MCLC: aborigines in the art of Zhou Xiaoping

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: aborigines in the art of Zhou Xiaoping
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Artspace China is pleased to announce publication of Mabel Lee's essay,
'Aboriginal Australians in the Art of Zhou Xiaoping.'

An introduction to the article can be read below, however the full article
is posted, with images, at:

http://www.artspacechina.com.au/

Very best
Christen Cornell
Editor, Artspace China
China Studies Centre, University of Sydney

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Aboriginal Australians in the Art of Zhou Xiaoping
by Mabel Lee

In recent decades contemporary Australian Aboriginal art has attracted
much international and local attention. The creations of Aboriginal
artists form a distinct and disparate category of Australian art,
notwithstanding that most Aboriginal artists are also informed by
non-Aboriginal artworks, art techniques and art practices. There are
highly prized traditional paintings executed on bark or canvas in various
colours of ochre that contain sacred images and designs that are the
exclusive domain of Aboriginal artists, but the vast majority of works by
leading Aboriginal artists now tend to use oil or acrylics on canvas for
their depictions of the natural environment that somehow retain an
identifiable Aboriginal spirituality. A small number of artworks exude a
smouldering rage against injustices perpetrated on the Aboriginal people
since White settlement, and this may explain the virtual absence of the
human form in Aboriginal art, except for the occasional ochre abstractions
that resemble those found in ancient rock paintings.

The erasure of self in Aboriginal art is without question connected to
their history of dispossession. The drawings of 19th century Aboriginal
artists such as William Barak (1824-1903), Tommy McRae (c.1836-1901) and
Mickey of Ulladulla (1820-1891) depict Aboriginal people, but as noted by
one art historian, these are ³records of dispossession² (McDonald, p.
624). Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira (1902-1959) mastered European
watercolours, and won acclaim for his works that captured the shifting
moods and colours of the Australian landscape. However his landscapes are
devoid of Aboriginal people. By his time, and even in more recent times,
the representation of Aboriginal people has seldom been explored by
Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal artists. The existence of many taboos may to
some extent have stymied such artistic explorations, but lack of interest
has also been a significant factor.

Fate played a role in ensuring that Aboriginal people would begin to
populate the paintings of Chinese artist Zhou Xiaoping soon after he
arrived in Australia in September 1988, and that Aboriginal people would
remain the main subject of his continuing explorations in art. In China he
frequently camped to paint at various sites on Huangshan, a mountain range
in southern Anhui province that is famous for its bizarre rock formations.
On one occasion an Australian tourist stopped to admire his work, and
engaged him in conversation. He made a gift of some of his works to the
tourist, and before long he found himself invited to bring his Chinese
landscapes for a solo exhibition at Artists¹ Space gallery in Melbourne.
Most of his works sold, and he was keen to paint something of this foreign
land to take home to China. As urban scenes failed to inspire him, friends
suggested a trip to Outback Australia. In Alice Springs he encountered
Aboriginals for the first time, and instantly knew he wanted to paint
them. His next destination was Uluru. He managed to hitchhike part of the
journey, but as no motor vehicles appeared, he began walking. The bushland
attracted him, and he wandered off to explore, but as dusk approached he
found that he was hopelessly lost. Three aboriginal boys suddenly
appeared, as he was on the verge of collapse. Their only words he could
make out were: ³Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee,² the name of the Hong Kong martial
arts film and TV hero. Nonetheless, he was able to communicate his
friendship, and the boys took him to their campsite where he spent the
night with their families. The next day the boys took him to Uluru (Zhou,
pp. 16-42).

Like most who have approached the sacred site of Uluru, Zhou Xiaoping
detected its mystical aura. What he did not know was that Uluru was an
ancient sea raised countless millions of years ago, and that this too was
how Huangshan had come about in China. Before the end of 1988 Zhou
Xiaoping was painting Aboriginal people, and had extended his stay to
learn more about them, their history and culture. In the following year he
decided to make his home in Australia, and his art became firmly set on a
trajectory in which Aboriginal people would act as subject to the virtual
exclusion of all else. He began living in remote Aboriginal communities on
a regular basis, to learn from their elders and artists, and he is the
first non-Aboriginal to have painted in collaboration with Aboriginal
artists, notably Jimmy Pike (1940-2002) from the Walmajarri country in
Western Australia, and John Bulunbulun (1946-2010) from the Yirritja
country, east of Maningrida in Arnhem Land. His extraordinary engagement
with Aboriginal Australia is documented in Ochre and Ink: Zhou Xiaoping, a
Chinese Artist in Aboriginal Australia (Australian television premiere: 21
February 2012, ³Artscape² on ABC 1). Directed by Australian filmmaker
James Bradley, Ochre and Ink was recently awarded second prize at 2012
FIFO (Festival International du Film Documentaire Océanien), and also
shortlisted for the ASPEN prize in the USA.

Ochre and Ink opens with the April 2011 launch of the exhibition ³Trepang:
China and the Story of Macassan­Aboriginal Trade² at the Capital Museum in
Beijing. After three months in Beijing, the exhibition was shown at the
Melbourne Museum, and then Framed­The Darwin Gallery. Artefacts,
photographs, drawings and ancient maps document the trepang trade dating
back to the 18th century between Australian Aboriginals and South China,
via the Macassans. Showcased in the exhibition is also the contemporary
art exchange between traditional Aboriginal Australian art and Chinese
expressive-style painting, as embodied in the collaborative and individual
artworks of John Bulunbulun and Zhou Xiaoping.

The large number of spectacular works bearing the signatures of both John
Bulunbulun and Zhou Xiaoping include exemplary works such as Portrait of
John Bulunbulun (acrylic and ochre on canvas, 200 x 147 cm, 2007) [fig. 1]
(Trepang catalogue p. 119) and From Art to Life (Chinese ink, acrylic and
ochre on rice paper and canvas, 2009) [fig. 2] (Trepang catalogue, pp.
112­3). In the former work, Zhou Xiaoping¹s portrait of John Bulunbulun
exudes the authority and energy that characterized the Aboriginal artist
in life, as can be seen in footage of Ochre and Ink. The portrait is
superimposed against John Bulunbulun¹s traditional painting of horizontal
bands of Aboriginal motifs and line designs. Occupying more than a third
of the right side of From Art to Life is John Bulunbulun¹s traditional
painting of wide horizontal bands of Macassan traders in boats, barramundi
and a variety of line designs. The Macassan boats and barramundi point
westwards, towards China. In fact one of the two Macassan boats is
beginning to sail out of the painting, while a number of barramundi have
already launched into Zhou Xiaoping¹s swirling ocean waves that fill up
the remainder of the work. Two fish on the extreme left have transformed
into life-like fish with scales, and a small Chinese junk can be seen in
the distance. The surging energy of Zhou Xiaoping¹s waves on rice paper
are the result of his training in traditional Chinese expressive painting,
while his use of white, yellow and green of varying intensity bears the
imprint of his lengthy stays in remote Aboriginal communities.

To live with Aboriginal people has a profound effect upon Zhou Xiaoping,
and even when he is back in his Melbourne home he remains acutely aware of
an inexplicable sense of still being there. While in this psychological
state he can only isolate himself in his studio for days. The tangle of
inchoate sensations that he perceives must be given form in a painting
before he can be released from this self-imposed solitude (Lee 2011; Ochre
and Ink). Framed­The Darwin Gallery has represented him since 1992, and
the owner Anne E. Phelan states that most people love his works, and that
his buyers are people ³who love Aboriginal people² (Lee 2011a). She has in
fact identified the driving force behind his making Aboriginal people the
ongoing subject of his art. In the film Ochre and Ink the mutual love and
respect between Zhou Xiaoping and Aboriginal people resonates. In his
artworks, he has actualised his feelings for Aboriginal people, and it
would seem that viewers are able to intuit these feelings in his art. He
is not an Aboriginal artist, and his art of course cannot be categorised
as Aboriginal art. Nonetheless his ³outsider² art representations of
Aboriginal people deserve critical attention. What impressed me on my
first encounter with one of his paintings was the strong sense of
physicality and energy conveyed in the Aboriginal people depicted, and
this was confirmed in other of his paintings that I subsequently saw. Last
year I examined all available images of his artworks, read existing
publications on his art, then interviewed him over a one-week period by
email. How his early training as an artist in China related to his later
mentorship by Aboriginal artists, and how his art techniques and
aesthetics have since developed presented itself as a starting point to
better understanding the dynamics of Zhou Xiaoping¹s art.

Continue reading at: http://www.artspacechina.com.au/?p=1106