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Penrith Regional Gallery & the Lewers Bequest 1 2 MARCH 0 ~ ~ 25 1 MAY 4 PENRITH REGIONAL GALLERY & THE LEWERS BEQUEST LANDSCAPES OF ARTIFICE AND THE IMAGINATION RIVING WESTBOUND ON SYDNEY’S DM4 MOTORWAY, AT EASTERN CREEK, A COMPLEX JUNGLE OF OVERPASSES RISE OUT OF THE FLAT WESTERN PLAINS. THE LIGHT HORSE INTERCHANGE CONNECTS THE CITY’S MAJOR ARTERIAL MOTORWAYS (THE M7, M4, M2 AND M5) AND WAS OPENED IN 2005 TO SERVICE THE GROWING POPULATION AND ECONOMIES OF SYDNEY’S OUTER SUBURBS. RIBBONS OF CONCRETE AND STEEL, BRIDGES AND RAMPS, ARE PUNCTUATED WITH SCULPTURAL MONUMENTS TO THE LIGHT HORSE BRIGADE WHO SERVED IN WWI AND ONCE TRAINED IN THE AREA. A spectacle of public art crossed with communicate the epic power of the gargantuan feats of engineering—this natural world and people’s harmonious structure would not be out of place in attitude toward this. The genre’s strange the Chinese megacities of Shanghai or peaks and cliffs, misty waterfalls and Chongqing. A passage of movement forests of twisted pine are fluid forms where nobody crosses anybody else’s that exist without place or time— path, the Light Horse Interchange brings landscapes that are entirely imagined. to mind less the ANZAC spirit and more the transient spaces of supermodernity: I have decided to portray this theme [Mt or ‘non-places’.1 Non-places challenge Tiantai] according to my own imagination. conventional patterns of time and I have heard that some of the strange pine space, social interactions, history and trees on the mountain have met the sad fate identity: those escalators, motorways, supermarkets, hotels, leisure parks and of extinction. It seems that once the natural airports that could be situated anywhere wonders of the sky, earth, mountains and in the world. rivers are exposed to the intimate scrutiny of our dusty world they do not last long. This If supermodernity’s non-places signal 2 technology’s command over the indeed is a cause for lamentation. natural environment, the monumental mountainscapes of traditional Chinese Dai Benxiao (1621 – 91) landscape painting attempt precisely the opposite. Chinese landscape painting, For the thirteen Australian and Chinese or shanshui , is a poetic approach artists exhibited in Wondermountain, to imaging landscapes that has evolved many of whom travel and work across since the Tang Dynasty (618 – 906). the Asia Pacific, the non-places of Historically the domain of the literati both supermodernity and Chinese poet-painters of imperial China, shanshui art history are equally familiar. These can be characterised by its ink and wash are artists who operate transculturally, technique; embrace of negative space; their contemporaries not defined muted colour palette; fluid, expressive by geographic locale, but by shared mark-making and the absence of the aesthetics, concerns and uncertainties. human figure and elevation of natural forms. Through painting, installation, drawing, sculpture, photography and the moving Chinese landscape painting is unique image, Wondermountain visualises landscapes in the way that it synthesises textual and devoid of place. In Yang Yongliang’s pictorial elements. The white voids of haunting animation a Song shanshui are typically overwritten with Dynasty (960 – 1279) composition is poetry, commenting on the inner populated by hundreds of skyscrapers, spirit of the subject at hand. Heavily cranes and pylons in a complex dystopian influenced by Taoist and Confucian vision. In a similar act of subverting the philosophies, shanshui’s tranquil scenes sublime, Philjames transforms a found picturesque landscape painting into an Deceptively rendered as academic- image of China’s controversial Three style oil paintings, Wang Zhibo Gorges Dam, dwarfing the original imagines gardens that are entirely pavilion in the foreground. Both artificial. Wang’s parkscapes draw artists skilfully co-opt a pre-existing elements from both classical Chinese visual language to pass comment on and European landscaping and the scale and pace of development in architecture. The spaces that result contemporary China. are neither here nor there, evoking a quietly discomforting mood of eeriness Jamie North investigates the material and abandonment. Svetlana Bailey’s relationship between the natural and fog-filled photographs of Chinese human-made, encasing growths of leisure parks obscure any semblance of Australian native plant-life in an elegant place, elevating her mysterious subjects column of concrete, coal ash, steel slag into an otherworldly realm akin to the and iron oxide. Also experimenting with mist-shrouded peaks of shanshui. Also industrial detritus, Aesha Henderson’s working in photo-media Shoufay Derz installation—a mass of repurposed and documents the scattering of ashes onto fabricated concrete and rubble—openly the mountainscape of Taiwan’s Caoshan comments on the transformative and (also known as ‘moonworld’), altering lasting affect of humans on the landscape the landscape through ritual-like in a three-dimensional speculation of performance, while Liu Yuan’s what we might leave behind. Executed selection of vernacular photography in in brick-fragments and gold leaf, Jason mountain-like forms visually interprets Wing’s contribution is a direct response the Zen Buddhist thought that a to his experience of Xucun, a 2000 year mountain is not always a mountain. old village in remote Shanxi Province, where traditional ways of living face For 1500 years, Chinese painters have continuous threat from the vicissitudes borrowed and blended techniques and of urban developers and mining. imagery from shanshui of the past to express landscapes of their imagination. Working site-specifically, Li Ming In the essay that follows artist, Peter uses video to document a series Nelson, reflects on how this approach is of aural interventions, as his retrofitted continued in contemporary art, and his loudspeaker blasts a villain’s laugh into a own practice. Nelson’s work reinterprets sleepy mountainside town. The result is 11th century poetry and 16th century both humorous and sinister as Li’s work Chinese painting through 3D-printed hints at some kind of impending doom. ceramics and digital video. As a personal Similarly, the ink and brush drawings extension of this tradition, Nelson of Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen articulate the inserts actors—himself included—into invisible through a direct engagement his own landscape of exploration and with space. A response to the sounds self-realisation. Bringing the question of the Nepean River and gardens of of identity back in to focus, Nelson’s Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers remix reminds us that “non-places never Bequest, Chen’s abstracted soundscape exist in pure form; places reconstitute investigates the spatial dimensions of themselves in it; relations are restored Chinese landscape painting and the and resumed.”3 fluidity and fragility of the river ecosystem. Through the work of a new generation of artists who embrace both formal On the streets of Foshan, Guangdong and philosophical fragments of shanshui, Province, Hua Tunan paints Wondermountain critically contemplates the the unreal landscapes of shanshui in non-places of now. bursts of colour and movement. His bold palette and splatters of paint confront the ‘bland’ aesthetic and Joanna Bayndrian serene mood typically associated with the genre in a nod to the many vibrant Curator hues of contemporary life in China. For Wondermountain, Hua has produced a specially commissioned fluorescent shanshui mural in the Gallery and gardens. AN ARTIST’S VIEW HE ENTRY POINT WAS SUPERFICIAL. A FRIEND INTRODUCED ME TO CHINESE PAINTING AND IT TRESONATED WITH ME AS AN IMPORTANT LANDSCAPE TRADITION. AS AN ART STUDENT IN SYDNEY I WAS EXPERIMENTING WITH VARIOUS WAYS OF MAKING LANDSCAPE IMAGES, HOW TO ARRANGE OBJECTS AND HOW TO CREATE SPACES. LIKE ALL GOOD OBSESSIONS, IT SHIFTED FROM AN AREA OF PASSIVE CONTEMPLATION TO ONE OF SERIOUS STUDY. In 2009, I first saw Wen Zhengming’s 800 years earlier.4 The first poem opens particular point of interest, and through (1470-1559) 16th century with his optimism in facing a time-rich gradual exploration, they research landscape scroll Imitating Zhao Bosu’s retirement, whereas the second descends historical contexts and hypothesise their Illustration of the Latter Red Cliff Ode on display into the melancholy of personal isolation own contemporary meanings. I have at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. and looming financial poverty. made a number of such jumps, and I was travelling between artist residency my practice uses one investigation to programs, working with Taiwanese and “I have guests but no wine, and even if inform another. Just as Wen Zhengming Chinese artists, observing the maelstrom I had wine, there is no food to go along imitated the painting of Zhao Mengfu, I of China’s urbanisation, and studying with it. The moon is white, the wind, have used 3D modelling to redraw Wen Chinese landscape painting. Chinese gentle. But how can we enjoy such a fine Zhengming’s scroll, and then combine ink painting was the hook that first took evening?” 5 it with other languages, from utopian me to China, and the arbitrary starting urban architecture to sci-fi computer point that led me to new fields of interest Wen Zhengming painted his scroll 500 games. This video work tells the story of and new friends across East Asia. years after Su Shi penned these words. The Lost Man and his encounter with (Su Shi’s poems had become a popular Akan , played by Taiwanese artist My five-screen video work in subject for artists at the time.) Wen Nick Kan— two characters that cross each Wondermountain is a reconstruction of Zhengming worked from a painting other’s paths in a historically fragmented Wen Zhengming’s scroll. The historical made in the 12th century by Zhao Bosu no-place, and define themselves through threads that connect this painting to (1120–1182) – he painted in an gradual explorations of the landscape. my video are a sort of shorthand for my old-fashioned style for a 16th century art practice between Sydney, mainland artist.
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