03/06/2024
Posted • Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios is pleased to announce the fifth artist in our upcoming exhibition, The Wisdom of Others: Guo Jian.
Guo Jian, and his art, are products of the last fifty years of violence and tumultuousness in China, from the Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s and 70s, to the Sino-Vietnam war at the beginning of the 80’s.
He had been brought into the army as a propaganda painter, recognised in his hometown for artistic skills he had developed through copying. In 1989, he joined the protests and hunger strikes on Tiananmen Square. Blacklisted for his role in the protests, Guo Jian was unable to find work for three years as he waited for approval to emigrate to Australia, which he did in the early 1990s.
Since arriving in Australia, Guo Jian’s art practice has been fuelled by his position as a reflective, sharply satirical Chinese expatriate who grew up during the Cultural Revolution and under a deeply communist regime.
His career as a contemporary artist in Australia is extraordinary – Guo Jian’s work has been exhibited and collected in Musée de Picardie in France, Brussels Art Festival, the Art Gallery Of New South Wales, the Queensland Art Gallery and the Australian National Gallery. He is also well-represented across several significant private collections, including the Geoff Raby Collection of Chinese Art, which last year was gifted as a record-breaking donation to the La Trobe University.
You’ll have the opportunity to see Guo Jian’s work at our upcoming exhibition, The Wisdom of Others, which is on from 28 May to 29 June.
The Wisdom of Others is presented by Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios in partnership with Lane Cove Council and our lending partners as part of Refugee Week 2024.
Image credits to Guo Jian.
Acknowledgement: Vermilion Art.
