and technological exchange and e... more Art residencies are promoted as catalysts for artistic, cultural and technological exchange and experimentation but, when subjected to critical analysis, often fall short of these idealistic aims. Residency programs founded since the late 1990s in the “Porcelain Capital” of Jingdezhen, China demonstrate this incongruity, creating a context in which any movement toward greater socio-cultural equality is discouraged rather than fostered. Jingdezhen is a relatively small city in Jiangxi province with a population of just under two million people, most of whom are involved in the ceramics industry. The growth of tourism over the past decade and a rapid influx of international visitors, including many artists, has fostered a level of relative affluence and cultural diversity that sets the city apart from others in the area; however, inequality between locals and visitors is marked. Two of the first and most successful art residency initiatives, Sanbao International Ceramics Village and The Pottery Workshop, are primarily oriented toward the needs and desires of a privileged elite of predominantly white North American and European artist-nomads, respectively offering their residents a ceramics-themed retreat and package tour (Sanbao), and a production facility built on easy, unidirectional access to inexpensive materials, equipment and labour (PWS). Both encourage continuity of existing artistic and social conditions, rather than reform through exchange and experimentation.
The following conversation took place on 18 May 2021 during a panel discussion to coincide with m... more The following conversation took place on 18 May 2021 during a panel discussion to coincide with marking the six months since the opening of the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney, along with the annual occurrence of International Museum Day.
This article counters the prevailing and frequently disparaging economic and diplomatic associati... more This article counters the prevailing and frequently disparaging economic and diplomatic associations of the term ‘export’ in discussions of contemporary Chinese art, and especially those artists who live and work outside China. Drawing attention to the previously underacknowledged political, social and affective aspects of this term, the article offers a new reading of foundational works by Huang Yong Ping (1954‐2019), resident in Paris from 1989 until his death; Ni Haifeng (b. 1964), resident in Amsterdam since 1994; and Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957), resident in Tokyo from 1986 to 1995, then subsequently in New York. The article also highlights a concern shared by these artists with the persistence of colonial legacies in contemporary global capital, the connections uniting past and present modes of production and consumption and the essentializing impulses of chinoiserie, Pan-Asianism and related cultural trends. The combined study of these themes is intended to introduce a renewed foc...
This paper identifies an aesthetic of deformation in contemporary porcelain sculptures by Hong Ko... more This paper identifies an aesthetic of deformation in contemporary porcelain sculptures by Hong Kong-born, New York-based artist Sin-ying Ho. A selection of these are discussed with reference to three historic case-studies in ceramic deformity: wares that have been malformed when fired due to negligence, lack of vigilance, or misfortune; wares that have transformed in the kiln due to allegedly mysterious powers; and the eighteenth-century fashion for chinoiserie as a style of the monstrous, deformed and obscene. With reference to these case studies, it is argued that Sin-ying Ho’s ceramic sculptures represent deformity as something to be celebrated, endorsing an emancipatory narrative of diversity and open-minded tolerance.
This paper considers Australian artist Guan Wei’s use of Aboriginal Australian-inspired motifs in... more This paper considers Australian artist Guan Wei’s use of Aboriginal Australian-inspired motifs in seven related series of porcelain vases and dishes created in 2012 and 2014 in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, once considered China’s ‘Porcelain Capital’. Although significant for their quantity and their transposition of his signature style to a new medium, neither these ceramics nor the artist’s engagement with Aboriginal Australia in these and earlier works have received substantial critical attention. As one of the most prominent representatives of the ‘post-Tiananmen generation’ of Chinese émigrés who arrived in Australia after 1989, Guan Wei’s art has instead been consistently tied to a multiculturalist identity politics that foregrounds his combinations of Chinese and Euro-American iconographies. In contrast to this critical prevailing perspective, his ceramics create an idiosyncratic and exotic vision of Australia in which White Australians are either absent or appear as malign intruders. Like the eighteenth-century fashion for Chinoiserie once inspired by export ware manufactured in Jingdezhen, this ‘Australerie’ aesthetic blurs fact and fiction, East and West, to uncover a site of imagined encounter that exceeds the binary bind of identity politics, beyond the censure or control of White Australian viewers.
View: Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, 2020
This paper identifies an aesthetic of deformation in contemporary porcelain sculptures by Hong Ko... more This paper identifies an aesthetic of deformation in contemporary porcelain sculptures by Hong Kong-born, New York-based artist Sin-ying Ho. A selection of these are discussed with reference to three historic case-studies in ceramic deformity: wares that have been malformed when fired due to negligence, lack of vigilance, or misfortune; wares that have transformed in the kiln due to allegedly mysterious powers; and the eighteenth-century fashion for chinoiserie as a style of the monstrous, deformed and obscene. With reference to these case-studies, it is argued that Sin-ying Ho’s ceramic sculptures represent deformity as something to be celebrated, endorsing an emancipatory narrative of diversity and open-minded tolerance.
In 2007, Chinese artist Liu Jianhua (b. 1962) presented his work for the first time in the United... more In 2007, Chinese artist Liu Jianhua (b. 1962) presented his work for the first time in the United Kingdom with an installation of porcelain pieces at Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk. Following successful displays of this installation at the Singapore Biennale (2006), MC1 International Biennial of Contemporary Chinese Art (2005), and 50th Venice Biennale (2003), the exhibition seemed predestined to succeed. Yet Liu Jianhua: Regular/Fragile attracted more criticism than acclaim, so ardent that curator Sook-Kyung Lee was forced to close the display four weeks earlier than anticipated. This paper offers one possible answer to the question: why did Liu Jianhua: Regular/Fragile attract such criticism? The motivations identified uncover an impulse central to the parallel activities of collecting and curating: the desire to impose order on accumulations of objects that might otherwise be disorganised, chaotic and disruptive, and the need to contain a potentially threatening alterity within defined limits. By positioning the exhibition as a contemporary manifestation of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century massed porcelain displays, as well as their dissolution in public auctions of the same era, it is proposed that Liu Jianhua: Regular/Fragile provoked public complaint because it revealed an essential inability to impose boundaries on material, conceptual and cultural excess.
Art residencies are promoted as catalysts for artistic, cultural and technological exchange and e... more Art residencies are promoted as catalysts for artistic, cultural and technological exchange and experimentation but, when subjected to critical analysis, often fall short of these idealistic aims. Residency programs founded since the late 1990s in the “Porcelain Capital” of Jingdezhen, China demonstrate this incongruity, creating a context in which any movement toward greater socio-cultural equality is discouraged rather than fostered. Jingdezhen is a relatively small city in Jiangxi province with a population of just under two million people, most of whom are involved in the ceramics industry. The growth of tourism over the past decade and a rapid influx of international visitors, including many artists, has fostered a level of relative affluence and cultural diversity that sets the city apart from others in the area; however, inequality between locals and visitors is marked. Two of the first and most successful art residency initiatives, Sanbao International Ceramics Village and The Pottery Workshop, are primarily oriented toward the needs and desires of a privileged elite of predominantly white North American and European artist-nomads, respectively offering their residents a ceramics-themed retreat and package tour (Sanbao), and a production facility built on easy, unidirectional access to inexpensive materials, equipment and labour (PWS). Both encourage continuity of existing artistic and social conditions, rather than reform through exchange and experimentation.
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