NOW is a collaborative programme aimed at reinvigorating discussion around the role of female contemporary artists in the art ecology of present day China. Through a series of exhibitions, commissions and events, NOW explores how the diversity of current female artistic practice transcends notions of gender difference to offer hybrid perspectives on their socio-political environment. The transformative impacts of societal change have opened new, transcultural, possibilities for female artists working today.
Launching in February 2018 in partnership with the China National Art Fund and Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, the programme includes exhibitions at Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (Manchester), Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Nottingham Contemporary and Turner Contemporary (Margate) an artist film series from HOME (Manchester) and a symposium hosted by Tate Research Centre: Asia (London).
A two-part moving image programme has been curated by Bren O’Callaghan, Senior Producer HOME Visual Art and independent curator.
Striking, beguiling, sometimes disturbing yet always rewarding, the selection provides evidence that cultural difference is often much less than we might presume. The two programmes address notions of modernity, tradition and technique; incorporating performance, pen and ink, stop-motion animation, moving portrait and photographic techniques, choreography, new media art and experimental digital SFX, documentary and archive footage.
VOL 2
Guan Xiao
Weather Forecast, 2016
12.48
An inquiry into the necessity of physical movement for our identity to transform or change. The question “Why can’t we view Europe from a chair?” periodically punctuates the video, suggesting that a similar personal transformation could occur by experiencing a place through the Internet and staying in the same place.
Liu Shiyuan with Kristian Mondrup Nielsen
Best Friends Forever, 2017
6.35
In partnership with her husband, the artist simulates the relationship between art and politics by staging the intimate yet alien reality of a marriage via an animated Twitter exchange between Art (@GlobalArtworld) and Politics (@ImportantPolicy) respectively.
Hao Jingban
Off Takes, 2016
21.18
Tracing the present proliferation of ballroom dancing in Beijing to the two waves of ballroom dancing that first sprang up the early 1950s and post-Cultural Revolution late 1970s, entwining personal life stories with political shifts.
Wang Xin
Pumpkin Field, 2011
4.01
Wang Xin is a certificated hypnotist and explores the creative ways to use hypnosis in art, exploring the human subconscious. Young children stroll through the waning half-light of a pumpkin field strewn with swollen and burst gourds.
Geng Xue
Mr Sea, 2013-14
Approx 13.15
Exquisite porcelain puppets and scenery revitalise a 17th-century Chinese ghost story in which a scholar seeking peace on a remote island meets a beautiful woman who turns out to be a sea monster.
Liang Yue
Video No.20150415, 2015
7.27
The shots are accidentally captured with a long take: a line left in the sky by a plane and the slow drift of the sun. Liang Yue explores and captures the normalcy of daily routines, seeing beauty in the unimportant.
Liu Yi
Origin of Species, 2013
5.05
Origin of Species depicts the evolution and explosion of life over a period of two billion years, combining cell animation techniques with traditional Chinese pen-and-ink and watercolour; creating 12 hand painted images for every second of animation.
See here for further information and booking details for Vol. 1