The China Project

283 WILLIAM YANG: LIFE LINES In 1993 Yang was awarded International Photographer of the Year at the Higashigawa-cho International Photographic Festival in Hokkaido, Japan. His exhibitions included solo shows in Australia, China and Japan, and group exhibitions such as ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS’ at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, in 1994; ‘Sydney Photographed’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, in 1994; and ‘On the Edge: Australian Photographers of the Seventies’ at the San Diego Museum of Art, California, in 1998. In 1997 his book covering over two decades of Sydney gay life, Friends of Dorothy , was launched with a solo exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, which won Outstanding Visual Arts Event at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. This was followed by a 25-year retrospective, ‘Diaries’, held at the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, in 1998. In the same year Yang was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Queensland for his services to photography. Further monologues were developed during this period, including The North in 1996, which explores Yang’s childhood in far north Queensland; Friends of Dorothy in 1998, which draws on material published in the book of the same title; and Blood Links in 1999, which was produced following his mother’s death and traces several generations of his family across the world. In 2002, Yang was commissioned by the Perth, Adelaide and Sydney Festivals to create Shadows , which premiered at the Sydney Opera House. This is one of the few non-autobiographical works in Yang’s oeuvre, focusing instead on two other communities that have experienced intolerance and marginalisation: the Aboriginal community of Enngonia in New South Wales, and German immigrants to South Australia who were interned between the two world wars. Yang was now touring his performances regularly to festivals and art museums in Asia, Europe and North America and, in 2003, he performed a retrospective of his monologues, ‘The Journeys of William Yang’, at the Belvoir Street Theatre. Yang’s photographic exhibitions since 2000 have included ‘Australian Chinese’ at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 2001; and the survey exhibition ‘Selected Photographs 1968–2003’, organised by the Wollongong City Gallery and touring to regional galleries around Australia in 2003–06. Major group exhibitions have included ‘World Without End’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, in 2000; ‘Federation: Art and Society 1901–2001’ at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, in 2001; ‘Home’ at the Chinese Art Centre, Manchester, United Kingdom, in 2004; and ‘In a New Light: Australian Photography 1930s–2000’ at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, in 2004–05. His work was now held in major collections around the country, including the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney; and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. In 2001 Yang moved to a small apartment in Arncliffe, in Sydney’s inner south. His new surroundings inspired him to create the monologue Objects for Meditation , which was launched at the Sydney Opera House in 2005. The work was ‘a quiet, inward-looking piece, trying to find fascination in the ordinary and in nature’. 6 Drawing upon Taoist philosophy, the work is a meditation on domesticity and travel, and the impact of colonialism on indigenous cultures around the world. It also incorporated objects and moving images for the first time. Yang had acquired a video camera in 2003, and experimented with it for several years before realising that ‘video was too difficult a medium for me, as I never mastered sound’. 7 Yang undertook several collaborative projects in the mid 2000s, including working with the Aboriginal photographer Mervyn Bishop to develop and direct Bishop’s own monologue performance with photographs and music, Flash Blak , in 2004. In the same year, he participated in the Cultural Diversity Cluster, a project developed by the Australia Council with the drama department of Flinders University, Adelaide, to mentor emerging opposite Copy of hand-coloured publicity photo for The North, 1996 (from ‘GoMA self-portrait’ series) 2008 Digital print, ed. 2/20 / 28 x 30cm / Collection: The artist William performing Blood Links , 2004 2008 Digital print, ed. 1/20 / 32.6 x 50cm / Collection: The artist above Taoist oil pourer bought in Taipei, 2000 Ceramic / 5 x 14cm diam. / Collection: William Yang