Inside Out
New Chinese Art
3 Jun 2000 – 13 Aug 2000
About
Inside Out: New Chinese Art explores the vitality and dynamic changes in late 20th-century China – a period when the deeply-rooted cultural assumptions and centuries-old visual traditions have been under enormous pressure from rapid modernisation, changing political realities and conflicting global, ethnic and local identities. The exhibition features work by artists from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as those living abroad. Consisting of nearly 90 works created in the years 1985–1998, Inside Out presents an astonishing body of art - confronting, clever, mysterious, elegant and always thought-provoking – across the full range of media, with painting, sculpture, photographs, installations, videos and prints by some of the world's leading contemporary artists.
Inside Out: New Chinese Art is organised by the Asia Society in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The National Gallery of Australia is the only Australian venue.
Themes
Art and Text: Calligraphy and Meaning
China’s pictographic script has been an important tool for personal and artistic communication and administration for thousands of years. From around 1984 artists in mainland China began to create new characters, which are seen to challenge the foundations of Chinese civilisation.
Cultural Identity and Change
Artists refer to traditional Chinese cultural practice, reinventing objects in surprising materials.
Consumerism
As the economy of mainland China boomed in the early 1990s a new urban middle class emerged. Oil painters clinically dissected the values and activities of this new class, exposing beneath the glitter of wealth the fading of idealism, the breakdown of old family ties and the alienation of the individual.
Family Issues: Changing Values and Social Comment
The role of the family has always been important in Chinese culture. Political movements have challenged the relationship between the generations and the right to have more than one child.
Gender Issues
Female artists explore gender issues in relation to women’s historical role in Chinese society
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