'Convergence' # 2, WithSpace Gallery, 798 Beijing March 2012 'The City & The City' - Contested Space A.P.T. Gallery, London May 2013
"There is a certain kind of freedom in exhibition practice that comes along with a purity of purpose; the strongest curatorial work often comes not from those with carte blanche and unlimited budgets to develop projects wild beyond the imagination, but rather from those who are acutely aware of and indeed revel in the restrictions of particular cultural contexts. " Robin Peckham, Randian - art and culture in China
Fion Gunn curated IRISH WAVE 2016: BIRTH OF A NATION in Beijing & Shanghai, March 2016 with a team of co-curators: Niamh Cunningham, Gail Ritchie, assistant curator Steve Chen
IRISH WAVE 2016 was supported by Culture Ireland and the Embassy of Ireland in China and Gunn curated it annually from 2009-16
Fion Gunn curated IRISH WAVE 2016: BIRTH OF A NATION in Beijing & Shanghai, March 2016 with a team of co-curators: Niamh Cunningham, Gail Ritchie, assistant curator Steve Chen
IRISH WAVE 2016 was supported by Culture Ireland and the Embassy of Ireland in China and Gunn curated it annually from 2009-16
CURATORIAL CV:
2016 ‘The Painted Thread’ Joy Pavillion, Mission Hills Art & Lifestyle, Beijing
2016 Lead Curator & participant in ‘Intimate Transgressions’, Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, Taipei (co-curator Leon Tsai)
2016 Lead Curator & participant in ‘Intimate Transgressions’, Hangzhou, China (co-curators Hu Yuanbo & Jiao Jian)
2016 IRISH WAVE – Beijing & Shanghai comprising 3 Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibitions at EARC Gallery & NING Space in 798, Beijing, Sanwei Art Center, Shanghai (co curators, Gail Ritchie, Niamh Cunningham, assistant curator Steve Chen)
2015 'Sailing to Byzantium' collaborative UK/Irish/Chinese exhibition at the Leyden Gallery London
2015 Lead Curator & participant in ‘Intimate Transgressions’, Inter Gallery, Beijing (co-curator Niamh Cunningham)
20165 Lead Curator & participant in ‘Intimate Transgressions’, WhiteBox, New York City (co-curator Juan Puntes)
2015 IRISH WAVE – Beijing & Shanghai comprising 3 Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibitions at Inter Gallery, 798 a,nd Don Yue Museum of Art Beijing and Sanwei Art Center, Shanghai (co curators, Niamh Cunningham, Brendan Jamison, assistant curator Mark Revels)
2014 IRISH WAVE – Beijing & Shanghai comprising Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibitions at 3C Creative Mall in 798, China Central Mall in GuoMao, Beijing and Loftoo Gallery, M50, Shanghai (co-curators Sean Campbell, Niamh Cunningham, Weiming Lee)
2013 IRISH WAVE – Beijing & Shanghai comprising 8 Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibitions at NuoArt Gallery & 3C Creative Mall in 798, Beijing, YCC Gallery & China Central Mall in GuoMao, Beijing, Shanghai University Gallery, Tushanwan Museum of Art (2 exhibitions) & Irish Centre in Shanghai (co-curators Sean Campbell, Gail Ritchie, Niamh Cunningham, Debbie Dawson, Zhuang Xiaowei & Wu Jun)
2012 'THE CITY & THE CITY - CONTESTED SPACE' at A.P.T Gallery, London as part of the Cultural Olympiad
2012 IRISH WAVE – Beijing & Shanghai comprising 6 Irish/Chinese collaborative exibitions (co-curators: Mary Mackey, Sean Campbell in association with Zheng Xuewu) at National Center for the Performing Arts, YCC Gallery, Yi Gallery, Siemens Art Space, 798, Beijing and the Shengling Gallery & Irish Centre Shanghai
2011 IRISH WAVE – Beijing comprising 4 Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibitions (curated in association with Zheng Xuewu)
Galleries: Siemens Art Space, 798, China Central Mall, YCC Gallery & Yi Gallery, Beijing
2010 Africa Art & Design Fair, Portico Gallery, W. Norwood, London
2011 'FROM HERE TO THERE' first Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibition in Ireland, Cork School of Music in association with Crawford College of Art & Design - CIT & Zheng Xuewu
2010 Art Cubes – Streatham Festival, Streatham, London
2010 IRISH WAVE – Beijing comprising 4 x Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibitions in assocaition with Zheng Xuewu
Galleries: Tsinghua Academy of Art & Craft, Yi Gallery, Public Exhibition Space at Wangsiying & SiNordic Art Space, Beijing
2009 ‘BIGsmall - Intimate Histories’ with co-curator Ray Murphy, first Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibition in UK, Nunnery Gallery-Bow Arts Trust, London
2009 'The City' & 'Our Books, Our Lives' first collaborative Irish/Chinese exhibitions in Beijing co=curated with Ray Murphy
Galleries: Tsinghua Academy of Art & Craft, SiNordic Art Space, Beijing
2007 'Through Irish Eyes' first group exhibition of Irish Artists in Beijing at Beijing Institute of Graphic Communications, Beijing
2016 ‘The Painted Thread’ Joy Pavillion, Mission Hills Art & Lifestyle, Beijing
2016 Lead Curator & participant in ‘Intimate Transgressions’, Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, Taipei (co-curator Leon Tsai)
2016 Lead Curator & participant in ‘Intimate Transgressions’, Hangzhou, China (co-curators Hu Yuanbo & Jiao Jian)
2016 IRISH WAVE – Beijing & Shanghai comprising 3 Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibitions at EARC Gallery & NING Space in 798, Beijing, Sanwei Art Center, Shanghai (co curators, Gail Ritchie, Niamh Cunningham, assistant curator Steve Chen)
2015 'Sailing to Byzantium' collaborative UK/Irish/Chinese exhibition at the Leyden Gallery London
2015 Lead Curator & participant in ‘Intimate Transgressions’, Inter Gallery, Beijing (co-curator Niamh Cunningham)
20165 Lead Curator & participant in ‘Intimate Transgressions’, WhiteBox, New York City (co-curator Juan Puntes)
2015 IRISH WAVE – Beijing & Shanghai comprising 3 Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibitions at Inter Gallery, 798 a,nd Don Yue Museum of Art Beijing and Sanwei Art Center, Shanghai (co curators, Niamh Cunningham, Brendan Jamison, assistant curator Mark Revels)
2014 IRISH WAVE – Beijing & Shanghai comprising Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibitions at 3C Creative Mall in 798, China Central Mall in GuoMao, Beijing and Loftoo Gallery, M50, Shanghai (co-curators Sean Campbell, Niamh Cunningham, Weiming Lee)
2013 IRISH WAVE – Beijing & Shanghai comprising 8 Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibitions at NuoArt Gallery & 3C Creative Mall in 798, Beijing, YCC Gallery & China Central Mall in GuoMao, Beijing, Shanghai University Gallery, Tushanwan Museum of Art (2 exhibitions) & Irish Centre in Shanghai (co-curators Sean Campbell, Gail Ritchie, Niamh Cunningham, Debbie Dawson, Zhuang Xiaowei & Wu Jun)
2012 'THE CITY & THE CITY - CONTESTED SPACE' at A.P.T Gallery, London as part of the Cultural Olympiad
2012 IRISH WAVE – Beijing & Shanghai comprising 6 Irish/Chinese collaborative exibitions (co-curators: Mary Mackey, Sean Campbell in association with Zheng Xuewu) at National Center for the Performing Arts, YCC Gallery, Yi Gallery, Siemens Art Space, 798, Beijing and the Shengling Gallery & Irish Centre Shanghai
2011 IRISH WAVE – Beijing comprising 4 Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibitions (curated in association with Zheng Xuewu)
Galleries: Siemens Art Space, 798, China Central Mall, YCC Gallery & Yi Gallery, Beijing
2010 Africa Art & Design Fair, Portico Gallery, W. Norwood, London
2011 'FROM HERE TO THERE' first Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibition in Ireland, Cork School of Music in association with Crawford College of Art & Design - CIT & Zheng Xuewu
2010 Art Cubes – Streatham Festival, Streatham, London
2010 IRISH WAVE – Beijing comprising 4 x Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibitions in assocaition with Zheng Xuewu
Galleries: Tsinghua Academy of Art & Craft, Yi Gallery, Public Exhibition Space at Wangsiying & SiNordic Art Space, Beijing
2009 ‘BIGsmall - Intimate Histories’ with co-curator Ray Murphy, first Irish/Chinese collaborative exhibition in UK, Nunnery Gallery-Bow Arts Trust, London
2009 'The City' & 'Our Books, Our Lives' first collaborative Irish/Chinese exhibitions in Beijing co=curated with Ray Murphy
Galleries: Tsinghua Academy of Art & Craft, SiNordic Art Space, Beijing
2007 'Through Irish Eyes' first group exhibition of Irish Artists in Beijing at Beijing Institute of Graphic Communications, Beijing
CURATORIAL APPROACH
I have included these texts on website to give insight into how I investigate themes and curate shows. This is just one example but is representative of my approach
‘THE CITY & THE CITY’ Contested Space
A.P.T. Gallery, Deptford Creek, London 3-20 May 2012
a collaborative, evolving multi-media exhibition by contemporary Irish, UK and Chinese artists who are women – first showing at the APT Gallery, London in May 2012 as part of the Cultural Olympiad.
Curated by Fion Gunn in association with Holly Robinson, Sarah Rubidge and Zhen Lin
‘We are all philosophers here where I am and we debate among many other things the question of where it is that we live. On that issue I am a liberal. I live in the interstice yes, but I live in both the city and the city’ China Miéville – The City & The City
So often do we refer to those societies which live in cities as ‘civilized’ that we betray our own innate feelings for what we consider superior or indeed ‘transcendent’. London as a city has been described as ‘a modern Babylon’ (Disraeli) and Galbraith felt that ‘The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.’ An unkind view perhaps, of city with such a long history of cultural and political prominence, the city in which many of these artists live.
The ‘City’ has long been seen and portrayed as a place of boundless potential and strident ambition. The description of Babel and its fall takes up just nine lines in the Old Testament, yet its image has proliferated in art ever since and its meaning remains hauntingly ambiguous. The ‘City’ for Socrates and Plato represented the paradigm/centre of civilisation, and thus the “world”, and the legacy of this way of thinking passed down through the Catholic Church over the centuries with the Pope’s annual sermon ‘Orbi et Urbi’. The ‘City’ is also a place to lose the self as Melville wrote ‘There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear—the city of London and the South Seas.’
However, for women in particular the city has always been a contested space – offering on the one hand a certain potential for economic independence, for greater personal freedom and social contacts while on the other the urban environment has been the source of danger and violence, economic exploitation and personal degradation.
As Alice Taylor writes in her report for ActionAid;
‘Urbanisation can bring new opportunities, particularly in relation to employment and participation in organised groups. However, it also brings many challenges. Across the world, women experience violence or the fear of violence on a daily basis, travelling to and from work, taking their children to schools and travelling to and from markets. Moreover, urban men and women experience violence differently. They also experience and perceive protection and safety differently. Analysing these differences is a central first step to guaranteeing women’s rights to freedom from violence or the threat of violence in urban areas.
Gender is a key dimension of diversity, inequality and power structures in the city and analysing gender impacts is central to informing programmes and policies that reflect women’s realities and to promoting women’s right to the city. A woman can
enjoy her right to the city, when she lives free from violence and the fear of violence, and free from rights violations that arise in the spaces where she lives and works.’
(‘Women and the City’ by Alice Taylor – Report for Action Aid).
Pam Carrolls’s work ‘Closed in the Open Position’ addresses this anxiety - the feeling of entrapment and powerlessness architecturally imposed.
As London gears up to the Olympic Games nowhere has this constant change been more evident than in the East End and the issue of contested space – priorities of residents and local businesses versus the national priorities, national design, national officialdom and an impending international influx. What sense of place will remain in the aftermath of the Games, how will the new be absorbed? And will the residents of the East End feel a sense of ownership for new developments or regard them as permanent ‘Tourist attractions’?
The artists in this exhibition are all engaged with the investigation of what a city represents and how people live within that representation. They share some common aspects which will resonate with city-dwellers around the world. Now that many of our cities have developed deadly micro-climates, their growth and development may well mark the beginning of the end for humanity, just as the growth of the first cities announced the birth of human ascendance in the world.
In his book ‘Invisible Cities’, Italo Calvino describes cities within cities, temporal cities, cities that are not what they seem, ordered and wild cities. As Venice is to Calvino, London is to us, constantly changing but always remaining a ‘place’. This sense of place is evident in all the participating artists’ work.
Equally for many people the ‘City’ is symbolised by its inhabitants, homogenous or heterogeneous, its story is written on the faces and bodies of its citizens. The human infrastructure governs its aesthetic, marking the landscape with its roads, ‘polluting’ the night sky with the lights of its nocturnal activities and consuming the world’s resources voraciously.
‘The City and The City’ engages with the experience, interpretation and vision of artists who are women and this thus the ‘authorial voice’ of the exhibition has a distinctive tone and modulation.
Some of the artists in this exhibition focus on the symbolic significance of cities – their image as ‘Mother’, their image as a place of intellectual and spiritual refuge, a place where a person can be reborn as someone else. Like the distant cities in renaissance paintings which promise a city of God – paradise. Others on the cartographies and environments which make the city what it is.
The artists present the notional ‘City’ and its contested spaces in diverse ways; Gayle Chong Kwan has continually explored the themes of how we form our sense of self and give shape to our identity, how we reveal or hide our personal and cultural belief systems, values and attitudes. Her work addresses the mapping our emotional and social histories, how we increase our insight into who we are and where we come from. She does this through the construction of landscapes (architectural) using waste products, creating theatrical installations which are then photographed and reworked. Her cities of discarded plastic bottles, orange peel and cigarette butts are transformed into technicolour urban vignettes.
All cities no matter how dirty or ugly when viewed from afar take on an idyllic aspect. We can’t see the filth and degradation from the distance we see only the skyline, the gently modulated colours and windows glinting gold. Even more so at night, when lit, no matter how fitfully, we perceive a promise of hustle and bustle, excitement and novelty – an escape from the boring and mundane.
Fiona Creagh’s ‘Still Moving’ which describes the centre of Cork a small Irish City has a twinkling, dreamlike charm – the night-time city which hypnotizes us all.
Chong Kwan’s work could be said to reverse this process but her take on the ‘idyllic city’ is not a million miles aesthetically from the hauntingly beautiful ‘Jerusalem’ portrayed in the 15th century by Rogier Van der Weyden in his ‘Crucifixtion’ (triptych) or his ‘Virgin visited by St Luke’.
Meanwhile filmmaker Jane Clegg’s video ‘Dancing in the City’ engages with the realities of how ordinary Chinese people engage with their communal urban green spaces and the pleasure derived from these oases of green which punctuate the relentless urbanity of Beijing.
Our cities express all that to which we aspire; architects have long been able to express the underlying values of their societies while often remaining unaware of the implications. We can have a fairly clear idea of what fascism aims to accomplish by looking at the city architecture of Nazi Germany or mad dictatorship when we see the palace of Ceaucescu. Others see the city as a descent into the underworld, a confirmation of the visions of Hieronymous Bosch or Dante or the Chapman Brothers. How often have artists and writers used the ‘City’ to represent all that is negative in humanity whether it is Gotham City or alienated urban scenes of Edward Hopper? And how often have we the viewers responded with recognition?
Raine Hozier Byrne’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ is a tense visualisation of an urban environment framed in high rise windows.
In the contemporary world European and Chinese nations face similar urban problems, despite the difference of scale, namely how do we keep our ‘city landscapes’ from turning into centres of degradation, swamped with cars, suffocating with polluted air and teeming with a transient population that loses all sense of itself. How do we protect our city dwellers from crime and violence. For European and Chinese immigrants our home cultures have followed the path of the cities to which we emigrated in the past and increasingly have to deal with new patterns of immigration into their own communities. The participants in this exhibition reflect the complexity of all these interwoven lives and aspirations.
‘The City & The City’ refers back to the home cultures of participating artists and ambiguity of the immigrant experience of both the Chinese and Europeans. The duality also refers to the different worlds we inhabit while occupying the same physical space – one that is increasingly contested as population growth exacerbates the competition for resources.
A number of the artists participating in this exhibition are UK residents or resident of other European countries but from diverse backgrounds - European and Chinese and this has added another layer of significance to the exhibition. Gao Yuan, whose work is equally informed by her exploration of 19th century French painting and by her experience of living in the midst of Beijing’s on-going building site, was brought up in New York, educated in Japan and lived for many years in New York before settling in mainland China.
Gayle Chong Kwan’s upbringing in Scotland was informed by her father’s Chinese Mauritian origins which also encompassed an important French- Mauritian influence. Her work is often inspired by French philosophy and the exploration of cultural displacement. She now lives and works in London’s East End and her work is an eloquent commentary on local regeneration and degeneration.
Chen Mei Tsen who is Taiwanese like Gao Yuan has lived in Paris for over 20 years and celebrates the ‘City’ with her web-like renditions of urban maps – Taiwan, Paris, Singapore and many others. Chen’s experience of change, transition, crisscrossing cultures, languages and climates has given her an intense insight into the ever changing, densely fragile urban environment.
Until recently, many European nations and China were predominantly rural countries, the vast majority of Chinese and Irish people lived in great poverty and the beauty of the pastoral landscape was one of their few consolations. Even so, with many nations pouring out their emigrants into London, New York, Paris, San Francisco, many soon learnt what it was like to live in the midst of sprawling multicultural cities and for good or ill, many remained and made their peace with imperfection.
Fion Gunn is herself an immigrant in London. Brought up and educated in Ireland she subsequently went to France where she lived for 4 years and spends a significant amount of time in Paris and Beijing every year. Her life and work have always been centred around urban living and her own practice has been shaped by the environment and the multiplicity of cities.
In considering contemporary society the exploration of the city is an interesting way to discuss technologies’ effect on place. For example, before visiting a city like New York we may have preconceived notions about what it will be like and the type of experiences it will offer - having seen countless images and footage of the city from Hollywood, in the news or on the internet, New York already feels like a familiar place.
Technology affects the remote; it brings it nearer (Auge, 1995). New York is transient just like any city; people walking, constantly moving, rushing from place to place. Its systematic grid, readable and simple, defies all expectations and whether it is merely and the flows of people, traffic and water within it along with a tourist’s experience or not, the grid pulls people in, not into a simplified city experience but into an encapsulating bubble whose streets can be walked endlessly. The technology built into modern cities impacts men and women differently and urban planning & architecture has not yet addresses these different needs and different desires.
In London we walk past block after block of offices, shops, residential buildings and then we stumble upon Westminster, the South bank or St. Paul’s cathedral and each time they have impact on us; we experience iconic resonance we are brought face to face with the remains of London’s past, the physical history of people we have never known but yet often feels more intimate than the roads and high tech structures created by our contemporaries.
Technology can bring those resonances to the surface. Sarah Rubidge’s work explores the interconnections between past and present that are embedded in the fabric of the city, the sensate presence of environments. She works extensively with digital media, allowing it to reveal what is hidden from sight.
Her art intervention for this exhibition will reference the intricate network/s of the ‘journeyings’ that have formed the overlapping narratives that form the city along with the feelings and sensations that the city invokes. She constructs the conditions for a journey through the gallery, traces of the rivers that lie beneath the surface of the city emerging from ‘Streamlines’ a multiscreen digital installation and flowing across the floors and walls of the gallery to create hints of a cartography of the intersecting histories that make the city. This web-like map interacts with the intricacy of Chen Mei Tsen’s drawings while also addressing the senses subliminally, invoking the feelings and sensations of city life.
Jane Jacobs, the American urban activist writer on cities was dismissed by male urban planners in New York and ‘pondering why men and women’s voices were heard differently on the subject of city building, she noted matter-of-factly that women think about things close to home—street, neighbourhood and community. They more easily recognize the big difference small things can make. Men think big, national and global. They are top-down oriented.
This contrast was played out in a very public way when developer James Rouse and Jane Jacobs appeared together in 1980 at the Boston Great Cities Conference. Rouse spoke first on the question of whether cities should be developed with big plans and inspiring visions or modest steps and incremental change, recalling the words of Daniel Burnham, he said "Make no little plans, for they have no magic to stir men’s blood."
Jacobs followed, beginning, "Funny, big plans never stirred women’s blood. Women have always been willing to consider little plans." The applause was deafening.
Rouse argued that big plans could give the world exciting new communities. Jacobs said that ‘big plans lead to big mistakes’ and stifle imagination and alternatives. Rouse claimed that big plans avoid wasteful haphazard piecemeal development. Jacobs saw big plans as routinizers, formulas, smotherers.’ (Roberta Brandon Gratz)
Thinking of these issues which surround scale and ambition, Holly Robinson’s large scale suspended construction represents a cityscape built from delicate papers, swaying gently and collecting dust throughout the exhibition.
Her sculpture evokes the impact of the forthcoming Olympics and of its architecture on London and pose questions about what will become of the Olympic site when the event is over. Will the Olympic Park be put to good use within the London community or in years to come? Or, will it be a desolate, forgotten wasteland?
Will it become a city that is not always visible but is always present?
The ‘City’ interpreted in this exhibition is multi-faceted and multi-media. It is a Babel of meaning and aesthetics. It achieves harmony through dissonance and unity through diversity.
As an exhibition The City & The City has been designed to evolve over time with a changing line-up of artists to enable it to respond to each exhibition venue and to each area or country in which it is exhibited.
The underlying curatorial approach, which is generative, responsive, collective, and permeated with the authorial voice of the women in the city, remains a constant.
Fion Gunn 2012
I have included these texts on website to give insight into how I investigate themes and curate shows. This is just one example but is representative of my approach
‘THE CITY & THE CITY’ Contested Space
A.P.T. Gallery, Deptford Creek, London 3-20 May 2012
a collaborative, evolving multi-media exhibition by contemporary Irish, UK and Chinese artists who are women – first showing at the APT Gallery, London in May 2012 as part of the Cultural Olympiad.
Curated by Fion Gunn in association with Holly Robinson, Sarah Rubidge and Zhen Lin
‘We are all philosophers here where I am and we debate among many other things the question of where it is that we live. On that issue I am a liberal. I live in the interstice yes, but I live in both the city and the city’ China Miéville – The City & The City
So often do we refer to those societies which live in cities as ‘civilized’ that we betray our own innate feelings for what we consider superior or indeed ‘transcendent’. London as a city has been described as ‘a modern Babylon’ (Disraeli) and Galbraith felt that ‘The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.’ An unkind view perhaps, of city with such a long history of cultural and political prominence, the city in which many of these artists live.
The ‘City’ has long been seen and portrayed as a place of boundless potential and strident ambition. The description of Babel and its fall takes up just nine lines in the Old Testament, yet its image has proliferated in art ever since and its meaning remains hauntingly ambiguous. The ‘City’ for Socrates and Plato represented the paradigm/centre of civilisation, and thus the “world”, and the legacy of this way of thinking passed down through the Catholic Church over the centuries with the Pope’s annual sermon ‘Orbi et Urbi’. The ‘City’ is also a place to lose the self as Melville wrote ‘There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear—the city of London and the South Seas.’
However, for women in particular the city has always been a contested space – offering on the one hand a certain potential for economic independence, for greater personal freedom and social contacts while on the other the urban environment has been the source of danger and violence, economic exploitation and personal degradation.
As Alice Taylor writes in her report for ActionAid;
‘Urbanisation can bring new opportunities, particularly in relation to employment and participation in organised groups. However, it also brings many challenges. Across the world, women experience violence or the fear of violence on a daily basis, travelling to and from work, taking their children to schools and travelling to and from markets. Moreover, urban men and women experience violence differently. They also experience and perceive protection and safety differently. Analysing these differences is a central first step to guaranteeing women’s rights to freedom from violence or the threat of violence in urban areas.
Gender is a key dimension of diversity, inequality and power structures in the city and analysing gender impacts is central to informing programmes and policies that reflect women’s realities and to promoting women’s right to the city. A woman can
enjoy her right to the city, when she lives free from violence and the fear of violence, and free from rights violations that arise in the spaces where she lives and works.’
(‘Women and the City’ by Alice Taylor – Report for Action Aid).
Pam Carrolls’s work ‘Closed in the Open Position’ addresses this anxiety - the feeling of entrapment and powerlessness architecturally imposed.
As London gears up to the Olympic Games nowhere has this constant change been more evident than in the East End and the issue of contested space – priorities of residents and local businesses versus the national priorities, national design, national officialdom and an impending international influx. What sense of place will remain in the aftermath of the Games, how will the new be absorbed? And will the residents of the East End feel a sense of ownership for new developments or regard them as permanent ‘Tourist attractions’?
The artists in this exhibition are all engaged with the investigation of what a city represents and how people live within that representation. They share some common aspects which will resonate with city-dwellers around the world. Now that many of our cities have developed deadly micro-climates, their growth and development may well mark the beginning of the end for humanity, just as the growth of the first cities announced the birth of human ascendance in the world.
In his book ‘Invisible Cities’, Italo Calvino describes cities within cities, temporal cities, cities that are not what they seem, ordered and wild cities. As Venice is to Calvino, London is to us, constantly changing but always remaining a ‘place’. This sense of place is evident in all the participating artists’ work.
Equally for many people the ‘City’ is symbolised by its inhabitants, homogenous or heterogeneous, its story is written on the faces and bodies of its citizens. The human infrastructure governs its aesthetic, marking the landscape with its roads, ‘polluting’ the night sky with the lights of its nocturnal activities and consuming the world’s resources voraciously.
‘The City and The City’ engages with the experience, interpretation and vision of artists who are women and this thus the ‘authorial voice’ of the exhibition has a distinctive tone and modulation.
Some of the artists in this exhibition focus on the symbolic significance of cities – their image as ‘Mother’, their image as a place of intellectual and spiritual refuge, a place where a person can be reborn as someone else. Like the distant cities in renaissance paintings which promise a city of God – paradise. Others on the cartographies and environments which make the city what it is.
The artists present the notional ‘City’ and its contested spaces in diverse ways; Gayle Chong Kwan has continually explored the themes of how we form our sense of self and give shape to our identity, how we reveal or hide our personal and cultural belief systems, values and attitudes. Her work addresses the mapping our emotional and social histories, how we increase our insight into who we are and where we come from. She does this through the construction of landscapes (architectural) using waste products, creating theatrical installations which are then photographed and reworked. Her cities of discarded plastic bottles, orange peel and cigarette butts are transformed into technicolour urban vignettes.
All cities no matter how dirty or ugly when viewed from afar take on an idyllic aspect. We can’t see the filth and degradation from the distance we see only the skyline, the gently modulated colours and windows glinting gold. Even more so at night, when lit, no matter how fitfully, we perceive a promise of hustle and bustle, excitement and novelty – an escape from the boring and mundane.
Fiona Creagh’s ‘Still Moving’ which describes the centre of Cork a small Irish City has a twinkling, dreamlike charm – the night-time city which hypnotizes us all.
Chong Kwan’s work could be said to reverse this process but her take on the ‘idyllic city’ is not a million miles aesthetically from the hauntingly beautiful ‘Jerusalem’ portrayed in the 15th century by Rogier Van der Weyden in his ‘Crucifixtion’ (triptych) or his ‘Virgin visited by St Luke’.
Meanwhile filmmaker Jane Clegg’s video ‘Dancing in the City’ engages with the realities of how ordinary Chinese people engage with their communal urban green spaces and the pleasure derived from these oases of green which punctuate the relentless urbanity of Beijing.
Our cities express all that to which we aspire; architects have long been able to express the underlying values of their societies while often remaining unaware of the implications. We can have a fairly clear idea of what fascism aims to accomplish by looking at the city architecture of Nazi Germany or mad dictatorship when we see the palace of Ceaucescu. Others see the city as a descent into the underworld, a confirmation of the visions of Hieronymous Bosch or Dante or the Chapman Brothers. How often have artists and writers used the ‘City’ to represent all that is negative in humanity whether it is Gotham City or alienated urban scenes of Edward Hopper? And how often have we the viewers responded with recognition?
Raine Hozier Byrne’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ is a tense visualisation of an urban environment framed in high rise windows.
In the contemporary world European and Chinese nations face similar urban problems, despite the difference of scale, namely how do we keep our ‘city landscapes’ from turning into centres of degradation, swamped with cars, suffocating with polluted air and teeming with a transient population that loses all sense of itself. How do we protect our city dwellers from crime and violence. For European and Chinese immigrants our home cultures have followed the path of the cities to which we emigrated in the past and increasingly have to deal with new patterns of immigration into their own communities. The participants in this exhibition reflect the complexity of all these interwoven lives and aspirations.
‘The City & The City’ refers back to the home cultures of participating artists and ambiguity of the immigrant experience of both the Chinese and Europeans. The duality also refers to the different worlds we inhabit while occupying the same physical space – one that is increasingly contested as population growth exacerbates the competition for resources.
A number of the artists participating in this exhibition are UK residents or resident of other European countries but from diverse backgrounds - European and Chinese and this has added another layer of significance to the exhibition. Gao Yuan, whose work is equally informed by her exploration of 19th century French painting and by her experience of living in the midst of Beijing’s on-going building site, was brought up in New York, educated in Japan and lived for many years in New York before settling in mainland China.
Gayle Chong Kwan’s upbringing in Scotland was informed by her father’s Chinese Mauritian origins which also encompassed an important French- Mauritian influence. Her work is often inspired by French philosophy and the exploration of cultural displacement. She now lives and works in London’s East End and her work is an eloquent commentary on local regeneration and degeneration.
Chen Mei Tsen who is Taiwanese like Gao Yuan has lived in Paris for over 20 years and celebrates the ‘City’ with her web-like renditions of urban maps – Taiwan, Paris, Singapore and many others. Chen’s experience of change, transition, crisscrossing cultures, languages and climates has given her an intense insight into the ever changing, densely fragile urban environment.
Until recently, many European nations and China were predominantly rural countries, the vast majority of Chinese and Irish people lived in great poverty and the beauty of the pastoral landscape was one of their few consolations. Even so, with many nations pouring out their emigrants into London, New York, Paris, San Francisco, many soon learnt what it was like to live in the midst of sprawling multicultural cities and for good or ill, many remained and made their peace with imperfection.
Fion Gunn is herself an immigrant in London. Brought up and educated in Ireland she subsequently went to France where she lived for 4 years and spends a significant amount of time in Paris and Beijing every year. Her life and work have always been centred around urban living and her own practice has been shaped by the environment and the multiplicity of cities.
In considering contemporary society the exploration of the city is an interesting way to discuss technologies’ effect on place. For example, before visiting a city like New York we may have preconceived notions about what it will be like and the type of experiences it will offer - having seen countless images and footage of the city from Hollywood, in the news or on the internet, New York already feels like a familiar place.
Technology affects the remote; it brings it nearer (Auge, 1995). New York is transient just like any city; people walking, constantly moving, rushing from place to place. Its systematic grid, readable and simple, defies all expectations and whether it is merely and the flows of people, traffic and water within it along with a tourist’s experience or not, the grid pulls people in, not into a simplified city experience but into an encapsulating bubble whose streets can be walked endlessly. The technology built into modern cities impacts men and women differently and urban planning & architecture has not yet addresses these different needs and different desires.
In London we walk past block after block of offices, shops, residential buildings and then we stumble upon Westminster, the South bank or St. Paul’s cathedral and each time they have impact on us; we experience iconic resonance we are brought face to face with the remains of London’s past, the physical history of people we have never known but yet often feels more intimate than the roads and high tech structures created by our contemporaries.
Technology can bring those resonances to the surface. Sarah Rubidge’s work explores the interconnections between past and present that are embedded in the fabric of the city, the sensate presence of environments. She works extensively with digital media, allowing it to reveal what is hidden from sight.
Her art intervention for this exhibition will reference the intricate network/s of the ‘journeyings’ that have formed the overlapping narratives that form the city along with the feelings and sensations that the city invokes. She constructs the conditions for a journey through the gallery, traces of the rivers that lie beneath the surface of the city emerging from ‘Streamlines’ a multiscreen digital installation and flowing across the floors and walls of the gallery to create hints of a cartography of the intersecting histories that make the city. This web-like map interacts with the intricacy of Chen Mei Tsen’s drawings while also addressing the senses subliminally, invoking the feelings and sensations of city life.
Jane Jacobs, the American urban activist writer on cities was dismissed by male urban planners in New York and ‘pondering why men and women’s voices were heard differently on the subject of city building, she noted matter-of-factly that women think about things close to home—street, neighbourhood and community. They more easily recognize the big difference small things can make. Men think big, national and global. They are top-down oriented.
This contrast was played out in a very public way when developer James Rouse and Jane Jacobs appeared together in 1980 at the Boston Great Cities Conference. Rouse spoke first on the question of whether cities should be developed with big plans and inspiring visions or modest steps and incremental change, recalling the words of Daniel Burnham, he said "Make no little plans, for they have no magic to stir men’s blood."
Jacobs followed, beginning, "Funny, big plans never stirred women’s blood. Women have always been willing to consider little plans." The applause was deafening.
Rouse argued that big plans could give the world exciting new communities. Jacobs said that ‘big plans lead to big mistakes’ and stifle imagination and alternatives. Rouse claimed that big plans avoid wasteful haphazard piecemeal development. Jacobs saw big plans as routinizers, formulas, smotherers.’ (Roberta Brandon Gratz)
Thinking of these issues which surround scale and ambition, Holly Robinson’s large scale suspended construction represents a cityscape built from delicate papers, swaying gently and collecting dust throughout the exhibition.
Her sculpture evokes the impact of the forthcoming Olympics and of its architecture on London and pose questions about what will become of the Olympic site when the event is over. Will the Olympic Park be put to good use within the London community or in years to come? Or, will it be a desolate, forgotten wasteland?
Will it become a city that is not always visible but is always present?
The ‘City’ interpreted in this exhibition is multi-faceted and multi-media. It is a Babel of meaning and aesthetics. It achieves harmony through dissonance and unity through diversity.
As an exhibition The City & The City has been designed to evolve over time with a changing line-up of artists to enable it to respond to each exhibition venue and to each area or country in which it is exhibited.
The underlying curatorial approach, which is generative, responsive, collective, and permeated with the authorial voice of the women in the city, remains a constant.
Fion Gunn 2012