Ai Weiwei Exhibition at the Royal Academy
I visited The Royal Academy on 30th October to see the Ai Weiwei Exhibition
Ai Weiwei is one of China's most recognisable and contentious artists, as famous for his outspoken criticism of the government of his native country as he is for his art.
The works in this exhibition represent a powerful and coherent exploration of Chinese culture, history and material and although he has exhibited widely across the world it is the first major survey of his work to be shown in the UK.
In his blog posted on 13th January 2006 Ai Weiwei stated: "An artwork unable to make people feel uncomfortable or to feel different is not one worth creating. This is the difference between the artist and the fool."
Table and Pillar 2002
Weiwei's artwork uses materials that probe the interrelationship between power, human rights, freedom of expression and cultural history in China.
I was completely overwhelmed by the scale and potency of the whole exhibition. I was also pleasantly surprised to be allowed to take pictures and these are a selection of images taken with my i-phone:
This image is a scratched wooden table into which a 4.6 metre cylindrical wooden pillar, partially painted red is embedded. It alludes to recent government drives towards a highly industrialised and modern China
Straight
This work relates to the devastating Sichuan earthquake in 2008 which measured 8.0 on the Richter scale and left over 90,000 people dead or missing and 11 million people homeless.
When Weiwei discovered that the collapse of twenty shoddily constructed schools caused the deaths of many schoolchildren he clamoured for the government to admit that corruption had enabled builders to ignore safety codes when erecting the schools and to publish the names and the tally of the children who died. When his pleas were ignored he diligently collected the steel bars from the collapsed walls, employed craftsmen to heat and straighten each bar manually which were then used to to make this 200 tonne installation that implicitly memorialises the students lost in the earthquake.
Ton of Tea
Ton of Tea which highlights the universal architectural measurement of one metre is one ton of compressed pu'er
tea from China's Yunnan prefecture, which has been aged using traditional methods.
The exaggerated scale and scent makes the viewer aware of the work's surface and of their own body in relation to the object.
Ton of Tea also invokes tea's material status as a luxury item in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries, when drinking tea was the fashion of the upper classes in Europe.
Bicycle Chandelier 2015
This work which was originally a floor installation made up of bicycles calls attention to the bicycle's one-time status as China's chief form of travel, owned by Chinese citizens across the land.
Today, however, as a result of rapid modernisation, the bicycle has gone down in popularity so owning a bike has become a luxury. Weiwei has responded to this by converting the installation into another symbol of extravagance, the chandelier.
The artist, who grew up in exile without lights or even candles, further accentuates the status of this work by suspending and illuminating white crystals that cascade down from the rims of the bicycle wheels. He has taken Duchamp's concept of the readymade and in his usual style has enlarged it to a grand scale and also transfigured it.
The bicycles are no longer utilitarian items promising their owners a means of transportation and thus freedom, they now hang eternally motionless.
Table and Pillar 2002
Weiwei's artwork uses materials that probe the interrelationship between power, human rights, freedom of expression and cultural history in China.I was completely overwhelmed by the scale and potency of the whole exhibition. I was also pleasantly surprised to be allowed to take pictures and these are a selection of images taken with my i-phone:
This image is a scratched wooden table into which a 4.6 metre cylindrical wooden pillar, partially painted red is embedded. It alludes to recent government drives towards a highly industrialised and modern China
Straight
When Weiwei discovered that the collapse of twenty shoddily constructed schools caused the deaths of many schoolchildren he clamoured for the government to admit that corruption had enabled builders to ignore safety codes when erecting the schools and to publish the names and the tally of the children who died. When his pleas were ignored he diligently collected the steel bars from the collapsed walls, employed craftsmen to heat and straighten each bar manually which were then used to to make this 200 tonne installation that implicitly memorialises the students lost in the earthquake.
Ton of Tea
Ton of Tea which highlights the universal architectural measurement of one metre is one ton of compressed pu'er
tea from China's Yunnan prefecture, which has been aged using traditional methods.
The exaggerated scale and scent makes the viewer aware of the work's surface and of their own body in relation to the object.
Ton of Tea also invokes tea's material status as a luxury item in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries, when drinking tea was the fashion of the upper classes in Europe.
Bicycle Chandelier 2015
Today, however, as a result of rapid modernisation, the bicycle has gone down in popularity so owning a bike has become a luxury. Weiwei has responded to this by converting the installation into another symbol of extravagance, the chandelier.
The artist, who grew up in exile without lights or even candles, further accentuates the status of this work by suspending and illuminating white crystals that cascade down from the rims of the bicycle wheels. He has taken Duchamp's concept of the readymade and in his usual style has enlarged it to a grand scale and also transfigured it.
The bicycles are no longer utilitarian items promising their owners a means of transportation and thus freedom, they now hang eternally motionless.
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