Output details

Heartbeat

Heartbeat at Art Centre 99, Shanghai included six large oil paintings, seven wearable paintings, eight small oils on canvas and nine acrylics on unstretched canvas, all from 2008 - 2012. This British Council funded exhibition interrogated questions of identity, the formation of self and emotionality through still life painting.

The aim of presenting painterly depictions of a ‘western’ configuration of self in an Asian context was to generate cultural exchange; debate notions of artistic identity, in particular female artistic identity, and how this is potentially shaped by specific social, pedagogic and political contexts; and to demonstrate the originality of an expanded definition of still life painting.

This exhibition built on my deep-rooted interest in Asian art which has influenced my practice from the outset and spawned several residencies and research trips in Japan, China and Taiwan since 1990. My work is held in several Japanese museum collections and in a private foundation in China.

For Heartbeat, I joined Wang DaWei, Dean of the College of Fine Arts, Shanghai University in a public talk on my work at 99 Art Center. The exhibition was a platform to raise awareness of the John Moores Painting Prize China (for which I was first prize winner in 1989) and led to my appointment as judge for the John Moores Painting Prize 2014. It also included a workshop residency in which I learned aspects of Chinese ink painting.

This exhibition and practical residency have led to other recent research trips, exhibitions and public engagements in Southeast Asia and the Middle East to explore and absorb different cultural approaches to painting.