Serve the People

Overview

Western contemporary art is slowly emerging from an existential crisis, from the black hole of post-modernism, to embrace art that serves a political and social as well as an aesthetic purpose. But whilst we are all busy congratulating ourselves for remembering that artists aren't just weirdos who question whether or not squares exist, China has jumped miles ahead in the art of political art.

Serve the People goes some way in justifying this sweeping generalisation. Impressively curated by 'retired' Art Gallery of NSW director Edmund Capon, the latest exhibition to grace the walls of Judith Neilson's White Rabbit Gallery surveys the best artworks of China’s 21st-century cultural revolution. It was at the height of the initial 1974 Cultural Revolution that Capon made his first trip to China and there witnessed the rapidly changing relationship between artist and society: from the iron rule of the Mao era, where art didn't legally exist beyond Soviet-style socialist realism, to the increasing freedoms experienced by artists in today's global, tourism-driven market.

The title Serve the People is ironically taken from the eponymous 1966-76 Maoist slogan urging artists to serve the cause of socialism, but here opens up the role of the artist to serve people ideas that lie outside the prescribed government agenda, ideas that critique, challenge and satire society and politics. Exhibited works span the human psychological and emotional spectrum, exploring fear, anarchy and hope through rich personal and public lenses.

Capon has chosen from Neilson’s 700-strong collection to present a survey of starkly diverse but equally affecting works with both conceptual depth and technical proficiency par excellence. The rigour and the methodology in works like Jin Feng's A History of China’s Modernisation Volumes 1 and 2 (2011) pay tribute to China's socialist roots, where the boldness and humour in Invasive Species – Vegetables (2010) by Chen Hangfeng and Shi Jinsong’s Baby Stroller – Sickle Edition (2007) (a child’s stroller made to look like a Viking chariot with metal spikes — for parents with a competitive spirit!), reflect the increasing freedom artists have to reinterpret the world and serve us new visions, some hilarious, some confronting, some tantalising.

Other highlights include Nibbling Up – Tomb Figures (2008), a humorous and haunting work by Sun Furong. The artist, a former seamstress, decided to stab at 100 Mao suits with a pair of scissors and then present them like a headless ghost army. Just think about how much cathartic energy it would have taken to stab even one suit, let alone 100. Also keep an eye out for the meticulous craftsmanship in Wang Lei’s Fabrications (2009), the silk 'dragon robes' worn by Chinese emperors, here recreated by twisting chopped-up bits of paper from a Chinese-English dictionary into yarn.

It seems we've been served quite a treat.

Image: Jin Feng, A History of China’s Modernisation Volumes 1 and 2, (2011).