Sunday, September 20, 2009

The White Rabbit Gallery

Although Alex just made a post about the gallery, having just visited it yesterday I felt obliged to write about it as I really enjoyed it!
The director and owner of the collection Judith Neilson obviously has an amazing eye for contemporary Chinese art and has the biggest collection in the world. I got to go on a tour & talk of the collection which was very insightful.

A lot of the works were very confronting and have strong political and social messages. 
I think that many of these works can be related to both themes Globalism and Spirituality. One installation (Where Have All the Children Gone?) consisted of young girls dresses hanging from the roof representing girls who were murdered during Mao's reign. The piece had a very spiritual feel to it. It was poignant and beautiful. Many other works had the same spiritual essence. The political history of China has affected the people immensely and made for a lot of powerful art.

Globalism often dictates the way a lot of contemporary Chinese art is made as many of the artists try to direct their work at the Western market (e.g. some of Ai Wei Wei's works have been said to do this). Judith apparently tries not to buy art like this. The piece "Apple in Love" speaks about the desire to be American and live 'the American Dream' showing an M&M struggling to water ski behind a speedboat. The influence of American culture through Globalism.

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I can't download the pictures unfortunately but here is the web address-

http://www.whiterabbitcollection.org/modules/collection/gallery.php?id_galleries=34

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