Billed as the largest and most significant collection of Chinese contemporary art in the world, selections from the M+ Uli Sigg Collection will be on public display for the first time.
he former Swiss ambassador to China had built up a vibrant collection of 350 artists and over 2,200 works from the past three decades of China’s modernisation, before bequeathing it this summer to the yet-unbuilt Hong Kong museum ‘M+’, which is expected to open in 2017.
Whilst global audiences await these institutional developments, the M+ Sigg Collection is to be simultaneously exhibited across two venues in Canberra and Sydney as a temporary display.
Curated by Dr Claire Roberts, the exhibition of 55 works includes drawing, painting, photography, video, sculpture and installation works from 1979 to current contemporary practice.
Go Figure! seeks to discover the variants of usage and depiction of the human figure and psyche in recent Chinese portraiture. It aims to ‘consider the idea of play – the liberal use of humour, irony and the absurd’ that are the hallmarks of such experimental and provocative documentation of Chinese culture.
Expect to marvel at outstanding pieces by artists such as Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Wang Guangyi, Zeng Fanzhi, Geng Jianyi, and Zhang Xiaogang.
National Portrait Gallery,
Canberra & Sherman Contemporary
Art Foundation, Sydney
Until DEC 2012, Sydney
Until FEB 2013, Canberra
www.portrait.gov.au
www.sherman-scaf.org.au
