Opening on Saturday 3 June, The Garden of Perfect Brightness is a poetic exploration of the relationship between nature, culture, and power in the digital age.
In this exhibition we are invited to contemplate the rise and fall of civilisations in the age of globalisation. Complex interplays of destruction and renewal, natural and artificial, and the duality of the “in-between” Chinese Diaspora identity, are all brought to light in the backdrop of geopolitical and historical events, in our rapidly changing world where history is written by the victors.
The Garden of Perfect Brightness is named after the English translation of the Yuanming Garden in Beijing. It was also known as the Old Summer Palace, a site of immense historical and cultural significance representing the pinnacle of artistic and cultural achievement in China. It was tragically destroyed during the 1860s in the ‘Second Opium War’.
The exhibition is constructed around the concept of a Chinese garden with sculptures created from Financial Times newspapers which draw inspiration from traditional Chinese ‘scholar’s rocks’ or ‘spirit stones’. Embodying microcosms of landscapes they are meditative focal points between nature and civilisation. The sculptures reflect on a world formed by datascapes shaped by the light speed movements of capital that create both utopias and dystopias.
Surrounding the sculptures are paintings of landscapes and still lifes, composed of scenes from the 1744 Qianlong Emperor’s imperial album “40 Views of the Yuanming Yuan”. These paintings have been digitally reformed to hover like auroras over the major cities of modern China.
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3 June – 9 September 2023