love at first sight

The gallery attendants are given lots of information to read before the show so they can talk to the visitors about the works. They told me that even after reading the information, there are still some works that they are unable to connect to. When they are giving group tour, they would swiftly direct them away from those works that they do not have know too much about or want to know too much about. I laughed loudly when I heard it.

I remember there are a few works that I do not enjoy looking at. So I stopped reading about what they are. When I show my friends around the gallery, it is a very selective tour.

Will you do something like that as well? Decide which works need to look into than other works by the first sight? Is it a not responsible art viewers just discard the works by the first look? What do you do when the works are not aesthetically pleasing to you? Does aesthetic play an important role when you view works?

about the gallery attendants

The gallery hired floor attendants at different levels. Their duties are guarding the works and explaining the works to the interested audience.

All of them are students at universities. Interesting enough, none of them majored in art history and theory, a course I originally thought a position like that would be equipped with. They are creative writing students, practicing artists, graphic designers, media arts and social art students. The logic behind hiring people from different background is that they can bring different input in interpreting the works and creating wider bonds between public and the guides.

Before the new exhibition starts, they were given information about the works to read. So in the first a few weeks of the opening of the show, you can see them all have a pile of papers stick to their pocket that they referenced to regularly.

They are required to let visitors know that they can explain the works to them if they want. This gallery is the first public gallery I have been to that the guards on the floor are not only there for security reasons. Lots of commercial galleries hire staff to discuss the works with the visitors for selling purpose. But public museums more often let the visitors see the works themselves. The wall text and catalogues are used to help the visitors.

What do you think of the way floor attendants are used in our gallery? Do you think it is necessary or unnecessary to have the floor attendants to explain the works to the visitors? How much help the visitors need to interpret the works? How can we measure it since the visitors are so dynamic?

The Spitbox

If I want to devote another entry to the gallery souvenirs, it has to be the spitbox.

 

Do you know what a spitbox is? I have never seen it in Sydney. There are a lot of them in China. I attached a picture of it here.

 

For a long time in China, many of the families can not afford to build houses with toilet. A few different houses will share one toilet. The toilet is outside the houses, and is within equal distance to each house that are sharing it. For elderly and children to use toilet at night, this becomes a problem. Many families buy spitbox to solve this problem. I had one at home when I was young. My loving mother would empty it for me every morning.

 

I have never seen it since I left China until recently. I saw a Chinese spitbox sitting on the top of the reception counter of the gallery. When I asked if it is for sale, the receptionist told me with a lovely smile that “Yes, $24.95 for one”, with her face almost touching the side of the spitbox. I was in awe. It is never a place that I would imagine it would be.

 

I was in more shock when seeing the different usages the gallery promote the spitbox to be: Ice bucket, flower vase, kitchen utensils holder, and the most inspiring one is fruit bowl.

 

Well, why not?

 

My previous experience with the spitbox prevents me associating it with any other usages. Now I look at the shape and height of it, I think to myself it may work well as a flower vase. A fruit bowl may be a little bit out of my reach, but I can see it can hold a lot.

 

I can't help wondering, does this run a parallel with what art can do: challenging people's assumptions and stereotype, change people's ways of seeing things. 

Now, I can not wait to see my mother's face when I tell her we can use the spitbox for food. It will be a fun thing to watch. 

 

 

The Badges

The gallery I am doing internship with has made badges with artworks printed on the top to be sold in the gallery shop. The artworks that are chosen to go on to the badges are quite unusual. There is one with a girl smoking with a fly (strangely enough, this badge went out most quickly). There is another one with several pieces of different animal meats hung together with a human body (this artwork is very scary). I guess, because the badges are quite small, the colour and composition of the artworks are more important than the images itself. (that is why some people look at it from distance and say how beautiful. When they look at it closely and will make a sound of Oh)

 

Because the gallery is about contemporary Chinese arts, the badges sold here remind me of Chairman Mao badges in China. One thing I need to say is that badges are never considered as an adornment in China. There are beautiful adornment pins to click on the scarf in China. But there are no badges like what we see here. Chairman Mao badge is an exception. It became very popular in China in the 1960s, during the cultural revolution.

 

“Badges carrying the image of Mao Zedong first appeared in China before liberation. They were produced sporadically until the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, when in late summer 1966 they began to be manufactured in massive quantities. From the summer of 1966 to the summer of 1969, factories, work units and army units across the country stamped out over several billion badges in tens of thousands of varieties.” (from Badges of Chairman Mao Zedong: http://museums.cnd.org/CR/old/maobadge/)

 

I remembered my father told me the story that when he was a teenager in the cultural revolution, he traded one Chairman Mao badge for one boat tickets to get out of a disaster place. People treated the badges like a currency for a period of time.

 

Because the gallery is about Contemporary Chinese arts, even small sourvenirs like badges in the gallery actually is carrying some connections with China. I think it is a very smart way to use something accessible in Australian culture but also bearing the meanings in China as a tool to promote the gallery.

 (P.S. thanks to the creator of the peacelodge blog who gave me idea for this entry)

 

About the Gallery Library

Most of the time at the gallery, I choose to work in the library. The company of the artworks, visitors, gallery attendants give me needed distraction when the time seems standing still. The books, hundreds and hundreds of books, remind me there are so much more in the world outside my life.

 

The library is dedicated to Chinese contemporary arts. It contains exhibition catalogues, artist biographies, art histories, surveys of Chinese contemporary art, and a variety of periodicals, most either in English or including English translations.

 

The library just finishes cataloging 2000 books. Apparently there are 8000 more in the warehouse nearby that need cataloguing, which will be a huge task for the education officer.

 

Contemporary arts can sometime be ambiguous and put the audience off. Reading books about the works that I am not too sure about make me go “that is what you are on about.”

 

If attending guided tours of the gallery is an introduction to the works on show, library is where you decipher the contemporary arts. 

My Internship Arrangement

I am doing my internship in a new public art museum in Sydney. I want to work in the public events area and luckily I got what I want in this museum.

 

The museum runs daily tours for the public. They also ran book club and exhibition related films once a month for the public.

 

My role here is to propose for more events that can promote the gallery to the wider audience and attract more people to come.

 

I am here two days a week: one week day and one weekend day.

 

Many of my time here are spent on researching for more ideas and the logistics of the events. Most of the time I worked in the library. With people coming and going, I found it more stimulating.

 

For the first a few weeks in the gallery, I used lots of my time studying on the artworks that are currently shown: the meaning behind the works, what kind of message it wants to convey etc. I think it gives me some guidance for the kind of public events that the gallery can run.

 

When I have the chance, I chat with the public audience to find out what they feel about the gallery, where they heard about it etc.

 

I think I need to do more on who is our audience and who the gallery wants to attract. They are sometimes different groups. It gets me in a little bit trouble. I will tell you how in my next blog.

 

a dumpling idea

I got the internship opportunity before I went back to China for a family visit. I was thinking a lot about the event idea for Chinese New Year when I was in China. Finally I got an idea which was possibly inspired by the big banquet there. Why not we do a dumpling demonstration at the gallery? Chinese New Year is about sumptuous food and family gathering. A dumpling demonstration matches this theme. Besides, dumplings are the food that lots of people here love to eat. Then I was thinking about how to make the event more engaging. I probably watched Master Chef in Australia for too long, the idea of unprofessional chef cooking got to me. Yes, instead of a demonstration, why not organize a professional chef to teach an art related celebrity to make dumplings? The celebrity can work as a draw card to attract people to come. I was happy about the idea.

Then I started to think about who to invite to do the show. I think the celebrity has to be a chatty and light-hearted person who can create a fun chemistry for the event. There I got some problem. Being an international student in Australia, I felt I do not know enough celebrity to make the choice. I know very little about the characters of the different celebrity and what audience they attract to.

I talked to the gallery manager about this idea. She likes it very much. We are in the process of identifying a right person for the job at moment.

From this experience, I felt I am out of the loop of the main stream Australian culture. This is always the feeling I have, even after being here for eight years. I guess the feeling of not belonging is the nature of the immigrants experience.

Watching more television and reading more newspaper are up to the schedule now. Fortunately, they are enjoyable things to do.