Henry Fok Pearl Jubilee College

Cai Jin is one of the few women artists whose paintings
were included in ground–breaking exhibitions promoting
contemporary Chinese art in the 1990s, such as China’s New
Art, Post-1989 and Mao Goes Pop: China post-1989.1 Her
works have also regularly featured in exhibitions in China,
Australia and Hong Kong devoted specifically to the art of
Chinese women, many of which have been framed in terms
of a gender-specific approach to art-making.2 These include
Women’s Approach to Contemporary Art (1995), Woman
and Flower (1997), Women’s Work (2008) and, most recently,
Nu Yishu Series V: Viriditas (2011).3 Nu Yishu translates as
‘female art’ while viriditas is glossed in the exhibition’s
media release as ‘lushness and vitality…freshness, fertility,
fecundity, fruitfulness, verdure, or growth.’4 This title,
like that of the earlier Woman and Flower exhibition, points
to a “botanical turn” that is apparent in the work of women
artists from China. What does this tendency reveal about
contemporary Chinese notions of the feminine?5 Do such
works simply participate in the age-old association of
femininity with nature or should they be viewed as part of a
feminist project?

We present an analysis of work completion couched in terms of an effective completion decision identified by its characteristic contents and functions. In our proposal, the artist’s completion decision can take a number of distinct forms, including a procedural variety referred to as an ‘extended completion decision’. In the second part of this essay, we address ourselves to the question of whether collaborative art-making projects stand as counterexamples to the proposed analysis of work completion.

This paper takes as its starting point Vivien Johnson’s claim that the paintings of Judy Watson (1959-) privilege emotion and resist a ‘cognitive bias’ common to a wide range of discourses on Aboriginal painting, tradition-based and otherwise. This claim is tested through a close reading of four works — the guardians (1986-1988), internal landscape (1994), heartland (1991) and shoal (1998) — which, it is argued, frame embodied identity and spirituality in Aboriginal and feminine-specific terms. Johnson identifies in Watson’s paintings a feminist strategy of privileging emotion to evoke a ‘felt, rather than thought, connectedness’ to Aboriginal country and artistic tradition. While Johnson posits an implicit opposition between emotion and thought, contrasting Watson’s paintings with more overtly political works by Aboriginal artists who have adopted the ‘approved ‘‘quotational” mode of Post-modernism’, this essay argues that the political aesthetic of the four works in question is located in their capacity to generate ambivalent moods and modes of thought.

Keywords
Judy Watson, contemporary painting, Aboriginal art, feminist aesthetics

How are city and culture—the space of the city and the “mind space” of the cultural artefact— connected or disconnected? Contemporary Macao poetry and installation art demonstrate that not only has local culture continued to thrive despite outside pressures on the city’s regional position (a part of “one China” with a localized function) but that the need to produce a critique of these pressures has itself been productive of a politically interested (and interesting) literary and visual culture—a creative culture that demonstrates an opportunistic ambivalence toward identity options. Macao (a city in southern China and, until 1999, sleepy Portuguese possession) is today undergoing unprecedented development. Since the 2002 “liberalization” of casino licensing, the cityscape has taken a monumental turn, with the addition of a number of remarkable landmarks. Today, Macao is promoted as a tourist destination that offers ultramodern casinos and luxurious hotels as well as World Heritage–listed architecture. In recent years, the people of Macao have sometimes felt themselves the victims of contradictory forms of recolonization—by Beijing on one hand and by Vegas-style casino capitalism on the other. Between these gigantic pincers, what chances of survival have local culture and custom had? This article takes a close look at some contemporary Macao poetry and installation art, dealing with themes of monumentality and their meaning for the “new” Macao.

Underground (1994-5) is a mixed media work on paper consisting of twenty eight unframed panels, each depicting a close-up representation of a face, arranged in a grid on the gallery wall. Seeing this work in London’s Tate Gallery in 1996, I was immediately struck by its disjunctive appearance. Why is Underground such an arresting artwork?  Almost all of the panels contain two radically different styles of markmaking. A bold rainbow-coloured palette jars against the restrained black and white ink painting that it partially obscures. These contrasts point to a remarkable feature of the piece. Underground combines child-art with the work of a professional adult artist.
The painting is a collaboration between Marlene Dumas, a South African born artist (1953-) who has lived in the Netherlands since 1976, and her then five-year-old daughter, Helena. The Tate catalogue cites the artist’s account of how the work came into existence:

Helena decorated, improved and worked on my black and white drawings, which she found boring, with colour. “It was her underground.” She worked against me. I allowed her to play with my drawings so I could do other work. This was not set up as an art project in the first place. She “recast” my original models into her own stories. One was kidnapped, she said, and one walked into a horse.

Dumas describes the collaborative process in terms of the child’s subversion of her work, amplifying the resonances of the title, Underground. The title also refers viewers to the layered structure of the work. Had Helena been restricted to black media, her marks would have merged to a more significant extent with those already laid down by Dumas. As things are, there are only a few panels in which Dumas’s work is all but obscured by the child’s contribution. In the rest, the work of both mother and daughter can be clearly discerned.
The meta-communicative frame provided by Dumas’s statements and title encourages the viewer to read the painting in terms of the relationship between the two grounds, and indeed, the two artists. The viewer is cued to notice the degree to which the monochrome layer of painting has been “cast underground” by the more recent and vivid overlay, the professional artist’s work eclipsed by that of her daughter.
This paper explores the nature of the collaborative relationship evidenced by Underground. In the first section, I offer an historical perspective that places child-art in relation to “proper” adult art. The second section explores the resonances of Underground’s two layers, Dumas’s monochrome “foundation layer” and Helena’s brightly coloured overlay. The third and final section examines the reciprocities and transgressions which typify the interaction of the two. It is argued that Underground questions the ethical values of a contemporary art world that privileges competition, exclusivity and the masterful, unitary and adult artistic voice.

This paper surveys examples of dialogic pedagogy in creative practices in the areas of Visual Studies and Creative Writing at universities in Hong Kong and Macao. The authors describe their own participant-observer experience of evolving pedagogy for creative practice through on-site and remote interaction, with colleagues and with and between
students. The creative writing practices discussed refer to extra-institutional translation and publishing activities of a Macao non-governmental organisation – the Association of Stories in Macao. Samples of published
output are positioned within its history of poetry translation/publication activities. The practice of workshop translation is situated as an apprenticeship for bilingual poets, to explain how dialogic activities
(face-to-face and virtual) catalyse the co-evolution of collaborative learning and publishing strategies. The visual arts practices refer to a series of collaborative drawing projects that use conventional mail for the transmission of works-in-progress between collaborators. We describe the history and rules of one of these collaborations, provide
examples of its output and consider feedback from participants. We draw on the literatures of play, dialogue, pedagogy, community and gift economies (Huizinga, Freire, Bakhtin, Mauss) to theorise a common framework for understanding the role of purposive dialogue in collaborative and cross-cultural arts apprenticeships.

Keywords: pedagogy; dialogue; poetry; visual arts; collaboration

Welcome to Postcards between Friends, an exhibition of extraordinary postcards. They’re real postcards, complete with stamps, postmarks, and wear and tear, but they’re special in three ways. First, they are all hand-drawn. Second, every postcard is a collaboration between at least two people. And third, every postcard has been through the mail at least twice.

The process works like this. One artist starts a drawing and, without adding any verbal instructions or commentary, mails it to another. The second artist finds the postcard in her mailbox, completes the drawing, and mails it back to the sender. The results are surprising because each collaborative postcard is a small work of art that neither of its makers could have predicted.

Making drawings together in this way is exciting. It’s a fun new way to experience (the by now ‘retro’) magic of sending and receiving personal mail. It’s a fresh new way to relate to classmates and friends. Each postcard records a response to an ‘artistic dare’ as well as a sustained process characterized by reciprocal generosity and trust.

Friends share ideas and techniques with friends through making postcards together. I might always draw one way, in one style, using a familiar set of techniques; and so your drawing is a stranger in my art world. Do I welcome your approach to my initial idea? Does your way somehow work with mine? Why does or doesn’t it work?  Practice leads to analysis and this all takes time, because finding the best solutions to visual problems will not be an instant thing. Solving creative problems together involves thought, experimentation, imagination, and care.

The Postcards between Friends exhibition showcases the collaborative postcards made by the four class groups of Lingnan University students who participated in drawing courses offered by the Visual Studies Department between 2012 and 2014. It places these works alongside those that originally inspired them – works of their teacher, Carol Archer, in collaboration with five Australian artist-friends: Anna Couani, Loene Furler, Kit Kelen, Virginia Shepherd and Sue Rawlinson.

歡迎來到「友愛明信片」展覽，是次展品是真正投寄過的明信片，有郵票、郵戳、舊跡，而且還有三大特點。首先，它們是手繪明信片；其次，每一張明信片都是兩位或者以上藝術家的協作藝術品；再次，每一張明信片都被投寄過至少兩次。
協作明信片是由一位藝術家未完成的手繪開始，不作任何文字解釋，寄給第二位藝術家。第二位藝術家收到明信片後，完成整幅手繪再寄回。協作明信片計劃成果斐然，每一張明信片都是一幅藝術小作，而它的作者均不能預見。
這樣一種協同繪畫讓人興奮，它充滿魔術一般的樂趣，帶給收寄明信片的作者一種新體驗，現在仍讓人回味無窮。它也是同學和朋友之間新的交流方法。每一張明信片都記錄下協作者之間的碰撞，或可打趣稱作「藝術敢」，同時又記錄下他們的創作過程體現的互相包容、互相信任的態度。
朋友之間通過協同創作明信片來分享想法和技巧。我們用自己的方法、風格、技巧來繪畫。在對方的藝術世界裡，我們是陌生人，反之亦然。我們歡迎這位陌生人嗎？我們能否共融？爲什麽？從實踐到分析，一切都需要時間，因為解決視覺上的問題並非朝夕之事，我們還需要思考，嘗試，想像，還有關懷。
「友愛明信片」展覽的展品包括嶺南大學視覺研究系2012至2014年之間四個繪畫班的學生作品，另有給予他們靈感的老師區勵志與安娜•古安烈、莉安•芙樂、客遠文、維吉尼亞•夏普特、蘇怡•羅玲臣等五位澳洲藝術家的協作繪畫作品。

This is a gift you hold in your hands. You can’t buy it in a shop. Holding this gift in your hands you’re connecting with the hundred strong
community of artists and writers who contributed, from either side of the Pearl River Delta, in order to make this book of haiku-postcard
collaboration.
The haiku and the postcard each offers a perfect vehicle for the making of art on a minimal scale; in one case the art is of words, in the other
case it is made with marks and pigments on paper. Haiku and postcards are highly portable and that makes them great models for creative
practice. Each is designed to capture a moment and each makes the moment portable.
The haiku and postcards in this project each have multiple makers – people who have worked together to create an artwork, whether of word
or of image. Haiku is an art of surprise; every next line should surprise the reader. And in the making of these postcards each artist surprised
her collaborator. To make this book we started with the postcard collaboration at Lingnan University, then poets at the University of Macau
worked together to write haiku responses to selected cards.
So this book is the result of several kinds of collaboration; it is a collaboration of collaborations. The pictures and the poems responding
to them are works of mutual imagination. You can think of them as a kind of ‘call and response’ across artforms. And these works demand
interpretation – that’s to say, you can’t respond until you’ve decided what the work you’re responding to is about.
Let’s take an example. The first postcard in the book shows a boy on a letterbox and paper aeroplanes flying all over a map of Hong Kong.
The haiku in response is:
rose withered
fox gone
still expecting a card
To the poets reading the card at the University of Macau, the boy on the letterbox was none other than Antoine de St Exupéry’s little prince,
sad for company, but full of expectation. Was that the intention of the card’s makers? It doesn’t matter. The point is that there is a need to
form an understanding of ideas and images in order to respond to them. So the conversation, in the form of art, is unpredictable, in just the
ways that the work of art needs to be. Here’s another, reflexive, example, of expectation being playfully overturned:
your cards from the stars
I write back when they come
because I’m a stamp collector
This book is a pedagogy-practice-theory package. That’s to say it presents the practical results of a collaborative pedagogic plan – to bring
Visual Studies and Creative Writing students into conversation through art practice. The essay which introduces the book situates the art and
pedagogic practices at stake in its making.
But the work is better than the talk and so much of what’s meant is between the lines. How far is it between the lines of a haiku? Let’s leave
the last word to the last poem in the book:
a sparrow leaps
ten thousand li
just one step on the map

A collaborative postcard project completed by 22 students as part of a drawing course conducted at a university in Hong Kong is introduced. The project entailed inviting students into an art practice in which the author was herself engaged as a practitioner as well as a researcher. After introducing the educational context in which the project took place, the author provides an account – informed by 'participant-observer' feedback from students – of how the project unfolded and was experienced. In the second section of the article the creative and pedagogic efficacy of the project is considered with reference to the experience-centred and dialogic principles expressed in the educational philosophies of John Dewey, Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt and Paulo Freire. The third section draws on insights from scholars working in a range of disciplines – cultural history, anthropology, sociology and psychology – to argue that a particular set of organisational and collaborative dynamics catalysed students' levels of engagement, creativity and motivation. The article argues that the collaborative postcard project is an example of an experience-centred and practice-based pedagogy that is founded on dialogue, mutual generosity and experimental play, and engenders in students the 'quality of mental process' that is, for John Dewey, 'the measure of educative growth'.