Turning the lens on China: Martin Parr

Say what you like about Martin Parr – and many people do; his work is consistently polarising – but you can’t help but be drawn to his photos. Often laced with humour, his uncompromising images tackle high, low and popular culture; commercialism; human behaviour and the role of photography itself.

He first made a name for himself documenting life in northern England in the early 1970s, using black-and-white film as his medium of choice. But it was in the 1980s, when he pioneered the use of amateur, colour film for his ‘in-your-face’ snaps that he truly shot to fame. While other artistic photographers stayed locked to more traditional, colourless films, he straddled the line between artist and photojournalist. 

The images from this period – of overweight beachgoers, cramming their mouths with chips and squeezing in among fellow sunbathers at New Brighton – remain among his most recognisable. His intimate portraits of these unsuspecting subjects are rarely flattering; sometimes he even seems aggressive, exposing them to a certain degree of vulnerability. 

Even in 1994, when Parr was admitted to Magnum, the world’s most prestigious photo agency, there was heated debate about his photography. Magnum’s legendary French co-founder, Henri Cartier-Bresson, was among those who took exception to his work. After years of debate, Parr was finally voted into Magnum by its members, receiving just one vote more than the minimum three-quarter majority he needed. 

The celebrated photographer is most often associated with his visions of the cloudy shores of the British Isles, but the majority of his commissioned work today is shot abroad. 

Parr first began taking photographs in the PRC in the mid-’80s, while he was in Beijing to exhibit works at the Geological Museum of China. He has returned to the country over the decades to capture people in parks, at beaches (one of his favourite subjects), car shows and wedding shoots. ‘Photography is particularly important in weddings in China, which I find fascinating,’ he says. 

He found this unique national obsession so fascinating, in fact, that he created an ongoing series of portraits of himself shot by Chinese wedding photographers, some of which he compiled into a book, Chinese Wedding Album (2010). ‘I was taken to a pretty professional studio in Beijing and had a series of photos taken of myself by several different photographers – they do that so that each photo is different for you. The props, clothes, they provide all that,’ he explains, discussing one of these ‘self-portraits’. 

Of his own China pictures, Parr says shooting here is no more difficult than in any country, and, if there is any particular appeal, it is the sheer number and variety of China’s people. His subjects here ‘mostly don’t bat an eyelid’ at the notion of being photographed, he says. ‘I mean people in China take photos of everything anyway. They are not the only culture to do so. The Japanese are even worse, but you can be even more invisible when a culture is so used to cameras.’

 'China. Shanghai. 1997'

‘In the ’90s in China, most people didn’t even have a mobile phone, so [this photo] did capture a moment. I take so many photos every day, and only a few of them are good enough. These photos, you get them because that is what is there – and it was at a time when China was opening up, so you see a time of intense change.’

 'Hong Kong. Horse Racing. Sha Tin. 2001'

‘Horse racing is very popular in Hong Kong. I studied how people got caught up in their emotions over the races – betting and so on brings out a lot of emotions in people.’

'China. Qinhuangdao. Beidaihe. 2010'

‘In China, people have photos taken weeks before their actual marriage, and they are taken pretty seriously. [In this shot, the groom] was jumping up and down – there was no wind or anything.’

 'China. Qinghuangdao. Beidaihe. 2010.'

‘Beaches have attracted me for a long time. [Why did I shoot] the crowds on the beaches? It’s simple, there are lots of people there, all crowded together, and people are my subject.’

Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing 

Review: Painting Is Collecting by Guo Hongwei

 Guo Hongwei’s new exhibition of watercolours is a mixed bag. Painting Is Collecting is divided into two rooms: in the first are paintings of animals, composed on a white surface, and in the second are plant and mineral specimens. They are arranged with care, and for the most part make for successful compositions.

For an artist who used a similar formula with his exhibition Things (2009), here he focuses entirely on watercolour, rather than mixing it with oil and turpentine as he did before. The subject is also new, inspired by natural history, rather than ‘things’ simply found lying around his studio. However, while

his technique is generally a refined one, his animals are less convincing. It seems too obvious that they have been painted from photographs, and even composed from them. The monkeys in ‘Animal Number 4’ look like cut-outs from a magazine, as their shadowy figures merge with the branches.

The plants, however, are a pleasure to look at. Many come from specimens the artist has collected himself, some partially dried or half destroyed. Here, as in the mineral paintings, is where we enter the world of art beyond documentation.

The plants, however, are a pleasure to look at. Many come from specimens the artist has collected himself, some partially dried or half destroyed. Here, as in the mineral paintings, is where we enter the world of art beyond documentation. Clare Pennington


Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Review: As Seen by Karen Smith

Karen Smith is one of very few foreigners who has been able to see the Chinese art scene develop over the last two decades – and she’s still here. Having worked at one of Beijing’s first international contemporary art galleries, she has also curated at the Tate Liverpool, and is best known for her near-500-page tome Nine Lives: The Birth of Avant-Garde Art in New China, published in 2005.

As Seen is the sum of what Smith judges to be the most ‘notable’ artworks that were on show in China in the year 2011. Each of the 41 selected artists is given a few pages, and Smith describes what she considers to be their most important work from their 2011 exhibitions in vivid clarity.

Essentially, the volume serves as an introduction to what is generally considered hot in China’s contemporary art scene, with personal observations injected into each description. Zhao Yao, Ma Qiusha and Zhao Zhao are just a few of the younger artists Smith promotes, while sections devoted to art giants such as Zhang Peili and Zhan Wang are also included.

The book benefits from being a collection of short pieces, which helps lend clarity and purpose to a writer who, at times, struggles for conciseness. Its beautiful pictures, although unfortunately not always matched to the artwork Smith is describing, give a strong impression of each work. The selection of artists contains few, if any, points of serious controversy but the writer adds plenty of caveats to emphasise that the selection is deeply personal to her – just in case you don’t agree.

As Seen will be indispensable to those who were not there to see the exhibitions themselves – particularly collectors of Chinese art living abroad. It captures the zeitgeist nicely, and will undoubtedly become a key part of anyone’s contemporary Chinese art library. The year 2011 was an important one for the development of modern art in the PRC, particularly Beijing, and this book is surely a fitting testament to that. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Affordable Art Beijing

In the West, it is not uncommon for private individuals to own works of art, be it a plein air painting bought by a relative in France or a piece from a local gallery. It’s no surprise, then, that about 60-70 percent of art sold in the West goes for what experts deem an internationally ‘affordable’ price – meaning anything under 5,000USD.

The reverse is true of China. According to Tom Pattinson, the founder of China’s only affordable art-fair organisation, only 33 percent of all art sold here falls under the 5,000USD margin. That’s a big deal when estimates of China’s share of the global art market (in 2011) range around the 40 percent mark. ‘Art buyers here are mostly in the luxury market, and they associate these purchases with luxury wines, villas and so on,’ says Pattinson, on the culture of conspicuous wealth.

As Affordable Art Beijing (AAB) opens for its seventh year, the trend towards a less expensive art market is nevertheless growing, and quickly. In 2006, AAB received 400 submissions. This year, they received over 10,000, and the fair can boast that works sold six years ago for 8,000RMB are now fetching near to 50,000USD at auction.

Last year, the fair doubled its top threshold price from 10,000 to 20,000RMB, with the lowest selling for 200RMB. Pattinson’s marker of what counts as ‘affordable’ (he has calculated according to both the art market in China and the international top price of 5,000USD) reflects the growing disposable income of the middle class, as well as an increasing appetite for Chinese contemporary art.

Open for just two days, works last year sold at an average of two per minute in the opening hour. The vast majority are Chinese and come in a variety of mediums, including painting and sculpture – but the best works disappear fast. Collectors with an eye for Chinese art, get your skates on!
Clare Pennington

For more details, visit www.affordableartchina.com 

At 798 Space, 11am-6pm Sat 2-Sun 3
 
Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Dreaming of Balthus: Hisaji Hara

At three in the morning, Hisaji Hara awakes to a darkened room, the sound of the forest and the pale light of a white moon filtering through his window. The photographer’s countryside home lies just outside Tokyo, bordering an 800-year-old bamboo forest. After his first coffee, he sets about his day. ‘I often work obsessively for six to seven hours,’ he says, adding that he sustains himself on sweets and caffeine for ‘best efficiency’.

When we speak, though, it is at a more reasonable hour and Hara is sitting peacefully at home, his cat nestled beside him. In slightly broken but careful English, he describes the ‘damp air and silver sky’ encircling his house. But life wasn’t always so serene. Until 2005, the photographer mostly spent his time in the US, shooting stills and practising art on the side. It was after his visa expired that he returned to Japan and conceived the project that would dominate the next six years of his life – and launch him on to the international art scene. This month, it arrives in Beijing as part of the Caochangdi PhotoSpring festival, with +3 Gallery at Three Shadows playing host to Hara’s work until mid-June.

It’s a story he has clearly told a thousand times before. ‘One quiet autumn night in 2005, a very vivid image of one of Balthus’s paintings suddenly came into my mind,’ he recalls. ‘It was “Thérèse Dreaming”. I tried to search for an image of the painting on the internet and found only a very small version. Despite being only a blurred 5cm square, it radiated an intense light of authenticity.’ Hara scrupulously planned 25 black-and-white photographs, based on canvases by the early 20th-century French painter Balthus (Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola), few of which he has seen in the flesh.

‘Thérèse Dreaming’ depicts an adolescent girl, face turned away, eyes closed and skin bathed in sunlight. Her parted legs reveal white underwear as she dozes unconcerned, basking in the sun’s warmth. But it was not the sexual elements in the count’s work that enraptured Hara. Rather, it was the lines of composition and use of light; the carefully rendered angles of bent knees and elbows that form a complex image; the sense of aerial perspective achieved within that cramped space that caught his eye.

‘Light and shadow are everything to me,’ says Hara. Using the same models for every shot, he took over a 1920s art nouveau-style medical clinic. The building, in a state of preserve since the ’60s, even had old medicine bottles still on the shelves. ‘It has its own spatial quality,’ he explains. ‘When I shot the interior, I wanted to transfer that quality into light and shadow to achieve a density of image.’ Using dry-ice machines found at concerts, Hara has discovered his desired stillness.

The dispersed light seems to softly envelop his models, giving them an almost comatose air, yet the figures and the objects are still sharply defined. There is no attempt to disguise that they are posed; they are calm but frozen, acting their parts.

As we get down to discussing the light in Balthus’s paintings, I pause to ask what Hara means by ‘authenticity’. It is a word that he frequently uses to describe his goals as well as the work and artists that he most admires, such as the filmmaker Tarkovsky and the painters Poussin (1594-1665) and Giotto (1266-1337).

‘Authentic’ artwork should achieve a sense of timelessness. ‘It makes you feel that you’ll never have to compare a painting to any other in art history,’ he says. But Hara’s quest for timelessness goes beyond a still visual style. He is keen to show that photography need not be limited by its modernity. By taking multiple exposures, Hara has proved to be a man of patience and has avoided the lens’s usual sense of perspective.

The technique enables Hara to focus on different subjects in each take, squeezing more detail into the end shot – just as if he were composing a painting. ‘Because I was shifting the focus as I took the multiple exposures, the optical perspective was impaired and I got a really attractive sense of space, which I see in Balthus’s paintings,’ he adds.

In what seems a quirk of fate, history reminds us that Balthus’s surviving widow, Setsuko, is from Japan; the painter was as inspired by the island’s ancient landscape painting as he was by Western art. In turn, throughout Hara’s interpretations, the photographer features Japanese models, school uniforms and period architecture, all composed within a hazy, unidentified time. It feels as if Balthus has gone full circle. By using the medium Japan is perhaps most famous for – photography – Hara has managed to imbue his images with a timelessness of their own. Clare Pennington


Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

It Means Nothing to Me: Turner Prize-Winner Susan Philipsz's First Collaboration With her Father is Exhibited in China

Beijing is not the first place you'd think of finding Turner Prize-winner Susan Philipsz. But the artist, who usually creates works of sound sculpture from Celtic or Western pieces of music, is part of a new trend. British artists exhibiting solo in Beijing this month include sculptor Tony Cragg and British-based artist Bashir Makhoul, and there'll be plenty more coming to take advantage of the growing Chinese market. Chinese economic growth is giving rise to a new generation of collectors here with a voracious appetite for contemporary art.

The timing for Philipsz's new exhibition in China's capital is telling, but the sound sculptor, as she refers to herself, is not simply following the crowd. In fact it is a meandering journey back to her home, retracing her family roots, that has brought the Berlin-based artist to China for the first exhibition of her new work, It Means Nothing to Me.

The work is her first collaboration with her now octogenarian father; a duet of the Celtic song The Ash Grove, which the father and daughter both grew up singing. China is of special significance to Philipsz's father, as he grew up in Burma, next door to a Chinese community, stories of which the artist has heard since her childhood. 'Location has always been key in my work,' Philipsz says to me the day before the the show's opening at Caochangdi's Mizuma & One gallery.

Whether it is the underbelly of three vaulting bridges that cross her hometown, Glasgow's River Clyde or the Guggenheim's rotunda in New York, the artist always plans her work in the knowledge of its location. Step into the white-walled interior of the gallery where It Means Nothing to Me is housed, and you'll be faced by a poster-sized framed photograph. The use of photography to accompany her sound work is an interesting addition for Philipsz, whose art is usually invisible, made purely of sound.

The photograph, showing a tin foil stick, driven into a dirty grass verge, is a reconstruction of a childhood memory. "My dad told my younger sister that if she ever saw a silver stick in the ground, it meant fairies had left money there," she says. So, in 1970s Glasgow, Mr Philipsz planted an aluminium foil-covered stick in a rough, grassy patch of turf littered with rubbish along the path to Sunday Church. When Philipsz's sister set eyes on the shiny pole, it was as if she had been transported to a fairyland. "You could see it in her eyes, but really he'd planted it next to a factory, and I remember a cigarette packet being there." The scene meant nothing to the artist as the elder child, and the uncompromising photograph - showing thick rough grass and crumpled cigarette packet with the unseen buried money - supports this reality.

The exhibition is dark, with only natural light illuminating the two black speakers standing a little lower than head height, facing each other from three or four metres apart in the centre of the space. From these come the untrained but lovely voices of an old man and younger woman; Philipsz and her father. The pace of the song is slow and transforms the space from a simple white box into something more sublime, as a story of love, death and loss unfolds.

Philipsz's dad was born in Burma to an English mother and Burmese father. Having grown up, as Philipsz describes, "isolated and separated," without being allowed to go to the local school because of the British blood that runs through his veins, "he went to a refugee camp when [Burma] was occupied during the war with Japan. Then it became a Communist country, so he had to make a decision whether to remain in Burma and choose a Burmese rather than a British nationality." Philipsz's father chose to keep his British citizenship. In his 20s he moved to Glasgow, never again to see many of the family members he grew up with. Burma came under the rule of a military junta led by the Communist Party of Burma in 1962. 'He doesn't have such fond memories of that time in Burma, but he does have fond memories of the Chinese community he lived next to," says Philipsz. "Those are the people that he saw most of. They were kind to him."

For It Means Nothing to Me, father and daughter recorded their versions of The Ash Grove separately, though in gallery they are played together, and in time. This isolated recording process was necessary for the artist to recall "a sense of solitude." Her father's voice is tuneful, with softer and faltering tones that betray his age. Played against the sweet but characteristically untrained voice of his daughter, the result is startlingly moving. The song is in the voice of a man walking through the shady ash grove where he first met his "dear one." But in the second verse it is revealed that she is now buried under the green turf, separated from him forever.

Dig deeper into the song's history, Philipsz says, and you'll unearth even more sinister undercurrents. In the original Welsh version, The Ash Grove is a lament that sees a father grieving over a daughter he killed. Having intended to slay the lover he disapproved of, it is now his child who lies under the earth. The buried money that lies unseen in the photograph suddenly becomes that bit more menacing. There is a sense of separation, love, accidental loss and displaced melancholy. Here it is a reminder of the Burmese family her father was suddenly severed from and the Chinese community he remembers so fondly. It is a tale of change, of love and yet distance between the family generations, people who Philipsz herself is so far removed.

"He remembers lots of these sounds from the Chinese community,' Philipsz says of her father's life in Burma. 'He talked about the sound of funeral gongs, or rain on the corrugated iron roofs. He remembers lots of these sounds and I find this very evocative." The work also refers to these sounds, so that the relationship between this anglicised Welsh lament and Philipsz's father's childhood memories is located back to this Chinese community.  The original Welsh version of the song was meant to be accompanied by the harp, and so Philipsz has used what she considers to be the "Chinese harp" to form another element of the sound installation. After the unaccompanied voices' duet, the sound of the zither fills the room. Philipsz recorded herself plucking the strings in her studio in Berlin. Untrained in the instrument, she recorded each note individually, and these sounds resonate from four white speakers set up around the gallery walls.

Philipsz's father was one of her most important inspirations for becoming an artist, and she does talk of a happy, if sometimes difficult childhood. Her father would praise her drawings as a young girl, and it was his insistence on drawing his children that attracted her to art in the first place. With five brothers and sisters, life could be tough for her parents too, and they would sometimes escape from the stresses of life in music. "My mother, she would lock herself up in her room with the lights out and listen to Ravel and Debussy. Story-telling was also a part of growing up - it was uplifting and a wee kind for escape."

Looking at the darker themes that have invaded this work, she says, "I suppose that is something that always comes up in my work. Escapism, longing and separation are things I think have come from my parents' stories."  Philipsz's father's story has been, she thinks, subconsciously filtering into her work for a long time. Explaining why she chose now to collaborate with her father for a piece to be shown in China, she says, almost in a whisper, "He's eighty, and I don't know if he has much time left."

Originally posted in the Huffington Post.

Static Electricity: Ma Qiusha exhibition

Showing at Beijing Commune until Thursday 19 April

When a static electric charge builds up, you can feel the air around you change: your skin tingles, your hair stands on end, and then you get the hit! But Ma Qiusha’s latest exhibition isn’t about the moment of inevitable shock. In Mandarin, its title is Jingdian, referring to the static build-up – it’s all about the anticipation.

On the wall of Beijing Commune, three flat screens hang in a row, each showing differently coloured melting ice blocks. In ‘Red/White/Yellow’, the first rectangular lump is made from blood, the second from milk, and the third from urine. We glimpse the first minutes of melting, as the white-frosted texture of each block begins to darken, revealing a clear film of latex over the ice. The colours are meant to recall the coding of the audio jacks you would use to connect a TV to a sound system – a charge locked inside a protective plastic casing (in this case a condom). The artist links this to the intensely private, sexual and even insanitary fluids that make up our daily routine.

Although the link between static and these visceral elements seems a little tenuous, Ma’s works are often unsettling. ‘Token’ shows a dark road illuminated with a single, dim beam, filmed unsteadily as if from the back of a moving trolley. Across the dark tarmac, roughly cut organs are intermittently and violently thrown – a large kidney, brains, a liver – all accompanied by a feline purring, distorted like something from a horror film. Hot steam from the offal fills the screen and quickly disappears.

Ma’s works are as visceral as ever, yet here they are made up of traces, things left undefined. ‘Fog’ is a painting consisting of layers of watercolour built over a pattern of lace. The textures of the material remain on the paper, although the material itself has been removed. We are left only with the remains of bodily fluids, viscera and elements of man-made lace.

If this exhibition evokes in us anything, it’s a feeling of underlying foreboding and mortality. As the title suggests, it’s not about the shocks, but nor is it for the faint-hearted. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Sui Jianguo solo exhibition

Showing at Pace Beijing until Saturday 14 April

Sui Jianguo came to sculpture in the 1980s, at an age when the medium was still predominantly used for public realist monuments in China. This solo exhibition is a selective retrospective looking back at his work since 1987, the year he moved from Shandong to Beijing – and it is a career worth mapping. Sui is an artist who has long influenced trends in Chinese sculpture, and he remains a key figure as the head of the sculpture department at China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA).

The selection on display here represents his artistic career fluently and beautifully without overcrowding the space. Seen together, the threads that the artist has been pulling at throughout his career become apparent. His exploration of form, and interest in expressing force by combining different materials in his sculpture, emerge to the fore.
 

In the first hall stand classical plaster figures based on traditional Greek sculptures made by Sui’s students, but very quickly we move into more abstract and tactile territory. ‘Earthly Force’ (1992-1994) is a series of stones wrapped in industrial metal cords, strewn across the floor. The dinosaur-egg-sized rocks seem to push out against the rusting nets.

Another work that has been well represented is ‘Legacy Mantle’, conceived during the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. The empty sculpture of a ‘Mao Suit’, as it is often dubbed, represents China as a shell, in which different leaders, regions and ideologies can be exchanged to fill an externally unchanging uniform. Here, the first version of this work is imposingly large, accompanied by a small maquette and deserving of the space it takes up.

The exhibition brings us right up to Sui’s changing interests as they bend towards manipulating forms. ‘For Presence’ (2006-ongoing), the artist has been adding a drip of blue paint to a metal stick every week, and will do so until his death. The result so far is an industrial, dark globule reminiscent of the lacquer-making process. Rather like a retrospective, the globule will become a strange, self-made monument to the artist’s life – a fitting symbol for this comprehensive and important exhibition. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Bashir Makhoul: boxing clever

Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost by Bashir Makhoul shows at Yang Gallery until Sunday 15 April.

Ghosts are notoriously difficult to exorcise. Like tragedies, they leave their mark, whether in real life or literature. In Hamlet, the protagonist’s dead father repeatedly urges him to avenge his murder; by the end, after most of the cast has perished, best friend Horatio promises to retell Hamlet’s story throughout ‘the unknowing world’. As long as the tale is retold, the ghost will continue to haunt us all.

It is from Shakespeare’s stage directions for the Ghost that Israeli-born artist Bashir Makhoul found the title of his latest exhibition, Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost. But how does an artist from the Middle East bring Shakespeare to China? Born in 1963 to an Arab or – depending how you look at it – Palestinian, Catholic family in Galilee, Makhoul takes his complex identity with him wherever he travels. Twenty-one years ago, he relocated from Israel to the UK, where he has built a career as a professor, writer and artist. Now he’s in Beijing to launch his seventh major solo exhibition in 798’s Yang Gallery.

‘There will be 100 metres of cardboard walls covered with 40 panels taking up this space,’ Makhoul says, waving at one half of the gallery. As we sit, surrounded by piles of flattened cardboard and wooden boxes, he takes me on a virtual laptop journey through his artwork of the same name. 

We move through a maze constructed from tall cardboard walls, each covered with lenticular micro-lens photos. These hologram-like images contain two photographs on one surface; as the viewer moves, the image changes. Makhoul takes out some prints from the boxes, and the kaleidoscopic effect is unsettling. You have to walk to see the images  shift, but it is impossible to predict how and when you will see pictures of real cities or cardboard ones – sometimes they even overlap.

One of these images is of a fake town Makhoul made from cardboard boxes. The simple, haphazard structures mimic those of poorer Arabic communities. But if you keep moving, other photographs, taken in East Jerusalem, Hebron and refugee camps such as Shu’fat, also emerge. Like the news images that perpetually haunt us, some are repeated at different points in the maze, dislocating and disorientating the viewer further.

The installation is meant to remind us that the images we are fed of Israel and the Gaza region by the media cannot be the whole truth. These places, despite the nationalist, Biblical and news-fed myths associated with them, are real, ever-changing and, like ghosts, cannot be defined by a picture. ‘It’s something that we invented ourselves, but we can’t even describe. If we do, we describe it in so many different ways. It’s something intangible,’ says the atheist Makhoul, observing that only a child might think they really know what God looks like.

Makhoul himself grew up with nine siblings in devastating poverty. His father was crushed under a tractor when the artist was just five and, by his own admission, his childhood was ‘miserable’. The family depended on their mother, a ‘real hero’ who kept her children fed and encouraged them to be successful. Makhoul later trained as a carpenter, making violins and other fine pieces, earning enough to make his way to university overseas. But he never forgot his past and carried with him his humanist and political ideals, a belief in justice and a concern for the place of his birth where much of his family remain today.

It is only after the presentation that Makhoul, perched on the corner of a small sofa and fuelled by a triple espresso, finally recounts the artwork’s history. The tale begins out in the Israeli Negev Desert, where lies one of the country’s few ‘ghost towns’, as he calls them.

Dubbed ‘Chicago’ by Israeli and US forces when it was built in the 1980s, he tells of a makeshift town created as a training location for ‘Military Operations on Urban Terrain’. Never built for habitation, the concrete city is a shell of a typical ‘Arab’ town. Complete with a peaked mosque, it has been used by the Israeli Defence Force to prepare for invasions into Beirut, the last Gaza evacuation and, more recently, by the US military.

‘They built a whole city out of concrete, similar to my cardboard boxes, for training,’ explains Makhoul, his relaxed demeanour cracking slightly to betray deeper emotions. ‘Be it for operations in Gaza, Hebron or Hanin, they built a city of concrete to practise on. They are merging training and playing with killing; that’s what makes the whole thing so absurd for me, and that’s why I think it’s worth us talking about it.’ In his hands, ghosts come alive and the maze of buildings becomes more about the fragility of human life in urban war zones.

Like Hamlet’s Ghost, Makhoul’s spectre emerges in the artist’s personal search for justice for those lives devastated by the Palestinian conflict. Just as the Ghost haunts Hamlet because he seeks justice for his murder, ‘You shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that this piece [‘Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost’] is about death,’ says Makhoul. And for all its playfulness, it is a message that will not die.  Clare Pennington

Originally posted on Time Out Beijing

Inside a Book a House of Gold

The 212 intimately scaled works housed under the UCCA’s vast, slanting ceilings are the sum (thus far) of collaborations between Swiss art journal Parkett and 192 artists from around the world. Over the course of 28 years, for each printed edition, a piece was specially commissioned. These incorporate print, installation, painting, photography and all variety of media, with the journals themselves piled into a single reading room, separate from the rest of the gallery.

Words for different areas of a typical, bourgeois household – ‘playroom’, ‘studio’ and so on – appear on the brightly coloured walls, with a ‘city’ area bringing this conceptual house into an urban context. The result is an ordered cacophony that continues to unfurl in your mind long after you leave.

Though many works were intended to be handled, from Jeff Koons’s inflatable flower to an orange trussed-up doll of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner by Jon Kessler, take note that, for visitors, there are glass cases to keep our hands off. The decision to divide the works from their corresponding journals is less understandable, though. Yes, they are allowed the freedom to stand on their own merits, but it would be interesting to see them displayed in the context of each Parkett, to give a bigger picture of the world it came from.

Nevertheless, this is a wonderland of sometimes-fantastical treasures. These include the last work by Andy Warhol, whose career began with magazine illustrations and, fittingly, reached its endpoint in another publication, with memento mori black-and-white photographs of skeletal figures.

A plaster cast, ‘Switch’, by Rachel Whiteread, was designed for hanging on a wall. At first glance, it’s just another light switch. But the indentation made by the lever and two small screws are just shadows of the original’s function, transformed into pure form.

This exhibition can be a lot to take in – the works are broad and cover a multitude of eras and ideas. But the scope and quality of what is on display, not to mention the artists involved (from Ai Weiwei to Damien Hirst and Sophie Calle), make this show one of the strongest so far this year. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

The Gao Brothers

A visit to the private studio of the controversial artists.

Celebrated for their violent, often sexualised renditions of famous political leaders, the Gao Brothers have been exhibited from Russia to the United States though their art is often kept under wraps in their home country where much of it is produced. A busty ‘Miss Mao’ sporting a long Pinocchio nose, a sculpture installation of several 'dear leaders' preparing to shoot a single Jesus, a voluptuously breasted nude with a red dragon shooting out from between her legs – these are works that have made the brothers as infamous to some as they are respected by others. Often associated with the late ‘80s and early ‘90s political and social trends in Chinese art, they have stuck to a recognisably 'Gao Brothers' style and persisted in their dissection of social and political issues. Brave, creative, controversial, unoriginal – how you see them depends on which end of the kaleidoscope you are looking through.


The brothers are most often referred to collectively. Individually, they are Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang, though it is difficult to see where the creative input of one begins and the other ends. In interviews, as Time Outdiscovered during a visit, they do not describe their individual roles in artistic collaboration in too much detail – although it is also clear they have much in common. ‘We don’t really have many disagreements working together, because we have been doing this for more than 20 years,’ Gao Zhen says. ‘If one of us has got an idea, we sit down and discuss it in terms of things like whether it is necessary to even make the work, how to carry it out and so on. We compare possibilities and ideas, then settle on the best ones,’ Gao Qiang adds. Hailing from Shandong province, they cite their father's forced suicide during the Cultural Revolution as a fundamental influence in forming their shared perceptions of and creative input into art. While Gao Zhen seems to speak for them both, Gao Qiang's attention never strays from the conversation and he frequently nods his agreement. 


Aggression and violence is an unavoidable element in much of their work. ‘We don’t intend to promote violence with our work – rather to reflect how others use it,’ Gao Zhen says. ‘It has a strong visual impact on viewers, so that the work will be remembered by them. Our violence points to notions, never at living beings.’

Impact - this is key in understanding the artistic choices the Gao Brothers have made. Sometimes criticised for using obvious faces from history (Lenin, Mao, Sun Yat-sen), the brothers have a clear agenda in making their work instantaneously understood at a certain level. Imagery and historical figures are meant to engage a wide variety of viewers, but on deeper inspection all is not as simple as it seems.

‘The Execution of Christ’ is a case in point. Artistically, they are giving a nod to Manet's politically loaded painting ‘The Execution of Emperor Maximilian’(this painting is in itself a response to Goya's ‘The Third of May 1808’ as well as the politics of its time). However, while they use well-known figures to represent these ideas, the story behind the sculptural installation originates in somebody else's story. ‘The Execution of Christ’ is actually based on the figure Lin Zhao, a Christian poet executed in 1968. The brothers realised during the process of planning the piece that Zhao wasn’t famous enough to get the meaning of the work across so changed her figure to that of Jesus.

As for violence, the piece offers a degree of hope in the human condition. Gao Zhen says that ‘While Jesus is weak, he cannot truly be executed – he will be reborn.’ Gao Qiang agrees. This is their own message, expressed within the realms of art and political history on a global scale.

At the same time, the brothers keep up to date with modern social trends. They check their Weibo and other social internet sites daily, while the role of the media and social issues such as economic disparity also fascinate them. A lot of work uses media imagery or engages with struggling members of society. In a work from 2000 which forms part of their Embrace series of 'occurences',  the Gao Brothers encouraged migrant workers to perform while being photographed. They were asked to hug - usually an act of love, greeting or reconciliation. ‘We went to their employers, asking if any of them were interested in a work opportunity,” says Gao Zhen. “We told them it was acting and promised to pay them a fair market price. So they didn't feel the warmth of hugging, they were just there to make some money which turned the whole thing into an employer-employee relationship... This work was intended to demonstrate that a non-utilitarian action like hugging in a materialistic society can become about employment [rather than love and reconciliation].’ The brothers also observed that when the workers discovered some of the hugging action was to be naked, they went on strike and demanded more money. ‘We found it quite interesting, because they were aware of their rights.’

The studio, which also serves as a private exhibition space and small cinema, houses their recent works. Their most recent oil paintings hang on the walls, large scale portraits based on formal photographs or paintings. Sun Yat-sen, a Ming dynasty emperor and more recent political figures stare out, rendered in a way that blows up the effect of newspaper print – diagonal lines cutting up the smoothness of the portraits.

‘Our recent works are divided into two series,’ Gao Zhen explains. ‘One is about significant figures who appear in modern history, such as Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek (both were presidents of the Republic of China) and Karl Marx, who brought about deep changes in Chinese society. Besides this we also have interesting western figures like Van Gogh. The second series consists of copies of classic art works from home and abroad.’

One face is a recent example of their engagement with ‘the social reality, the changes that take place every day’ that influences their work. The man, whose eyes are concealed by a pair of dark sunglasses, is the imprisoned, self-taught and blind lawyer Cheng Guangchen. The piece serves as a representation of their artistic process says Gao Zhen. ‘Social realities impact on how and what art we create. On the other hand, we think our work has an impact on society… it also embodies our attitude towards art, and is part of the reason we see no need to mix our artistic styles with widespread artistic changes and trends.’

Before we leave, there is time for a gander around the rest of the studio – a space originally intended to hold exhibitions of their own and other artists' work. Paintings are stacked up against the walls and there is plenty of storage space behind scuffed white curtains, while tall ceilings let in plenty of light. It is also a social space – some sofas and coffee tables are arranged at the main entrance, while in the back hides a small make-shift cinema. Based in Beijing for more than a decade, the brothers are clearly in no hurry to leave. 

So what brought them not just to this studio, but to the city? ‘This is the place where we have created and exhibited our work for the past 20 years,” Gao Zhen says. ‘Beijing is an international communication centre. In the first place we worked separately, except that we shared opinions from time to time. In 1989, we co-created a piece of work (‘Midnight Mass’) which caused heated controversy because of its erotic rather than political subject matter. While some people thought we were advertising sexual liberation and trying to be “blasphemous”, we intended is it as a symbol imbued with meanings of sensuality. It was that piece of work that combined us permanently, and we've been working together ever since.’  

Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

A Visit to Beijing's Wedding Market: Understanding the Fantasies and Realities of Marriage in China

“This is a Drag Queen's wet dream” , my friend joked as we trawled through the first rack of dresses. Beijing's Wedding Market is hidden above the Camera Market in Wukesong, in the north-west of the city. Climb up an inconspicuous flight of stairs, and you are crossing into a world of its own making: a world that in many ways encapsulates the Chinese Wedding experience. Crammed with dramatic ball gowns, fantastic wedding dresses, mens' suits and a large variety of wedding shoot props, couples are here given the resources to create a wedding (and the photographs to remember it by) which leaps into the realm of fantasy.

Having made this claim, I have to admit to having only attended one wedding in China. However, pairs promised to each other in marriage posing for their wedding shots even months before the ceremony are not an uncommon sight. In 2008, I visited Qingdao, a city on China's coastline and a former German concession. Many of its beaches are crammed with locals, tourists and the heaps rubbish with which they surround themselves. However, on one quieter sandy beach, the only other people around were a few retired couples and newlyweds having commemorative videos and photographs taken. A bride stood in her white flowing dress, knee deep in the undulating waves as her young husband wrapped his arms around her. Later, she lay with half her body resting on the sand, her lower half in the water, looking into a video camera and whispering “I love you” in English over and over. I kept thinking about the ruined, salt-water soaked dress. Among other sightings, a beautiful and traditionally dressed couple standing in red costume outside Wangfujing's Dongtang Cathedral in Beijing, and a couple posing by a water duct with a tiny patch of green grass surrounding it, of all places, directly underneath a motorway bridge intersection.

I step back into the present that conjured up this host of visions. In one shop, I spot a white dress appliquéd with cut out silver lilies on white gauze, a long train and sparkling sequins. The next shop along carries in its range a red-orange ball gown that opens out at the front to reveal layers of white petticoat, with a plunging neckline and ruffles upon ruffles expanding the bust. One dress reminds me of Terry Pratchett's book Monstrous Regiment, as a full military uniform-come-ball gown is brought into creation in a glaring combination of reds, golds and oranges. Another dress consists of whip-cream like twists in white gauze, shaped by metal wire and streaked with pinks and blues I usually associate with food dyes. The imagination poured into these dresses might not always be couture, but for me, it reflects the ideals and dreams of a new generation stepping into adulthood and family life.

Marriage in China is important, and always been. Father and son, husband and wife, have traditionally been considered amongst the most important and compulsory relationships to people here. Now, with the One Child Policy and laws to ensure volitional unions, marriage still remains the single greatest requirement for any individual growing up in China. Despite laws which forbid men from marrying before 22 and women before 20, women in particular are expected to marry young. In the eyes of the majority, women who have reached the age of 30 are guoshile – “gone off”. A few decades ago in the UK, being “left on the shelf” was a concern for many women approaching their 40s. I have Chinese friends who have fretted for years over finding the right partner within their allotted time frame (while they are still “ripe”). The social pressure is immense. Marriage is also a life insurance for a generation that cannot rely on the state for care in their old age, and hope to be able to lean on future children for support. Strips of white papers float amongst the trees in Peoples' Parks such as the one in Shanghai, where busy-body mothers have posted up advertisements of their children. When mothers meet to discuss the potential of setting up their grown-up offspring, the most important questions involve property ownership, incomes and levels of education. In this context, finding a marriage can become an aggressive and business-like affair, the source of anxiety as much as stability.

So, where does this leave us in terms of the dream-fantasy marriages this market tries to offer? Are weddings which go into all-out dress-ups and props just a thin layer concealing a truly sad reality? Divorce rates are increasing in China, but this has been the case for many countries around the world in recent decades. Marriage is a status symbol across the world, but the case in Asian regions seems particularly acute. Marriage has continued to be a link between families and a way to climb the status ladder, whether this depends on the bride and groom's status as a good communist cadre in the 60s and 70s, or as a wealthy businessman now. I have spoken to Chinese singles in their early twenties who make no secret of their materialistic criteria in any potential life-long mate. I asked one woman in her early twenties about her concerns. Her long term ex-boyfriend had recently married another girl back in their hometown of Dali. She had left only 3 months earlier to study in Beijing. Although she was only 24, she worried most of all that she would not find someone who she could love before she got too old, and that she might have to settle for someone she didn't really feel for. She felt rejected, but also sad that a young man she had loved so much had been so quick and desperate to get married.

What she said was both hopeful and depressing. It reminded me of all that this market stands for. Ridiculous dresses and props can be a way to ignore the reality for many: an unromantic and entirely materialistically motivated marriage. It also expresses perfectly young couples' surviving expectations or hopes to find romance and love in their partnerships, whether they have to build them from scratch or not. As we prepared to leave, escaping the feathered angel wings, puffy dresses and lacy parasols, I paused. It was irresistible: I had to try one of the dresses on and feel the fairytale it represented. Decked in white lace and suffocating under a tight bodice, I felt (if self consciously) for a flitter of a second like a princess, ready to be rescued by her prince charming.