RAS LECTURE
Tuesday 22nd November, 2011 at 7:00 p.m.
Tavern, Radisson Plaza Xingguo Hotel 78 Xing Guo Road,Shanghai
兴国宾馆上海市兴国路78号
PAUL GLADSTON
CONTEMPORARY ART IN SHANGHAI:
Conversations with Seven Chinese Artists
During the last three decades contemporary Chinese art has become increasingly prominent on the international stage. However, despite its growing international profile, relatively little attention has been paid to the specific social, political and cultural circumstances in relation to which contemporary Chinese art has been produced and received inside the People’s Republic of China, particularly with regard to regional and localized contexts outside the Chinese capital Beijing. This lecture goes some way to addressing that relative lack of attention by discussing a series of in-depth conversations conducted by Paul Gladston with seven Chinese artists living and working in or close to the city of Shanghai between 2007 and 2009. As the conversations show, while contemporary art in and around Shanghai conforms to many of the established conventions of a now internationalized contemporary artworld, it is also informed by strongly held feelings of national and local cultural identity as well as an acute localized awareness of the changing circumstances that have taken place both within and outside the People’s Republic of China as part of globalization. Under discussion here are conversations with the artists Yu Youhan, Liang Shaoji, Ding Yi, Yang Fudong, Song Tao, Ji Weiyu and Zhang Ding. All of the conversations discussed in this lecture are included in the recently published book by Paul Gladston, Contemporary Art in Shanghai: Conversations with Seven Chinese Artists (Blue Kingfisher/Timezone 8).
Paul Gladston is Associate Professor of Critical Theory and Visual Culture in the Department of Culture, Film and Media at the University of Nottingham. Between 2005 and 2010, he was seconded to the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China as the inaugural head of the Department of International Communications and director of the Institute of Comparative Cultural Studies. He has written extensively on the subject of contemporary Chinese art and contemporary Chinese art theory for academic journals and art magazines including Modern China Studies, Yishu, Tsinghua Arts, Eyeline, Art Review, Artworld, Contemporary Art and Investment, Wink and Broadsheet. His recent book length publications include the monograph Art History after Deconstruction (Magnolia, 2005), an edited collection of essays, China and Other Spaces (CCCP, 2009) and an edited collection of conversations, Contemporary Art in Shanghai: Conversations with Seven Chinese Artists (Blue Kingfisher/Timezone 8, 2011). He is currently preparing a monograph entitled Avant-Garde Chinese Art Groups and Associations of the 1970s and 1980s for publication by Intellect as well as, in collaboration with Katie Hill and Chris Smith, a guest edited edition of The Journal of
Contemporary Art Practice with the theme ‘Contemporary Chinese Art and Criticality’.
Entrance: RMB 30.00 (RAS members) and RMB 80.00 (non-members) those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to the RAS Lecture. Membership applications and membership renewals will be available at these events.
RSVP: to RAS Bookings at: bookings@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn