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8/3/2005

Rapt

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney

Austral-Asia Zero Five

LIN TIANMIAO + WANG GONGXIN
NUSRA LATIF QURESHI
LIN TIANMIAO
WANG ZHIYUAN

RAPT: Austral-Asia Zero Five looks to artists who touch upon the idea of rapture as they explore traces of the human form. These forms are immersed within distinct and emblematic realms. Figures appear in pseudo-conjugal quarters, ruined urban zones or bizarre ‘natural’ environs. Rather than attempting any documentary examination of people and place, the works offer personal explorations into unknown and, at times, otherworldly terrain. Underpinning these potent metaphors for inner worlds are expansive stories that concern the historic social and cultural shifts that are currently taking place in the region, specifically in China, Pakistan and India.

Nusra Latif Qureshi, 1. an artist from Lahore now living in Australia, adapts her rigorous formal studies in Pakistani miniature painting to new terrain as she continues her investigation of eighteenth-century Pahari painting from the sub–Himalayan mountain ranges. Pahari imagery is more spacious than that found in Mughal miniatures, the focus being on the subtle complexities of human relationships, often between couples. Qureshi’s work alludes to such intimate interactions against a historical background of political upheaval and decay. The photographs of Raja Lala Deen Dayal, the celebrated nineteenth-century Indian photographer who became Court Photographer to the Nizam of Hyderabad, are a rich source of reference for Qureshi. Dayal’s subjects include the forts, monuments and ruins of ancient Indian architecture; assorted visiting British and European royals; and the Viceroy of India. His black-and-white photographs capture the opulence, hopes and incongruities of the last vestiges of Princely India. Just as Qureshi is conscious of photography’s implicit role in the demise of miniature painting in India, so she is acutely aware of the compelling and ironic power of these images born of a captured land.

The venerated tradition of Chinese ink scroll painting lingers in the work of Lin Tianmiao, 2. one of China’s most respected contemporary artists. Lin Tianmiao creates vast altered worlds through digitally manipulated black-and-white photography. The enormous scale of her photographs allows them literally to enfold gallery walls like time-lapsed decodings of an altogether unknown place. Lin Tianmiao’s early artworks from the mid-1990s involved the painstaking wrapping of ordinary domestic objects in white thread, undertaken with meditative precision. Her recent photographs, such as Growing, 2003, extend her sculptural practice as she constructs digital environments of idyllic landscapes inhabited by naked human figures and spherical, thread-bound forms that seem to hold the key to the unfolding narrative.

Lin Tianmiao also works collaboratively with Chinese video artist, Wang Gongxin, 3. creating the Here? Or There? series in 2002. These colour photographs are an ornate meditation on urban and organic change, remembrance, ghosts and the adorned body. They are components of a larger work that encompasses multiple video projections and human-scaled sculptures that are part costume, part fantastic creature. The subjects of these photographs appear in different environments, including sacred gardens, desolate fields, partly demolished city dwellings and industrial carparks. The work can be seen within the wider investigation by many contemporary Chinese artists of the rapid and dramatic industrial, economic and urban transformations currently taking place in China.

Chinese artist Wang Zhiyuan 4. examines representations of the Chinese landscape through a reductive lens. Wang Zhiyuan’s carved and painted timber sculptures, worked meticulously by hand, inhabit an unexpected space that is a wry collision between traditional nature painting and intimate female apparel. His Underpants (Make Love Not War) series from 2003–04 is a tender yet provocative metaphor that also addresses the changing face of China. Today, time-honoured aesthetics from pre-communist China are being revitalised; at the same time, this nostalgic mood is co-opted in the service of rampant consumerism and the global circulation of goods. The influences and motivations arising from these competing aesthetic and economic surges are not easily identified.

Evidence of a devoted hand is present throughout this exhibition: Nusra Latif Qureshi paints with hand-ground pigments using an impossibly tiny hair brush; Wang Zhiyuan transforms timber into intricately carved and delicate sculptures; while Lin Tianmiao wraps thread with an elegant persistence. Their shared sensibility in the act of making enhances the artists’ examination of allegorical worlds within the milieux of architectural, natural and metaphorical form.

Rhana Devenport

1. Nusra Latif Qureshi (b. 1973 Pakistan/Australia) studied in Lahore, moving to Melbourne in 2001 to undertake postgraduate studies. Since 1997, she has exhibited frequently in international group and solo exhibitions in Pakistan, Europe, Japan and the United States.

2. Lin Tianmiao (b. 1961 China) has presented solo exhibitions in China and has participated in numerous significant group exhibitions including the Echigo–Tsumari ArtTriennial (2003) and the Shanghai Biennale; Guangzhou Triennale; Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale; Kwangju Biennale; and Ireland Biennale (all 2002).

3. Wang Gongxin (b. 1960 China) has exhibited extensively in China, United States and Europe. In 2001 he participated in the Sao Paulo Biennial and the Venice Biennale.

4. Wang Zhiyuan (b. 1958 China/Australia) arrived in Australia in 1989. He now divides his time between Australia and China, exhibiting frequently in both countries.

Image: WANG ZHIYUAN, UNDERPANTS (MAKE LOVE NOT WAR) 2, 2003, carved wood and paint, courtesy the artist and Sherman Galleries, Sydney.

Sherman Galleries
16-20 Goodhope St - Paddington
Sydney

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