Shenzhen Action: British-Chinese Action Art Encounters, jointly brought about by the Cultural and Education Section of the British Consulate-General and the prestigious European contemporary arts curator Jonas Stampe, in partnership with Shenzhen Middle School and Ya Ku Library Art Space, is going to be held in Shenzhen on the 3rd and 4th of December 2010. The influential UK contemporary artists Bill Drummond and Brian Connolly, as well as the Chinese avant-garde artist Yingmei Duan and independent artist Ge Ya will bring to the public live performance, presentations and public discussion on a 2-day span.
In recent years the number of action art festivals is on apparent rise globally, and for that matter, it takes no prisoner in different countries in Asia. Nevertheless, action art has nowadays become a novel and influential arts medium that attracts more and more participants like a magnet. Among them, a large proportion of the population is a younger generation of artists who are into “the art belongs to the future”. On this occasion, this British-Chinese Action Art Encounters could present to the public the interaction and comparison between ‘old’ and emerging action artists. The intellectual dialogue between Chinese female artists and western male artists are inspiring both on the academic and educational front. Action art is an avant-garde and experimental new form of art on the fringe and, what’s more, it appeals to people who understand it by seeing and feeling it emotionally and intellectually. It could also ignite and inspire our poetic understanding and learning about time and life. Every work of every artist presents in this event is non-renewable. It’s here and now. It’s ephemeral and special.
www.shenzhenaction.org
Programme
Part One: “Shenzhen Action: British-Chinese Action Art Encounters” Artists Talk
Time: 16:30 – 18:30, 3 December 2010
Venue: Auditorium, Shenzhen Middle School
Speakers: Brian Connolly, John Court
Host: Jonas Stampe
* Note: This is an exclusive event for teachers and students from Shenzhen Middle School.
Part Two：“Shenzhen Action: British-Chinese Action Art Encounters” Live Performance and Public Discussion
Time: 14:00 – 18:00, 4 December, 2010
Venue: Outdoors of Ya Ku Library Art Space, Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town
Artists: Brian Connolly, John Court, Yingmei Duan, Ge Ya
Host for public discussion: Jonas Stampe
Part Three：Guangzhou Live 2010
Time: 8 – 14 December 2010
Venue: 53 Art Museum, Guangzhou
UK artists: Brian Connolly, John Court, Alastair MacLennan and Bill Drummond
Program(TBC):
15:00-19:00, 8 December History Lesson—Brian Connolly
14:30-18:00, 9 December History Lesson—Brian Connolly
10:00-18:00, 11 December ArtTra—John Court
14:30-18:00, 11 December Making a bed—Bill Drummond
14:30-18:00, 11 December AT ATE—Alastair MacLennan
14:30-18:00, 12 December Making a bed— Bill Drummond
Artists Talk: Alastair MacLennan
19:30-21:00, 14 December, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts
Artists Profile
Brian Connolly， UK
Born in 1961, living and working in Belfast, Brian Connolly is a multi-media artist who's works often relate to ‘place' or context. He employs a wide range of artistic processes, including Performance, Public Sculpture, Installation Art, and collaborative projects.
He currently employs two distinct Performance strategies: The first is geared to entice ‘non-art' audiences and take the form of Market Stall intervention. Surreal humour is employed to question aspects of consumerism and global political and social ethics.
His other live works are often both place-specific & durational. These Performance works, generically entitled "Install-actions", are often visually elaborate and contain both political and spiritual metaphors.
John Court, UK
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John Court was born in the UK in 1969, and moved to Finland in 1997. Court creates large scale drawings, performance and video works that reflect issues related to learning. His work has been exhibited in the UK, Scandinavia and Berlin, and has been featured in several prestigious European events including the Venice Biennale [2005], and the Liverpool Biennale [2004].
In 1999 John court began a series of performances based on the ethics of the eight hour working day. Court uses his body in motion to express the disarrangement of his learning experience.
The performance space creates the immediacy of the juxtaposition between the self as body, the blank page and a page unread. In the everyday situation, time is invariably spent in flux between a variety of competing moods and emotions.
Time is spent, caught, wasted, killed, saved, lost, found; all these events are evident in performance works of John Court.
www.johncourt.info
Alastair Maclennan, UK (Guangzhou Live 2010)
Alastair MacLennan is one of the most prolific performance artists on the international scene. Being a member of the legendary performance art group Black Market International, MacLennan is further regarded as a central figure in this particular field of contemporary art. He is currently professor emeritus in Fíne Arts at the University of Ulster.
www.vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/maclennan
Bill Drummond, UK (Guangzhou Live 2010)
Born in 1953, living and working in London, Bill Drummond is a Scottish musician, media personality, record producer, writer and artist. Since leaving Liverpool College of Art in 1973 he has used various ways to investigate and converse with the cultural landscape. These investigations and conversations have found expression via the written word, pop music and actions.
Bill Drummond is best known as a co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde "pop group" The KLF and its 1990s "avant-art" media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994. He has had numerous one-man exhibitions in major UK regional galleries. Since 1998, all Drummond's work has been framed within the context of The Penkiln Burn. He produced a variety of different conceptual art projects, and helped to set-up The Foundry, an arts centre in Shoreditch, London.
His written words include the following books: The Manual (1989), Bad Wisdom (1996), 45 (2000), How To Be An Artist (2002), and The Wild Highway (2005).
www.penkilnburn.com
Yingmei Duan, China
Yingmei Duan begins as a painter in China. In the 90‘s she came to the "East Village", an Beijing artists' quarter and started to develop intimacy with the contemporary avant-garde. It was there and then that she attends the now famous performance "To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain". In 1998 Yingmei Duan moved to Germany, where she studied at the HBK Braunschweig with Marina Abramovic, Birgit Hein and Christoph Schlingensief.
As a performance artist, she has been involved in numerous national and international exhibitions, festivals and workshops. Her work is experimental and site-specific. The artist often realizes her performances in found places in indoor and outdoor space or creates spatial situations that seem necessary for her work. The temporal extension, spontaneity, and the inclusion of the audience play an important role. To create a close connection to everyday life, Yingmei Duan loves to work together with people of different cultures, ages and from different areas of life.
Also, the materials used by her are objects of our familiar surroundings: she builds her installations of paper, garbage, furniture, etc. The artist works with her own body as a means of expression. In vivid images unusual connections are established between the things: sometimes ironic, sometimes tragic, or even mystical. By the use of noise and light, intense atmospheres and moods are created.
Yingmei Duan’s performative concepts convey visions between dream and reality, personal fears and desires. Focusing on cultural backgrounds, social constraints and social relationships, her performances raise a variety of questions, whilst without giving a definitive answer.
Geya,China
Independent artist, founder of the International Art Exchange (IAE) Volunteer Organisation. She graduated from Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts and majored in oil painting in 2005. In 2006, she studied at the Mural Painting Department of Central Academy of Fine Arts and is currently is living in Beijing, China. Soon after 2008, Ge Ya sought after the creation of multimedia arts, video installations, performing and performance arts. In August 2009, she was invited to feature in the eighth unit of the 10th anniversary of the 2009 Open International Performance Art Festival curated by the Mexican curator MARTIN RENTERIA, as well as in "III Biennial" Chile June 2010.
Born in 1983, Ge Ya belongs to the younger generation of artists. She is particularly interested with the trail of personal growth and memory under different Chinese social contexts and, from the reorganization of memories, she manages to sort out the social value system and the impact of the material world as oppose to the growth of individuals, subsequently reflect on it. In a way of quasi-violence, her works compel the audience (performance participants) to reflect on the era of generation, growth, fun, sex, violence, politics, capital, social events, fashion, material, and ultimately in the form of visual, as well as auditory violence to depict the impact of materialism onto individuals, whilst discussing the difference between individual and public aesthetic memory. In the meantime, As the founder of the International Art Exchange (IAE) Volunteer Organisation, she’s been working with a great number of active curators in China and getting involved in assisting a variety of curation works which include: the 10th anniversary of the OPEN International Performance Art Festival, "The Historical Transformation of China's New Art Documentary Exhibition 2001-2009 ", “2010 Get It Louder "and so on. In addition, she runs "IAC work shop --- Voluntary Cooperation and Share Plan" to encourage cross-disciplinary arts and artists cooperative projects in a voluntary way.
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