Art is inherently political, and under times of unrest and constraints on our freedom of speech, it’s introspective to look back on artwork created under periods of national struggle and systemic change. The Mayor Gallery does just this with Celebrating 100 Years, the final instalment of their 3-part exhibition series, this time presenting artists from Asia and Central Europe.
The gallery, located in Bury Street displays the artworks of Tadaaki Kuwayama, Aiko Miyawaki, Key Hiraga, Jiang Dahai, Li Huasheng, Li Jin and the Luo Brothers alongside Eastern European artists from Slovakia and Hungary. Combining their respective cultural practices and traditions, each artists’ works are influenced by the West, either by their involvement with their respective country’s political affairs or through the artist’s travels.
Sitting by the window display of the gallery is the Luo Brothers’ World Famous Brands (Television!), a polychromed fibreglass statue of a baby perched on a TV with a cylindrical speaker. It shone in the Spring sunlight, the baby a nostalgic symbol in Chinese advertisements. To the Luo Brothers, this is the image of contemporary China. Pioneering Pop Art in the country, the family trio incorporates material possessions and adopts figures in Chinese culture into installations and paintings. Symbolising the Western world with burgers, cans of soda and televisions, their work mixes East Asian traditions and dips them in gold to reflect commercialisation and rapid socio-economic changes in China.
Painting an industrialised Japan is Tadaaki Kuwayama’s work. He was inspired by the Minimalists movement in an era of Abstract Expressionism and traditional Japanese techniques. Kuwayama’s painting titled TK8742 1/2-61, is red with silver leaf, glimmering on the bottom of the canvas and obscured with dripping red pigment. His work feels manufactured, as he avoided incorporating Japanese art techniques and left no evidence of human contact on the canvas. Kuwayama’s art is reminiscent of machine-made production, perhaps to reflect Japan’s own transition into mass manufacturing and political unrest in the 1960s.
At the front of the gallery stood Aiko Miyawaki’s 2-dimensional piece, Untitled. Created in 1961, shortly before her interest in sculpture, the Japanese artist often worked with wooden boxes and marble powder, using a knife to etch shapes onto the canvas-like piece. Influenced by her travels across Europe, her practice largely focused on transformation. It’s evidenced by her innovative use of unconventional materials throughout her career. But despite the irregularities of change, Miyawaki’s work felt uniform, characterised by white ridges that cast identical shadows across the box. Completely in white, the piece encourages you to inspect its details.
With an emphasis on an artist’s creative practices rather than the painting itself, Li Huasheng’s work comes to mind. Inspired by Chinese calligraphy and penmanship, Huasheng’s piece, 0546, uses ink on pen, horizontal and vertical lines overlapping on a strip of paper. One of China’s most iconic landscape artists, Huasheng’s transition into ink and process-focused art came after visiting Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. Huasheng holds an ink pen with the precision of a seasoned painter, the straight lines a reflection of his serene state of mind and regulated qi energy. Upon closer look, each line fell into place and filled the paper, with slight bends and curves from the wetness of ink.
Transformation seemed like a central theme among the artworks found in the gallery, which isn’t far-fetched given the rapid developments happening in the artists’ external world. Take Jiang Dahai’s Obscuration (Red), an acrylic painting that blends burgundy with ruby red. A French-Chinese artist, Dahai’s work is largely inspired by clouds, the hazy red colours resembling wisps in a dark sky. It’s rhythmic and unconventional, likely resembling his own search for identity from living across the two continents.
Moving past the more abstract pieces was Key Hiraga’s doodle-like oil painting, Window I. Growing up in a war-stricken Japan, Hiraga’s artwork is vulgar and absurd, opposing the dreariness and strict rule as the country finds its bearings post-war. The painting is divided in 8 squares, a recurring shape in Hiraga’s work often to illustrate windows. One window painted yellow, another with abstract characters or rounded shapes that overlap with phallic symbols, and another window left bare. Like iconic artist Yoshitomo Nara, Key Hiraga breaks the mould of modesty and restricted self-expression in Japan with his artwork, albeit through disfigured bodies and concealed genitals snuck into his work.
Echoing this vulgarity is Li Jin’s Daily Pleasure Series, two seemingly traditional Chinese ink drawings titled Mother and Son and The Melons are Ripe. A documentation of first-hand experiences, the two portraits are dreamlike and hazy while illustrating the mundanity of contemporary Chinese life. In Mother and Son, an illustration of a voluptuous worm on a branch, assumed to be the mother, with her son in tow, smaller and illustrated underneath the branch. The Melons are Ripe emphasises the figure’s curves, barely concealing breasts and genitals that peeks off the canvas. With his playful approach, Li Jin’s subjects are often men and women in states of undress that evokes a sensuality that feels out of place on rice paper.
While each artists’ practices ranged from wildly different movements and techniques, they all interestingly portrayed the same struggle of finding stability in periods of liberalisation and rapid changes. From documenting their journey of self-discovery, experimenting on mediums and symbols like food and sexuality, each artwork is a response to a war, socio-economic changes and a country’s sudden collapse in societal norms that inevitably changes its people.
Celebrating 100 Years: Asia and Central Europe is running until 10 April, and is free to enter. Check out The Mayor Gallery for more details.