An exhibition of Chinese photomedia is expected to attract an audience familiar with its themes among the many Chinese students at The University of Queensland.
Beijing Hao! at the UQ Art Museum features works by six contemporary artists working in and around Beijing.
Exhibitions Coordinator and curator of Beijing Hao! Gordon Craig said the Art Museum is committed to showcasing international works and this latest focus on Beijing was apt, considering the university’s growing Chinese student population.
“We tend to have an international exhibition every couple of years, but, coincidentally, Beijing Hao! is being presented at the same time as the Gonkar Gyatso survey exhibition, providing our audiences with an unprecedented opportunity to enjoy contemporary Chinese art at UQ.”
Works range from Zhou Jun’s stunning photographs of ancient and contemporary Beijing sites, shot in black and white with added red highlights, to Zhang Hongkuan’s images of makeshift workers’ cottages, Huang Xu’s performative photographs of fireworks, and Liu Gang’s photographs of advertising imagery found on building site hoardings, offering the allure of a Western lifestyle.
Li Gang, an artist who trained in Australia, uses his camera to produce positive and negative images of contemporary art spaces in Beijing, while Feng Yan makes portraits of everyday objects – a bicycle, a upright fan, a cabinet – as if they are monuments.
“For one of the world’s largest and most populous cities, Beijing is not instantly recognisable by its skyline in the manner of cities such as New York or Paris,” Mr Craig said.
“I have also noticed that photographic art depicting Beijing is often devoid of people, or at least sparsely populated.”
“This stands in contrast to tourist images of the city, which often focus on the large population and the ‘mass humanity’ one encounters in China’s capital. I wanted to focus not so much on the city itself, but on residents and their way of life, and images by people who live and work in Beijing.”
Beijing Hao! explores the experience of contemporary artists working in and around Beijing, and the intersection between international photography and the Chinese contemporary art world.
Professor Ping Chen officially opened the exhibition as Director of the Confucius Institute, a partnership involving UQ, Tianjin University and The Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban) in China. The institute fosters Chinese language and culture within the university and seeks to build and deepen links and collaborative opportunities with China.
The exhibition opened on Friday 30 March and runs to June 3 at The University of Queensland Art Museum, University Drive, St Lucia.
Media: Gordon Craig (07 3346 68762 or g.craig@uq.edu.au)
