Negotiating ‘Chinese-Australian’ Identity: Ah Xian's Dr John Yu (2004) and his China China Series (1998–2004)

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my PhD supervisors Claire Roberts (University of Melbourne), Robert Wellington (Australian National University) and Charlotte Galloway (ANU), for their support, guidance and encouragement; Julie Brooke (ANU), for reading the first draft of this essay; the two anonymous reviewers, for their very insightful and generous comments; and especially Ah Xian, for creating the works discussed here and for always being happy to respond to my constant questions.

Notes

1. Simon Elliott, ‘Clay, Water, Fire’, Portrait, 1 March 2005, http://www.portrait.gov.au/magazines/15/clay-water-fire/ (accessed 22 March 2016).

2. It should be noted that while Dr John Yu has received little academic attention, the NPG has given the bust substantial consideration and prominence within its collection. In addition to the sources cited here, it has been included in both editions of the NPG's permanent collection catalogue The Companion (2008 and 2015), and is always a key work considered in Access and Learning tours.

3. Elliott, ‘Clay, Water, Fire’; Michael Desmond, John Yu (Canberra: National Portrait Gallery, 2009), 6. Tarun Nagesh, Assistant Curator of Asian Art at Queensland Art Gallery, provides a concise description of the stages involved in cloisonné production: ‘strips of gold, brass, silver, copper or other metals are welded to a metal backing and the resulting spaces are filled with vitreous enamel paste. The creation is then fired, ground smooth and polished.’ Tarun Nagesh, Ah Xian: Metaphysica (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 2013), n.p.

4. Ah Xian, conversation with the author, 14 April 2016; Elliott, ‘Clay, Water, Fire’.

5. Elliott, ‘Clay, Water, Fire’.

6. See, for example, Linda Jaivin, ‘Ah Xian: Recent Works in Porcelain’, ArtAsiaPacific 33, no. 1 (2002): 28; Claire Roberts, ‘Ah Xian: “China. China”. Recent Works in Porcelain’, in Beyond the Future: The Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, ed. Jennifer Webb (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 1999), 228; Dieter Brunner, ‘Die Büste Und Die Unsterblichkeit: Ein Chinesischer Künstler Auf Den Pfaden Westlicher Kultur [The Bust and Immortality: A Chinese Artist on the Paths of Western Culture]’, in Ah Xian: Skulpturen, ed. Marc Gundel et al. (Bonn: Edition Braus, 2007), 45.

7. M. H. Kaufman and Robert McNeil, ‘Death Masks and Life Masks at Edinburgh University’, British Medical Journal 298, no. 6672 (February 25 1989): 507.

8. Alexandra Roginski, Ned Kelly and Death Masks (National Portrait Gallery, n.d.), http://www.portrait.gov.au/stories/ned-kelly-death-masks (accessed 4 May 2016).

9. Kaufman and McNeil, ‘Death Masks and Life Masks at Edinburgh University’, 506.

10. Nagesh, Ah Xian: Metaphysica, n.p.

11. Melissa Chiu, ‘Asian-Australian Artists: Cultural Shifts in Australia’, Art & Australia 37, no. 2 (1999): 256–57.

12. Marita Bullock, ‘“China China”: Autoethnography as Literal Translation in Ah Xian's Porcelain Forms’, in Memory Fragments: Visualising Difference in Australian History (Bristol: Intellect, 2012), 101–02.

13. Desmond, John Yu, 4–5.

14. National Portrait Gallery, ‘John Yu AC’, National Portrait Gallery, 2006, http://www.portrait.gov.au/people/john-yu-1934 (accessed April 19, 2016).

15. Ah Xian, conversation with the author, 13 April 2016; Elliott, ‘Clay, Water, Fire’.

16. Desmond, John Yu, 2; Australian of the Year Awards, ‘Australian of the Year 1996: Dr John Yu AC’, Honour Roll: Past Award Finalists and Recipients, http://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/hon our-roll/?view=fullView&recipientID=99 (accessed 19 April 2016); Will Ockenden, ‘Former Australian of the Year and Chinese Refugee Hits out at Immigration Policy’, AM (ABC News, 10 May 2014), http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2014/s4002043.htm (accessed 2 May 2016).

17. Desmond, John Yu, 2.

18. NPG, 'John Yu AC’; Desmond, John Yu, 4.

19. Australian of the Year Awards, 'Australian of the Year 1996: Dr John Yu AC’.

20. Mabel Lee, 'Ah Xian: Challenging the Spatial Limitations of Sculptural Art', Humanities Australia 6 (2015): 49.

21. Claire Roberts, ‘The Slow Art of Ah Xian’, Art & Australia 43, no. 3 (Autumn 2006): 392–93.

22. Ibid.

23. Lee, ‘Ah Xian: Challenging the Spatial Limitations of Sculptural Art’, 51; Russell Storer, ‘Ah Xian: Healing the Wounds’, Broadsheet: Contemporary Visual Art + Culture 43, no. 1 (2014): 39.

24. Rebecca Craig, ‘Ah Xian – Biography’, Design & Art Australia Online, 2013, https://www.daao.org.au/bio/ah-xian/biography/ (accessed 24 March 2016); Roni Feinstein, ‘A Journey to China’, Art in America 90, no. 2 (February 2002): 110.

25. Ah Xian, 18 January 2014, cited in Storer, ‘Ah Xian: Healing the Wounds’, 39.

26. Ah Xian, ‘Self-Exile of the Soul’, TAASA Review 8, no. 1 (1999): 8.

27. Desmond, John Yu, 6.

28. Rosemary Neill, ‘The Face: Ah Xian’, The Australian, 21 March 2009, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/the-face-ah-xian/story-e6frg8n6-1111119160459 (accessed 4 April 2016).

29. National Portrait Gallery, I Couldn't Hear, I Couldn't See: An Interview with John Yu, n.d., http://www.portrait.gov.au/stories/john-yu (accessed 19 April 2016).

30. Storer, ‘Ah Xian: Healing the Wounds’, 41.

31. Ah Xian, ‘A Light towards the Future’, in Porcelain City – Jingdezhen, ed. Amanda Game (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2011), n.p.

32. Malcolm Baker, ‘“No Cap or Wig But a Thin Hair upon It”: Hair and the Male Portrait Bust in England Around 1750’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 38, no. 1 (2004): 64, 68.

33. Ibid, 70–72.

34. Geoffrey Batchen, ‘Ere the Substance Fade: Photography and Hair Jewellery’, in Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images, ed. Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart (New York: Routledge, 2004), 37–38.

35. Feinstein, ‘A Journey to China’, 110; Roberts, ‘Ah Xian: “China. China”. Recent Works in Porcelain’, 228. The works incorporating plaster-cast hands and feet were exhibited as two series, with the titles Site Perspectives and Pervasive Spirit (both 1992–1993).

36. Yi Yang, «这帮兄弟那些年» [Old Time with These Sworn Guys] (Hong Kong: China Fine Arts Publishing House, 2013), 27; Feinstein, ‘A Journey to China’, 110.

37. Lee, ‘Ah Xian: Challenging the Spatial Limitations of Sculptural Art’, 47.

38. Ah Xian, ‘Self-Exile of the Soul’, 8–9.

39. Ibid.

40. Jaivin, ‘Ah Xian: Recent Works in Porcelain’, 29.

41. Ah Xian, interview with Melissa Chiu, 2001, cited in Melissa Chiu, ‘The Iconic and the Personal: Ah Xian’, in Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China (Milan: Charta, 2006), 183.

42. Ibid., 190.

43. Ah Xian, letter to Clare Williamson, 11 June 1996, cited in Clare Williamson and Michael Snelling, Above and Beyond: Austral/Asian Interactions (South Yarra, VIC: Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 1996), 6.

44. Roberts, ‘The Slow Art of Ah Xian’, 393; Roberts, ‘Ah Xian: “China. China”. Recent Works in Porcelain’, 228.

45. Jonathan Goodman, ‘Ah Xian’, Sculpture 22, no. 5 (2003): 73; Jaivin, ‘Ah Xian: Recent Works in Porcelain’, 28.

46. Guoping Feng, Yinjiao Hu and Jimei Shao, «景德镇千年窑火不熄的陶瓷之城» [Jingdezhen: A City with Kiln-Fire Burning a Thousand Years], ed. Jingdezhen People's Government News Office (Beijing: Intercontinental Press, 2006), 8; Rosemary E. Scott, Elegant Form and Harmonious Decoration: Four Dynasties of Jingdezhen Porcelain (London: Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, 1992), 9.

47. Feng, Hu, and Shao, «景德镇千年窑火不熄的陶瓷之城» [Jingdezhen: A City with Kiln-Fire Burning a Thousand Years], 48.

48. Ah Xian and Jo Ely, ‘Engaging Contemporary Art Audiences’, Journal of Australian Ceramics 47, no. 2 (July 2008): 17.

49. Lili Fang, ‘Jingdezhen and the Artist: 1910–2012’, in New ‘China’: Porcelain Art from Jingdezhen, 1910–2012, ed. Willow Weilan Hai Chang and J. May Lee Barrett (New York: China Institute Gallery, 2012), 13.

50. Roberts, ‘Ah Xian: “China. China”. Recent Works in Porcelain’, 228; Lee, ‘Ah Xian: Challenging the Spatial Limitations of Sculptural Art’, 47.

51. Feinstein, ‘A Journey to China’, 111.

52. Roberts, ‘The Slow Art of Ah Xian’, 393; Stephan von der Schulenburg, ‘À La Recherche de La Porcelaine Perdue [In Search of Lost Porcelain]’, in Ah Xian: Skulpturen, ed. Marc Gundel et al. (Bonn: Edition Braus, 2007), 26.

53. Eva Strober, Symbols on Chinese Porcelain: 10,000 Times Happiness (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche, 2011), 186.

54. Elliott, ‘Clay, Water, Fire’; Ah Xian and Kathryn Wells, ‘Ah Xian: Ancient Crafts, Contemporary Practice – A New Language of Art’, Craft Australia, 28 September 2011, http://www.craftaustralia.org.au/library/inter view.php?id=ah-xian-ancient-crafts-contemporary-practice (accessed April 12, 2016).

55. Ellen Johnston Laing, ‘Auspicious Images of Children in China: Ninth to Thirteenth Century’, Orientations 27, no. 1 (1996): 47–48.

56. Ah Xian and Wells, ‘Ah Xian: Ancient Crafts, Contemporary Practice – A New Language of Art’.

57. Patricia Bjaaland Welch, Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery (Vermont: Tuttle, 2008), 153–156.

58. Laing, ‘Auspicious Images of Children in China: Ninth to Thirteenth Century’, 49–50.

59. NPG, I Couldn't Hear, I Couldn't See: An Interview with John Yu.

60. Ah Xian, cited in Desmond, John Yu, 6.

61. Chiu, ‘The Iconic and the Personal: Ah Xian’, 187.

62. Jaivin, ‘Ah Xian: Recent Works in Porcelain’, 28–29; Feinstein, ‘A Journey to China’, 109, 111; Melissa Chiu, ‘Ah Xian’, ArtAsiaPacific, no. 37 (2003): 31; Chiu, ‘The Iconic and the Personal: Ah Xian’, 188; Roberts, ‘The Slow Art of Ah Xian’, 397; Storer, ‘Ah Xian: Healing the Wounds’, 39.

63. Von der Schulenburg, ‘À La Recherche de La Porcelaine Perdue [In Search of Lost Porcelain]’, 27; Feinstein, ‘A Journey to China’, 111.

64. Welch, Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery, 28.