Newspaper Article 2007 – China offers surprises

China offers surprises

A five-week trip to China provides “truly humbling” for Bay artist Martin Poppelwell

Visual arts
FIONA HISLOP

I visited renowned Hawke’s Bay artist Martin Poppelwell at his home and spoke to him about his recent adventure working and exhibiting his art in China.

Martin accompanied his friend, painter/printmaker Simon Kaan, who was returning to Beijing for five weeks that very quickly became a research trip.

They lived and worked alongside other Chinese artists in a typical artists’ compound, of which there are thousands in China.

These are built expressly as basic empty brick studios and living spaces for artists with a smallish one housing perhaps 150 studios.

Martin spoke of immediately beginning to see the volume of work that was being produced, as well as issues such as how the artists existed, living in a country where no one owns land, and where a really organised system of art production was phenomenally effective in yielding a never-ending supply of artists to fill the many compounds design to house them.

He said it was actually much better for artists there compared with how they exist in New Zealand when starting out, and how astonishingly useful it was to have places like that for around US$1000 a month.

Apparently anyone could venture into these compounds, with theirs sporting its own lake, several galleries and plans for a new bakery.

The artist was candid when speaking about his experiences.

“You encounter stuff you never imaged in China. As an artist and a human being it is a great space to be in. Just organising stretches to be made, all shops look the same but they all do it differently, no one spoke English and it was challenging and quite tiring trying to communicate. On an average day we got up and went for a bike ride (everyone rides bikes) to an area where art supply shops were, to buy materials. There are so many of them and you quickly begin to learn which ones you can navigate around and communicate with. A week later 10 linen stretches, each measuring 220cm x 100cm, turned up at 8 o’clock at night on the bikes of two very hard-working women.”

Martin was against the idea of this being a cultural experience, “to use that idea to make this work significant seemed really dumb. Simon and my approach was to do basic stuff – he is unable to make his sort of work here in New Zealand, the market doesn’t allow it. We didn’t go to sell work, we went to make a show and this gave Simon the freedom to experiment with new ideas and not be reliant on making money.

“He spent a lot of his time mucking about doing walls of fruit boxes while I worked on grey linen stretches, the unprimed linen forming the background and backdrop of the work. There is a lot of covering out of graffiti over there, as is here, just swashes of paint marks – I quite like them. One of the works I produced was the actual deal negotiated on paper for the stretches, in red, black and white writing, with graffiti covering paint marks. When I showed them, I put a big pile of peanuts in the corner of the gallery (they are everywhere in China) and I eat them like they are going out of fashion. Viewers could just go in help themselves. I ended up exhibiting three times, one solo and two group shows.”

I was extremely interested in how the Chinese reacted to his artwork. He shared these thoughts:

“The Chinese artists who came along to our show were quite perplexed. They said they knew what we were doing but were not quite up to that stage of making yet. They saw and enjoyed the simplicity and clarity of the work – it was totally direct and they could “get it” straight away.

“The artwork was experimental and quite playful, it didn’t try too hard to pick up any sort of cultural exchange, it wasn’t about being there – ideas we had already formulated – we just did what we knew and showed them that.”

Martin spoke of the experience of being “truly humbling”, of being in a country that “can’t afford depression.”

He specifically wanted to go there to try and get some work going with people in the ceramic production areas, wanting to gain knowledge in the culture of ceramics there and pass it on to people in New Zealand. Hopefully, with the help of his brother, who manages a research company in Shanghai and speaks Mandarin, he will be able to continue with this process of discovery.

“Chinese people are so eager to help, they often say ‘yes yes’. Unfortunately ‘yes’ has nine different meanings in China, with not one of them meaning ‘yes’ to us!

“On the next trip I would like to go back and produce a show that I am currently working on and figure out the technology over there to do larger scale casting. Then, essentially get Chinese artists to finish what I start, exhibit on the streets there and then bring it all back to New Zealand to exhibit.”

This is but a fraction of Martin’s observations, encounters and participation with the Chinese.

“It was such an extraordinary experience getting your head around a city with 25 million people. I mean, where does everything go?”

Photo caption – ARTIST WITH WHEELS: Martin Poppelwell with bicycle in his studio, The work in the background is “short-term artist, long-time lover.”