Held on the 24th May 2019
at 12:30pm to
1:30pm
A Closer Look at Contemporary Chinese Art
During the last four decades, contemporary Chinese art has become increasingly prominent on the international stage. Despite a series of high-profile exhibitions worldwide since the late 1980s and the international fame of the artist Ai Weiwei, the varied significances of contemporary Chinese art nevertheless remain largely obscure to audiences outside China. Contemporary Chinese art is not defined simply by concerns with political censorship within China. It also raises serious issues about the relationship of contemporary art to politics, society and cultural identity more widely. What sort of dialogue do contemporary Chinese artists have with western art and the art of the Chinese diaspora? How do they respond to China’s five- thousand-year history and civilization?
In this talk internationally recognized experts on contemporary Chinese art and culture, Lynne Howarth-Gladston and Paul Gladston will respond to these and other questions by discussing contemporary Chinese art from differing international and localized Chinese perspectives. In doing so, they will seek to open up a broader transcultural understanding of contemporary Chinese art beyond the limited and often prejudicial view of the Euro-American artworld as well as restrictions imposed on the public showing and interpretation of contemporary art inside a still politically authoritarian China.
Dr Lynne Howarth-Gladston is an artist, curator and scholar. Lynne has exhibited her painting internationally and was lead curator of the exhibition New China/New Art: Contemporary Video from Shanghai and Hangzhou staged at the University of Nottingham’s Djanogly Gallery in 2015. Her PhD thesis is the first to engage critically with the work of the C19th botanical illustrator and traveller, Marianne North. She was an expert contributor to the BBC4 documentary, Kew’s Forgotten Queen: The Life of Marianne North (2016).
Professor Paul Gladston is the inaugural Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art at the University of New South Wales. His recent book-length publications include Contemporary Chinese Art: A Critical History (2014), which received ‘best publication’ at the Award of Art China 2015. He was an academic adviser to the internationally acclaimed exhibition Art of Change: New Directions from China, staged at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2012. Paul’s forthcoming monograph, Contemporary Chinese Art, Aesthetic Modernity and Zhang Peili: Towards a Critical Contemporaneity will be published later this year.
School of Creative Arts and Media | Arts Forum
Fridays 12.30 - 1.30pm
Dechaineux Lecture Theatre
School of Creative Arts and Media
University of Tasmania
Hunter St, Hobart
