Artspace

Overview

Unfolding Ground was an abstract translation of China's urban landscape from the perspective of a partial outsider as a recent tourist and artist-in-residence. The installation was made from a series of fragmented visual metaphors to reflect the complexity of navigating an (un)familiar cultural landscape in a transient mode. Images of urban geography explored through the language of geometric abstraction adopt photography as an expanded painting tool. The documentation of private and public spaces in Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai were displayed as a large-scale concertina book. Intervening the architecture of the gallery, the formation of the book guided the viewer through a maze of unravelling pages.

The artist would like to thank Simon Killalea, Paul Ogier, Andrew Swan and Cecilia Tong for their assistance. Unfolding Ground has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.