The China Project

61 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection opposite Li Jin / China b.1958 Fish 1988 Ink / 38.5 x 49cm / Collection: Nicholas Jose and Claire Roberts / Photograph: David Bishop expressed elsewhere. The poet Duo Duo, who was a peripatetic rural journalist by day, advised me in 1988 to stay on for another year if I really wanted to see something. Perhaps we should have noticed, in the huge take-up of the chance to study English in Australia late in 1988, an edge of desperation in people’s determination to get out of China if they had the money. What was happening in art approved to be a prophetic microcosm of what was happening in the society at large. The forces came together in the extraordinary event called ‘China/Avant-Garde’ at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing in the New Year holiday period of 1989. The exhibition itself, curated by scholar–critics Gao Minglu, Hou Hanru and Li Xianting, was remarkable enough, with the first public appearance of many of the future stars of the contemporary Chinese art phenomenon including Xu Bing, Zhang Peili, Fang Lijun, Liu Xiaodong, Ding Fang, Li Jin and others. But the actions surrounding it indicated more alarmingly that the Chinese cultural and political space had entered uncharted territory. Artist Xiao Lu fired a gun at her installation work during the opening festivities and the show was closed down by the authorities (to reopen after due investigation). Behind the scenes there were machinations and manoeuvres as participants from across the country, from inside and out of the academy — practitioners, theorists, cultural politicians, activists, entrepreneurs and officials of every stripe and status — worked out their positions. The media were in attendance, too, fascinated as they broadcast these events to the world. All this would play out on the much larger stage of Tiananmen only a few weeks later, from April to the tragic finale on 4 June 1989. Later, avant-garde art would be blamed as a factor in the ‘counter-revolutionary turmoil’ that could only be halted by force. For that reason it is not possible to speak of contemporary Chinese art without reference to its historical trajectory through political drama and social upheaval, with 1989 as its pivotal moment. Those of us who were as exhilarated by the art as we were appalled by the political situation were determined that the China that had been silenced inside the country should be able to breathe outside. That included supporters in Australia. When Johnson Chang, scholar and director of Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong, and Li Xianting started to investigate ways of taking a version of ‘China / Avant-Garde’ to international audiences, Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art quickly agreed to collaborate. An exhibition was curated that included key artists and works from the 1989 exhibition together with new works and artists. It was presented in Australia in 1992–93 under the title ‘Mao Goes Pop’. Zhang Xiaogang was a haunting presence in that show, as were Yu Youhan, Li Shan, Wang Guangyi, Ah Xian and Guan Wei. The latter two had also showed locally by then, with Liu Xiao Xian in ‘Echoes from China: Beyond the Bamboo Curtain’ in 1991, and again with Liu Xiao Xian, joined by Shen Shaomin, Ren Hua, Xiao Lu and Tang Song, and Jia Yong, in ‘Orientations: The Emperor’s New Clothes’ in 1992, curated by Claire Roberts, both at Sherman Galleries, Sydney. Like Lin Chunyan, Shen Jiawei, Wang Zhiyuan, Guo Jian and many others, these artists had relocated to Australia, in some cases in the wake of the tragic Tiananmen Square events and as refugees. For those who stayed in China, the post-Tiananmen period was tense and difficult. The upward curve of liberalisation since 1978, vicissitudes notwithstanding, seemed to have slammed into a wall. Many leading figures were abroad, mainly in the United States. Others suffered official harassment in their places of work. Shang Yang, for example, who had been the centre of an innovative artists’ group in Hubei, was transferred to Guangzhou in a forced internal exile. Others were closely watched. Artists met in small private groups, producing intimate work on metaphorically suggestive themes, such as ‘wind’ and ‘frame’ (Wang Youshen’s Portrait series – Frame 1990 is an example). At the same time, connections with the outside world became more important than ever. The Hawke government’s policy for Australia — in a context where exchange arrangements with many countries were frozen, thus tending to isolate China — was to maintain cultural and educational people-to-people channels as far as possible. Renowned Sydney-born pianist Roger Woodward’s visit in 1990 was perhaps the first official cultural visit from a Western country after Tiananmen and he was applauded like a hero for his electrifying performances. Roger went out of his way to express support for avant-garde artists and arranged for Ah Xian, Liu Xiao Xian and Wang Youshen to show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in his Sydney Spring International Festival that year. For me, that policy framework also meant cautiously keeping in touch with artists and curators, despite being under surveillance myself. I got to know Liu Xiaodong, whose painting Smoker 1988 I had loved in ‘China /Avant-Garde’, and his wife Yu Hong. Like other artists, he was keen for his work to enter public collections outside China as a way of protecting it. Thus I was entrusted with Smoker , subsequently acquired by Queensland Art Gallery. Similarly with Yu Youhan’s Flowery bicycle 1989, with its 4 June associations. He was keen for Claire Roberts and me to take it with us from a studio visit in 1991. And Fang Lijun expressed the wish that his pencil drawings find their way into public collections outside China, since it was unlikely at the time that any public institution in China would be in a position to hold them. Li Xianting, who was under investigation for his role in the events of above Guan Wei / China/Australia b.1957 Wo yu (Kneeling fish) 1986 Oil on canvas / 86.5 x 46cm / Gift of Nicholas Jose and Claire Roberts through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2008 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery