Best wishes for the Year of the Dragon!

Asian look in the Gallery shop

While the Gallery shop was closed for renovations in the past year, a new range of products were been designed to feature art from the collection. Asian art in particular was a rich source of ideas. The Gallery’s 2012 calendar features twelve months of Japanese woodblock prints and new jewellery range includes earrings that take advantage of the gold glow of Japanese screens. Linen tea towels sport images from Ladies Graphic cover designs by print artist Yumeji Takehisa. Chinese ink paintings of Mount Huang and Prunus create inspiring covers for sketch books.  The Gallery shop bags are gifts in themselves with reproductions of a Japanese actor print and Maruyama Okyo’s Cranes.

Staff moves

Alexandra Green, curator of South and Southeast Asian art resigned in December to take up a new position next year as the Henry Ginsburg curator for Southeast Asia at the British Museum. This new position is funded by the bequest of Henry Ginsburg, eminent authority in Thai manuscripts at the British Library for over thirty years. Alexandra will focus on the Thai, Burmese and Cambodian collections.

Indian Picchvai celebrates Krishna

Visitors to the exhibition One hundred flowers: recent Asian acquisitions will have noticed a dramatically large painting of Krishna surrounded by gopis. This picchvai or decorative cloth hanging was used to embellish the shrine of Krishna in a Pushti Marg temple. The subject refers to the Sharad Purnima festival, which takes place during the autumn full moon. It is the time for rasalila, when Krishna and the gopis dance and play together in the forest. This festival was particularly popular as a picchvai subject, being considered an instance of a soul’s ecstatic union with god. During the festival the doors to the shrine are opened eight times during the day, and each time picchvai of different designs may be on display. It is likely that the Gallery’s picchvai was hung several days prior to the festival night, as Krishna has not yet begun the dance.

View the picchvai on the Gallery’s website

One hundred flowers: recent Asian acquisitions

Extended until 15 January 2012
A 13th-century Nepalese gilt bronze of Padmapani or The Luminous Lord of Infinite Compassion is just one of the stunning works on display in this exhibition, which showcases some of the artworks that have been added to the Gallery’s world-class Asian collection in the last five years.

Alongside this elegant figure are works in many different media, including miniature paintings from India, Japanese folding screens, Chinese ceramics and calligraphy, and textiles from across Asia. Covering many centuries, the wide selection of art on show represents high points in artistic expression across countries and cultures as diverse and distant as Tibet and Indonesia.

Dragon

18 January – 6 May 2012
Evolved from a pre-historic totemic animal, the dragon has become a symbol of China to the world. Chinese people everywhere take pride in considering themselves descendants of this mythical creature.

Celebrating 2012 as the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac, this exhibition showcases more than 50 artworks that carry the dragon motif, either from the Gallery’s collection or on loan.

Encompassing bronzes, porcelains, textiles, paintings and calligraphy, it examines the creature’s diverse meanings and manifestations in Chinese art, ritual and politics, while pieces from Japan and Chinese exportware demonstrate how the dragon has been adopted by cultures outside China.

Mother India: video plays by Nalini Malani

11 March – 20 May 2012
Mumbai-based artist Nalini Malani was born in 1946 in Karachi, now in Pakistan. This installation features several of her videos, with the focus on Mother India: transactions in the construction of pain 2005

Realised on a scale that overwhelms the viewer, this emotive five-channel projection is 15 metres long. It explores Nalani’s core political themes, drawing on her family’s experience of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Looking at partition, and the riots in Gujarat in 2002, this important work was made in response to an essay by anthropologist Veena Das, titled Language and the body: transactions in the construction of pain. Das examines how widespread sexual violence against women at the time of partition was incorporated into a political narrative that reinforced the allegorical notion of the nation-state as a paternal figure.

Malani’s politically charged sequence of images addresses histories of gendered violence in India, which continue to the present day. While the work deals with specific historical circumstances, it is part of the artist’s broader project to confront politics and human suffering across culture and gender boundaries.

Tours

Arts of Asia: Daily 12noon
Gallery highlights: in Cantonese, Tuesdays 11am
Gallery highlights: in Mandarin, Thursdays 11am
Gallery highlights: in Japanese, Fridays 11am
Gallery highlights: in Korean, Fridays 11am

Chinese New Year celebrations

Saturday 28 & Sunday 29 January 2012

There are a myriad of ways to enter the year of the dragon over the weekend of Saturday 28  and Sunday 29 January. We begin with an auspicious Buddhist blessing and drum performance. There are two sessions each day with acclaimed storyteller Kiran Shah, who has some surprising tales of the animals of the Chinese zodiac. A lion dance on the front steps kicks off the Sunday program when there is also the opportunity for children to meet artists Di Wu and Kathy Huang to colour their own rainbow dragon. Special tours and lectures are also on the program.

Full listing

Lectures

VisAsia Hingyiu Mok Mandarin language lecture
Christian art on the Silk Road
Saturday 28 Janaury 1pm–2.30pm

From the cross on the lotus of Tang Nestorianism to the palace architecture of the Christian university campus in modern China, religious art from the West has undergone tremendous transformation since its introduction to China via the Silk Road. Join professor Gu Weimin from the Shanghai Normal University and adjunct professor Milton Wan from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in a visual art journey, spanning over a thousand years. This annual lecture is delivered in Mandarin language only.

Arts of Asia lecture series: ‘Love’

Tuesdays 1pm. Beginning 6 March 2012
The uplifting, immersive and transformative experience of love is the topic for the 2012 Arts of Asia lecture series. The word ‘love’ is applied to a multitude of relationships as the series, drawing on the expertise of academics, curators and critics will demonstrate. The aim is to offer fresh insights into the interpretation of love in the religious, literary and artistic worlds. Our theme was inspired by the upcoming exhibition at the State Library of Victoria, Love and devotion in Persian art. The series will be launched on 6 March by Stefano Carboni, director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia speaking on ‘Famous Persian love stories’. Noted Islamic art specialist from London Dr Eleanor Sims will also participate along with one of our most popular lecturers Susan Scollay both delving into love stories expressed in Persian painting. 

Term 1 of the series focuses on the Near East, South and Southeast Asia and Term 2 beginning July 31 focuses on East Asia. Topics as diverse as ‘kama’, the Indian concept of love and enjoyment, familial love in Confucian China and the otherworldly love of Japanese Noh theatre explore the ancient wisdom and living traditions of love in the arts of Asia.

Book online

Kids Club workshop

Year of the Dragon puppets

Saturday 4 & Sunday 5 February
10.30am–12pm & 1.30pm–3pm

The Kids Club, art classes for members' children aged 5–8, starts 2012 by acknowledging the Year of the Dragon. To celebrate, make your very own dragon puppet to give you good luck all year long. $25 per session.

Book online

Contemporary Chinese art focus in world art tour for members

Following the sell-out success of this year’s Cutting Edge: China tour, Sydney Morning Herald art critic John McDonald will lead a second tour to China in May 2012. Focusing on the contemporary art scene in Shanghai and Beijing, the itinerary takes advantage of McDonald’s experience in visiting China since 1989. His most recent work has been in writing the catalogue for the opening of the White Rabbit Gallery, a private museum of contemporary Chinese art.

Over the past two decades China has emerged as the most innovative force in international contemporary art. The tour visits galleries and studios that are driving this new revolution, including major art complexes such as 798 in Beijing, and Shanghai’s Moganshan Lu. In addition, there are visits to private studios of well-known Chinese artists.

Further information

Buddhist art and contemporary culture course through Nan Tien Institute

The Gallery is collaborating with Nan Tien Institute to deliver a short course on Buddhist art and culture 10–14 April 2012. The course forms part of the graduate diploma in applied Buddhist studies but is also open to the general public This subject explores the history and development, form and meaning of Buddhist arts and their influence in different cultures and contexts. Participants stay at Nan Tien Temple in Wollongong, the largest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere and spend  two of the five days at the Gallery for lectures, workshops and contemplative viewing of Buddhist art.

Visit the Nan Tien Institute to enrol