This post is written by Marie-Ann, Veronika and Susanna who were jointly responsible for the event they describe.
Below are images from a student–teacher special event we held on Thursday 27 October to explore and celebrate the wonderful exhibition on contemporary Chinese art called A New Horizon. The paintings are fascinating and relevant to many different areas but we decided to focus on three specific disciplines: history, art and Chinese language. We wanted to make the event relevant to students but also provide a chance for teachers to gain some deeper insight into the artworks for their own teaching areas.
We were fortunate to find teachers from three different disciplines to talk about the exhibition:
- Nanette Bragg from Canberra Girls’ Grammar School (History)
- Rebecca Pryor from Hawker College (Visual Arts)
- Grace Chen from Narrabundah College (Languages)
All the teachers involved in the event came into the Museum on a number of occasions to have meetings with us and to research and view the exhibition, but all the hard work paid off with outstanding presentations and a great sense of excitement as we built to the day.
History
Nannette Bragg agreed to present a discussion on the historical relevance of the exhibition. She commented on how exciting it was to have these paintings here in Australia. In fact many of them had never left China before. They cover the era from the start of Modern China, post 1949, a history that is widely taught in schools, especially in Canberra. This time period is so fascinating and is such a vital era for our world today. As we planned, questions came immediately to mind: What events would they cover? What insights into the modern era would they provide? Would they focus on the personal or the political? The paintings became fascinating as historical documents and the trouble for Nanette was on how to narrow down which paintings to focus upon.
Using the old Chinese proverb ‘Consider the past and you shall know the future’ as the focus for her presentation Nanette provided a wonderful discussion of the key events revealed through the paintings and you can hear this talk here in the blog. The exhibition opens with ‘Group Photo at Tiananmen’ by Sun Zixi and this too was where Nanette began. This painting helps people to see the new vision for China with glimpses of Imperial China in the background. From here Nanette took us on a journey that ranged from the new industries for modern China depicted through the paintings, the impact of the Cultural Revolution and offered a great discussion on the amazing painting by Shen Jiawei called ‘Red Star Over China’.
Nanette‘s discussion certainly revealed the way the paintings explore China’s history and its place in the modern world. It was wonderful to have so many students and teachers attending the event and exciting to hear the way Nanette’s talk informed the audience as they viewed the paintings.
Listen to Nanette Bragg’s presentation:
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Visual arts
Rebecca Pryor gave an insightful, visually potent understanding of the exhibition. She elaborated, ‘there needs to be a balance of pedagogical foundations within confidence, permission and imagination for the students to have a positive experience of an exhibition’.
Rebecca demonstrated how to unpack or deconstruct an artwork by discussing a Sculpture by Liu Dashun and Jiang Xiaomei (a chair made out of Chinese coins suspended in air within a Perspex box). Rebecca’s ‘streams of consciousness’ responses were poetic and took the audience, both teachers and students, on an imaginative journey into the multiple possibilities from one artwork. Rebecca proved her teaching philosophy and methods has drawn out confidence in her students’ abilities to unlock artworks and to feel a sense of belonging in a gallery. Many of her students visited the exhibition that week and revisited, to attend this event to support their teacher! It was also wonderful to see Rebecca supported by her teaching colleagues and principal of Hawker College who also attended.
Listen to Rebecca Pryor’s presentation:
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Chinese language and culture
Grace Chen was the third and final speaker. She had been asked to talk about the exhibition through a lens of Chinese language and culture. Grace proceeded her warm and emotive presentation with the statement that one quarter of the world’s population speak Chinese which gave some context to just how significant the language and culture is. She also noted that ‘the Chinese character is a form of art’.
Grace spoke eloquently about the different eras that divide the exhibition. She divulged that the first era of New China was a political period that also brought great hardship to many so she did not deliberate over this time. She instead moved to the artwork ‘Tide by Zhan Jianjun, 1984’ which depicts a young farmer and which Grace believes, “shows strength, confidence and optimism in a new period of China’.
The New Century, noted Grace, is about society’s transformation and the emergence of modern China, encompassing a Western lifestyle and technology.
Grace spoke about the painting ‘Penetrating the Heart by Liu Qinghe’ and described it as ‘the colour of different emotions’ in a time where China is experiencing economic growth which makes the country prosperous but still creates problems in terms of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
At the conclusion Grace played a clip of a song, Fragrance of rice, that ‘represents a generation’. She concluded with the words ‘Hopefully in the future you join me to explore the Chinese world’.
In thanking Grace for her moving talk, Education Manager David Arnold noted that ‘language is not just about learning words; language is about understanding culture and people and the context and the history’.
This was a special and rich opportunity to experience such diverse perspectives about one exhibition and most of us walked away with our heads buzzing with theories, eras, art movements, language, music and further inspiration to educate.
Listen to Grace Chen’s presentation:
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