‘SINOPTICON’
13 April 2012
National Trust’s Saltram House, Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery and Plymouth College of Art Gallery, Plymouth.
A new multi-sited exhibition featuring the work of 13 international contemporary artists, including new residencies and commissions will open in Plymouth in April 2012.The exhibition is being produced in partnership with National Trust’s Saltram House, Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery and Plymouth College of Art Gallery.
SINOPTICON (2010-2013) is a long-term project investigating ideas and themes of a contemporary chinoiserie in contemporary art. The 18th century term, ‘chinoiserie’, arose from the mania for Chinese artefacts that erupted in the seventeenth century transforming taste and aesthetics in the West forever. Now China is back, upsurging as a country of major economic and political impact – and with it a new wave of chinoiserie for the twenty-first century. SINOPTICON looks at chinoiserie afresh in the context of contemporary art and incorporates design, display, desire and frippery alongside politics and trade, authorship, interpretation and cultural misunderstanding, fantasy, escapism and fiction. SINOPTICON includes an extensive research and development phase, a symposium, residencies, new commissions and a touring exhibition. Devised by Gayle Chong Kwan, Eliza Gluckman, Stephanie Douet www.sinopticon.org
