Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Chester
Family Village, a solo exhibition of works produced in connections to China.
Family Village explores China’s transition from rural traditions to urban expansion. Research was made possible by the Arts Council England funded arts organisation ArtSway, through their open invitation to seek out one international artist for their 2008 Artist Production Residency programme.
This opportunity allowed me to interrogate ideas of authenticity, originality and the vernacular within a contemporary Chinese context. The research emerged from a news article describing an exchange of Christmas cards sent in 2005 by a Dorset based urban planner and his counterpart in Chengdu, China. The card sent by the British planner depicts an idyllic watercolour rendition of Dorchester from a bygone era. Upon receiving the card, the Chinese counterpart was so impressed he used it as a blueprint to build ‘Dorchester’ in Chengdu.
My residency included a visit to Chengdu’s ‘Dorchester’, named British Town, to gather visual materials to bring back to the UK for further development into a new artwork. Filming spanned several days before being abruptly ended by a security guard who suspected I might have been a British architect stealing local architectural styles to bring back home. The incident not only informed ideas surrounding my research but also became a central theme to my practice.
Family Village was finally realised as a six-minute video installation with sound. The work premiered at the 53rd Venice Biennale, installed inside a blacked out room within a typically baroque Venetian palace. The works unravels the narrative of a peasant Chinese boy, meandering by boat along a river to collect bamboo for his village. Having completed his task, the boy loses his way back, as the village he has known since childhood appears to transform its façade and architectural style the closer he approaches home.
