Hayward Gallery:Art of Change from China

The Hayward Gallery exhibition: Art of Change it's been the best exhibition I have seen so far due to the variety of artist on display and  also the discovery that Chinese artists don't only make paintings but also interesting conceptual work.

MadeIn Company is a creative corporation established by Xu Zhen Chinese Artist the youngest artist in this group exhibition.

MadeIn’s works seemed to me to involve performance and participation of the audience most of the time as they where several interactive installations such as Untitled (2007) which consisted of fitness machine that the viewer can operate with the use of a remote control to show the loss of identity in the modern man and social control and Just a Blink of an Eye(2005/2012) an illusion where  a person is suspended in mid fall.

Yingmei Duan uses predominately performance & the body in her work. She looks at the states of awakens and sleep and says that dreams are very important in her work. She also explores cultural displacement and social marginalisation. I found that in the piece above Happy Yingmei  where I met the actual artist singing & I was quite shocked and unsure on what to do but I found it moving and then in the pic below Sleeping, In Between and Patience (2004-2012) where she explores the interaction between the actual body and the interaction with the shelves and space around it and the floating mind.

I found interesting that Liang Shaoji's career as an artist started when he was 40 due to the Ccultural Revolution he was sent to work in the countryside in a factory. His work is made of silk worm and is about the traces of fleeting time. I found listening to the silk worms disconcerting but found interesting the combination of natural primary materials in his sculptural work and the concept of inner peace. From his work one can see he is very much in touch and works with nature.

 Sun Yuan & Peng Yu two artists that have been working collaboratively since 2000 they investigate the relation between things & work sometimes with shocking materials such as human fat tissue like in the Civilisation Pillar 2001 a monument to capitalism & vanity. i found their work interesting and fun due to the use of unusual materials, the large scale of the sculptures but also not knowing if the sculptures where real or not like so one  is forced qquestion reality & deception for example in What I am Doing 2012 where one can see a mix of natural history specimens and  fake rhinoceros made to look very real but are not.

 Chen Zhen he is another artist who experience the Cultural Revolution left China and lived abroad for many years. He uses everyday materials in his art work

He went to Brazil and made art work with  poor Brazilian children that live in shanty areas the candles are a symbol of life, hope of creating harmony in a place where there isn't harmony. It was made by the children and I found the combination of the simple designs, the bright colours  of the candles which are actually quite fragile as a material,moving as they also symbolise the fragility of the children's dreams for stability in the future.