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.