Programme to include:
• Bang to Boom: Chinese Art in the 1990s
Curator Karen Smith will trace the events, ideas and theories that unfolded through the 1990s to produce the backbone of China's new art. Cynical Realism, Political Pop, performance art, photography, video, installation, and extreme conceptual expression all have their roots in this decade of tumultuous advance and experimentation, strung between the socio-political events of 1989--that began with a bang when woman artist Xiao Lu fired a gun into her work in February 1989--and the economic boom that began in 2004. The 1990s was an extraordinary incubator for art reflecting the extraordinary times that characterise the era.
• Centre and Periphery: the Dynamics of Hong Kong Contemporary Art
Eclipsed by the overwhelming attention directed at mainland China, Hong Kong artists have been free from commercial pressure to quietly develop a unique aesthetic. Compounded by the fact that Hong Kong is a place where physical platforms for visual art are curiously limited, many artists have survived by carving out private spaces far from the centres of control. This tendency towards privacy and interiority has become part of the fundamental vocabulary in the expressive content of Hong Kong contemporary art. Against this background, critic and independent curator Valerie Doran examines the quietly vibrant dynamics of Hong Kong art, past, present and future.
• Big Art in China
Philip Tinari explores the mechanisms of artistic production in contemporary China, asking how China's unique economies of labor affect how work is made. Looking specifically at locales and situations including the studio districts of Beijing, the ceramic workshops of Jingdezhen, and the "copy" painting village of Dafen in Shenzhen, it raises questions of artistic authorship and social relations against the wider background of China's status as "the world's factory."
• Asian Art Market Now
Jeremy Wingfield, Phillips de Pury’s Contemporary Art Specialist, will offer essential background and up to date information on the dynamics of the Asian Art Market today. The shift in global wealth from West to East in 2009/2010 has given rise to a new focus by Western art institutions on Asian and particularly Mainland Chinese art collectors. His candid insights into the current situation will focus on the inside players driving the Asian market forward, with special focus on the fresh opportunities available to collectors, institutions and art professionals.
• A Collectors Journey - From Hobby to Museum
Dr Oie Hong Djien, Indonesia’s foremost private art collector, will be discussuing his own journey from initial fascination with his nation’s artistic culture to being the first to systematically collect modern and contemporary Indonesian art. He founded The OHD Museum of Modern and Contemporary Indonesian Art to house this unparralleled collection of 1500 pieces. As well as providing useful tools and methodologies for budding collectors Dr Oei will be looking at the role of the private collector in Asia, analysising how fundamental this position is as a preserver and promoter a nation’s artistic practise and culture in a region where governments do not necessarily support such activity.
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