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Review
C109
Hangzhou: 6
x 6 for Ireland at 411 Gallery
Probably not many Irish
people have ever heard about the city of Hangzhou in eastern
China, located 180 km southwest of Shanghai. Yet is has
a population of approximately five million, larger than
Ireland, and is the capital of Zhejiang province with
a total population of over fifty million. Hangzhou used
to be the biggest and richest city in the world when it
was the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279).
Today it is a famous tourist destination, a must-see for
everybody travelling to China, thanks to the scenic beauty
of its West Lake. Hangzhou is also one of the economic
powerhouses of new capitalist China, an example of which
being the world's longest bridge, which they are currently
building across the sea at the Hangzhou Bay.
On the other
hand, many Chinese people do not know much about Ireland,
some may not know its location or that it is a member
of the EU. Luckily, in Hangzhou you can find a gallery,
which functions as one of the world's longest cultural
bridges, creating a dialogue between Western and Chinese
contemporary art and culture and thus bringing the Chinese
in contact also with Ireland : 411 Gallery. Founded in
2001 by Irish artist James Ryan and his Chinese wife,
printmaker Chen Jiale, it held its first exhibition of
Irish contemporary art in February / March 2003. Titled
6x6 - a reference to the size restriction of six-by-six
inches decided upon for the convenience of transport -
it was an immediate success, attracting seventy-five artists
working in all media and receiving broad media coverage.
Encouraged by the success, the Irish Consulate in Shanghai
supported the exhibition when it moved to Shanghai, where
it was then shown at the renowned Eastlink Gallery in
July 2003.
6x6
for Ireland has now become
a regular annual exhibition series sponsored by the Department
of Foreign Affairs of Ireland. The second 6x6 show
at the 411 Gallery took place 22 May to 22 June in the
new, more spacious premises in downtown Hangzhou. This
time it had the theme 'Year of the Monkey' (the Chinese
lunar calendar name for 2004) and works were selected
by curator James Ryan and assistant curator Martin Shannon,
resulting in sixty-five artists included in the exhibition.
Feedback again was extremely positive, with wide media
attention and besides the small foreign community in Hangzhou
it received hundreds of curious Chinese visitors, among
them many students and professors from China Academy of
Art.
Though restricted
in size, works in all media were accepted, so that the
exhibition featured an interesting and stimulating mix
of drawing, watercolour, oil painting, collage, printmaking,
sculpture, installation, performance, video, sound art,
photography, etc. Writer John Paul Donnelly also contributed
a humorous and allegorical short story titled A monkey named sue.
Unfortunately,
only about half of the artists submitted work really dealing
with or related to the theme 'Year of the Monkey'. The
other half did not take the trouble of working on the
theme. This is a pity because in consequence the exhibition
lacked a common point of reference for better comparability.
Another weak point of the show was the presence of some
low-quality works by some unknown amateur or 'hobby' artists.
There were maybe five or six such works and they did spoil
the positive general impression a little, so the selection
for next year's 6x6 should be a
little more strict and careful, even if this results in
less works exhibited.
The majority
of the works are of high standard but due to the large
number it is impossible to mention them all here. Of those
considering the monkey theme, I personally was most impressed
by the following:
1. Eamon
O'Kane's short video Monkey man shows
Jack Nicholson repeatedly ape-like rubbing and scratching
his hairy chest with his fingers while taking a break
during the making of the film The
Shining.
2. Gareth
Pyper took the photograph Monkey god on
a tour through India. It depicts an Indian boy with his
face decorated like a monkey for the Shiva Festival in
order to pay homage to 'Hanaman', the Monkey God.
 |
| Gareth
Pyper: Monkey
god, colour photograph;
courtesy 411 Gallery |
3. Prehensile
grip by Áine
Phillips is a drawing of a newborn baby gripping at a
rope. This baby though looks more ape-like than human,
addressing the basic instincts that have stayed with us
through evolution.
4. Michael
Haskett's humorous print Monkey business shows
a man in a debris-filled environment referring to the
confusion sometimes associated with the Year of the Monkey.
5. as
mon-cii by Enda O'Donoghue most fascinated the Chinese
audience. Based on the ASCII-code, it appears at first
sight to be just a series of jumbled up characters and
numbers. From a distance of around 8 feet though, the
face of a chimpanzee can be seen.
 |
| Enda
O' Donoghue:
AS-MONCii;
courtesy 411 Gallery |
Of those
works not related to the theme, the following are definitely
worth a mention:
1. Samuel
Walsh's Kopf drawing derives
from sketches of medieval helmets. 'Kopf' in German means
'head', and in this piece Walsh represents the human head
with simple, characteristic black line starkly drawn on
white paper.
2. Minutia
major by Angela Darby is a sculpture of twenty-two
Tarot cards folded into a popular children's game of chance
that may carry many psychological meanings.
 |
| Angela
Darby: Minutia major
(The Crowley Deck);
courtesy the artist |
3. Fiona
Bourke sent a self-made, extremely thin and fragile porcelain
cup, which luckily was not broken during transit. The
graceful cup, sitting on a corrugated support, might in
its delicate existence be a metaphor of the transience
of life. The title 1980
Year of the Monkey does not at all seem to be related to the meaning.
 |
| Fiona
Bourke: 1980
Year of the monkey;
courtesy 411 Gallery |
4. Catherine
Hehir submitted an interesting untitled photograph of
two different hands holding together a mysterious light
source that could symbolize the struggle or the unity
of man.
5. Curator
James Ryan himself presented the 'Sean Nós'-style
traditional song The cross of Spancil Hill sung in Chinese. The work, he says, is a comment on
his struggles to learn Chinese and to be understood by
the Chinese.
Ryan has
already set the date for next year's 6x6
for Ireland. It is scheduled for March 2005 and the theme will
be announced three months prior to the closing date of
submissions (11 March 2005). The show certainly has the
potential of becoming more important in the international
art scene now that it already is an established event.
Arvo
Bruene is lecturer in
Western Art History, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China.
6 x 6 for Ireland,
411 Gallery, Hangzhou, May / June 2004
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