The title Gideon Rubin: Memory Goes Far as This Morning, is that of the first museum solo show of Israeli artist, Gideon Rubin exhibited at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, one of Israel’s upcoming contemporary art museums. It displayed works created by Gideon Rubin during two art residencies in Tel Aviv, Israel and in Shenzhen, China, in 2014.
In 2008 Beijing hosted the Olympics and Paralympics, four years later it was London’s turn. To celebrate each country hosted two festivals. In 2008 the UK played host to China Now, which showcased cultural and sporting events from the country. The events included China Design Now, an exhibition that took place at the V&A. The show explored new design in China, focusing on the effect that rapid economic development had on architecture and design in three major Chinese cities: Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. The exhibition focused on a wide range of design from architecture, including the ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium, to fashion. In 2012 the festival UK Now took place in China and included exhibitions of work by Tony Cragg and Rankin as well as tours from the English National Ballet. The two festivals enabled creative discussions across the two countries and different institutions as well as displaying the quality of each country’s contemporary art scene.
The leading British artist Michael Craig-Martin RA will coordinate the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2015. The hanging committee for the Summer Exhibition includes Royal Academicians Norman Ackroyd, Olwyn Bowey, Gus Cummins, Jock McFadyen, David Remfry, Mick Rooney, Alison Wilding and Bill Woodrow.
China and Britain, east in Asia and west in Europe, breed different cultures, beliefs and logics. Geographically, these two distantly parted countries barely seem to connect, let alone closely with each other. However, in their enduring history, in which both countries have been making contributions to humanity, China and Britain have also been exerting profound ...
第十四期 ISSUE 14固定欄目｜Exclusive Column
Today, a major exhibition New British Inventors: Inside Heatherwick Studio was touring in mainland China supported by the British Council. The exhibition, curated by Kate Goodwin, Head of Architecture and the Drue Heinz Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, features projects and design process from 20 years of Heatherwick Studio, capturing the studio’s spirit of discovery, demonstrating their imaginative and entrepreneurial approach to design.
I was often asked such a question in my twelve years working on China-UK cultural relations: Why does the UK spend all these money on culture and art in China – is it cultural colonization? An official answer could be that by connecting and creating international opportunities for the people in China and the UK, it builds mutual understanding. One can also understand it in this way: cultural exchange is a soft approach to build a trust, which then enables an easier dialogue in harder areas such as economy and diplomacy. A voice from the bottom of my heart sometimes would add: investment in culture is always good as long as it is grounded and can benefit or inspire individuals.
“Art is more to do with observation than invention.” Carefully teasing out the globally recognised yet the most easily ignored everyday objects with bright and arresting colour, the British artist Michael Craig-Martin has orchestrated a visual symphony of modern material life in his debut exhibition in China. Entitled Now, the touring exhibition marks the beginning of the ‘2015 UK-China Year of Cultural Exchange’.
In September 2015, the Royal Academy of Arts will present a landmark exhibition of the Honorary Royal Academician, Ai Weiwei. Although Ai is one of China’s leading contemporary artists, his work has not been seen extensively in Britain and the Royal Academy will present the first major institutional survey of his artistic output. The exhibition will include significant works from 1993 onwards, the date that marks Ai Weiwei’s return to China following more than a decade living in New York. Ai Weiwei will create new, site-specific installations and interventions throughout the Royal Academy’s spaces.
China and Britain, east in Asia and west in Europe, breed different cultures, beliefs and logics. Geographically, these two distantly parted countries barely seem to connect, let alone closely with each other. However, in their enduring history, in which both countries have been making contributions to humanity, China and Britain have also been exerting profound influences upon each other. Nevertheless, examining each other with their respective coordinates will surely result in totally different understandings from the native ones. With the deepening of globalization and rapid development of information technologies, there are closer co-operations and exchanges between the two powers, yet their distinctive cultural backgrounds and ways of thinking may often come in the way of east-west communication. To ensure win-win on common interests, cultural exchange is the sole means to promote mutual understanding and remove barriers. In this issue, we document both British and Chinese cultural exchange programmes during this year in order to review the pros and cons of cultural exchange policies and their implementations, and discuss in depth the role cultural programmes play in Sino-UK exchanges as a whole.
“It is the same – threefold – Psyche, a woman, and each time there is a reminder, as Freud puts it, that she is extended (asugedehnt). But each time (and three times the first sentence resonates in French, “Psyche est étendue…” [“Psyche is extended…”]) the mise-en-scène differs, as do the tableau and the implicit narrative.” – On Touching, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida
This summer Tate Liverpool presents the first exhibition in more than three decades to survey the late paintings of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), made between 1951 and 1953; a phase of work referred to as his black pourings and a highly influential part of his career.
In the 20th century, “photobook” was produced as an effective media for recording history and reflecting the development of the history of photography. However only in the last decade there has been a major reappraisal of the role and status of the photobook within the history of photography. China boasts a fascinating history of photobook publishing, the oversea photographers and artists who have concerned about China have been studying on it for years, trying to light its historic position worldwide. Based on a collection compiled by British photographer Martin Parr and the Beijing-London-based Dutch photographer team WassinkLundgren, the Chinese Photobook illustrates the history of Chinese photobook making over a century vivid to the world for the first time, together with its country’s diversity, richness, and vigorousness. With the support of the Cultural and Education Section of the British Embassy, the Aperture Foundation and many other institutions, it has been presented in Arles, New York, Beijing and London successively. Besides, a book of the same titled has also been published in 2015 by Aperture and the China Photographic Publishing House.
This summer, the National Gallery offers visitors a unique opportunity to experience some of the highlights of the collection in a very different way, through what they hear as much as what they see.
Hayward Gallery presents Carsten Holler’s largest survey show in the UK to date, with a wide range of Höller’s works, from newly-made pieces that have been especially commissioned, to key early artworks like The Pinocchio Effect (1994) and Upside Down Goggles (1994-2009). It brings together kinetic sculptures, videos, installations and light works that are designed to profoundly re-orientate our awareness of time and space, reflecting Höller’s wide-ranging interest in the nature of consciousness.
The M+ Sigg Collection is an extraordinary exhibition drawn from an extraordinary collection, one put together by the Swiss collector Uli Sigg and now recognised as the largest and most comprehensive of its kind in the world. The collection will form the backbone of the new M+ museum for visual culture in Hong Kong (due to open to the public in 2019)
Station to Station: A 30 Day Happening — American multi-media artist Doug Aitken’s experiment in spontaneous artistic creation taking over the Barbican Centre’s indoor and outdoor spaces (Art Gallery, The Curve, Concert Hall, Cinemas, Lakeside Terrace and Sculpture Court) for 30 days this summer from Saturday 27 June.
Art critic, lecturer, curator, chief editor, founder of tomarts.cn, gallerist – for more than a decade, Pi Li has remained extremely active in the world of Chinese contemporary art. In 2012, he was appointed senior curator of M+ Hong Kong, and has ever since become responsible for managing and researching in the formidable collection of Chinese contemporary art of the museum. From a highly educated elite fresh out from the world of the academic, to a gallerist immersed in the tough business, now returning to a position that is museological and institutional, looking after a collection that has recently become public – Pi Li has seen it all. His move from Beijing to Hong Kong might well be simply a personal decision; to the remapping of Chinese contemporary art, however, it is deemed to be the signifier of a new era.
It’s 2006, Forest Fringe initiated at the Forest Cafe in Edinburgh, a beautiful decaying church hall above the cafe is the place where the group of artists making space for risk and experiment. Over the years they devote themselves to the UK contemporary experimental performances with full of passion. This is a totally independent non-for-profit community, in this community where artists and audiences have no boundaries and even shift the roles; meanwhile this is also a performence festival held annually in Edinburgh, now the festival has grown, they begin to experiment beyond Edinburgh creating projects across the UK and internationally. As one of the UK-China Year of Cultural Exchange programmes in 2015, seven artists came to China to share their ideas with local artists and audiences. After this three-week China Tour, the co-director Andy Field and the artist Richard DeDomenici shared their unforgettable experience with us.
As previously mentioned the inter-exchanges between China and United Kingdom, or the ‘contacts’, majority of people would never ignore the facts that Britain and its opponents from Europe invaded as well as occupied the Asian area. However, behind these visible conflicts among the empires, still more meanings are worth looking at and exploring actively through the micro-scope, that is, the formation and exchange of knowledge—and, following this, the cultural identity.
The moving train where we sit always attracts us to ‘see’ the scenery outside, and the speed of motion also removes the passengers from the sense of place, acting as a barrier. Even in a relatively slow tram, serving as a common way for commuters in a city, the windows through which they see mostly serve as utterly usual views. It shows ‘nothing’ more than a space that hosts daydreams; in this way, the moving coach is a place without any productive values. However, the project conducted by the British artists collective Circumstance, Sitting-Still-Moving – Times Museum Art on Track, aimed to change this impression and to transform the tram into a carriage that not only carries people but also brings them a novel story, or a past-cum-forgotten history regarding the local community.
From its discovery in China in 2737 BC to its enthusiastic welcome in London in 1644 AD, tea has become a worldwide phenomenon and beloved staple. Whether enjoyed in a picturesque Chinese courtyard garden or on a builder’s worksite, tea is instantly recognisable in any of its myriad forms or tastes and the love of it ties together both countries and social classes.
Cass Sculpture Foundation is delighted to present A Beautiful Disorder, the first major exhibition of newly commissioned outdoor sculpture by contemporary Chinese artists to be shown in the UK. From May 2016, fifteen monumental outdoor sculptures will be on display throughout the grounds of CASS. These artists employ a variety of ambitious sculptural techniques across a range of materials including bronze, stone, steel and wood.
Tate Britain presents the first major London retrospective for almost half a century of the work of Barbara Hepworth, one of Britain’s greatest artists. Barbara Hepworth (1903-75) was a leading figure of the international modern art movement in the 1930s, and one of the most successful sculptors in the world during the 1950s and 1960s. This major retrospective emphasises Hepworth’s often-overlooked prominence in the international art world. It also highlights the different contexts and spaces in which Hepworth developed and presented her work, from the studio to the landscape.
Revelations: Experiments in Photography
20 March 2015 – 13 September 2015
Science Museum
Text by Katie Hill … ‘as lowly as mere objects’ ……“如單純之物一般卑微” You might ask the question: ‘what is an artwork?’ Start with an everyday object, something you barely notice – a free newspaper left on the tube, a bench, a packet of cigarettes, nails or pieces of debris: wood, wire and string. Small insignificant …
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