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

April 2012, Launch of SINOPTICON exhibition, 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.

13 – 29 January 2011, BREATHE Residency at CAC, Gayle Chong Kwan and Stephanie Douet

January 2011, China Through a Looking Glass, Friday Lates at the V&A

12 October 2010, SINOPTICON Symposium  , V&A, London
The symposium reflects on and investigates an idea of contemporary chinoiserie, bringing historical themes, issues and ideas surrounding chinoiserie into a contemporary context; politics & trade, authorship, interpretation & cultural misunderstanding, fantasy, escapism and fiction and frippery & design. V&A_sinopticonevent

‘THE OBSIDIAN ISLE’, 2011
Designed and published by Gayle Chong Kwan and Graphical House
ISBN 978-0-9565200-3
Limited edition 500

Price: £25 (+ £3.50 P+P)

All payments taken securely through Paypal

A full-colour 60 page limited edition publication featuring large-format photographic works, sensory drawings, text works and a wrap around pull-out limited edition cyclorama map artwork. Edition of 500.

Featuring specially commissioned texts by: Dr Fiona Stafford, Professor of English and Fellow of Somerville College, University of Oxford; Dr Dominic Paterson, Department of History of Art, University of Glasgow; Murdo Macdonald, Chair of History at of Scottish Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee; and Laura McLean-Ferris, ArtReview magazine’s Editor at Large, and an art critic for The Independent.

A fictional island, on which exist the lost and destroyed buildings and places of Scotland, Chong Kwan’s The Obsidian Isle features a series of large-format photographic works, tactile prints, and sensory aids for use on the island, and a limited edition publication. The work plays with wider ideas of collective history and memories, national identity, landscape, and tourism, and refers to a controversial literary work. Ossian, the blind 3rd century poet who was ‘discovered’ by James Macpherson in the 18th Century, and presented to the public as the narrator and supposed author of a cycle of epic poems, translated from fragments of ancient sources in Scots Gaelic. From structures that fell into dereliction after the Highland Clearances, buildings destroyed during the Second World War, places torn down to make way for new developments, or structures that collapsed due to poor construction, The Obsidian Isle is a place where visitors are invited to remember or possibly to collectively ‘forget’, raising questions about what is kept, what remains, what falls into ruin or is destroyed, what persists and how these can be altered by memories, the senses, myths and competing histories.

‘THE GRAND TOUR’, 2009
Designed and published by Gayle Chong Kwan and ArtSway, UK
2009
ISBN 978-0-9558406-4-7
Edition of 1000
Hardback, 15.5 x 21.5cm, 72pp

Price: £10 (+ £3 P+P)

With texts by Camilla Brown, Senior Curator, The Photographers Gallery, and Edward Chaney, Professor of Fine and Decorative Arts, Southampton Solent University and others. Available to buy at ArtSway, New Forest; New Gallery Walsall, Walsall; Galerie Kernot, Paris; Oriel Davies Gallery, Powys, Wales; and other art bookshops.

A two-year project in which Chong Kwan developed new work to reference, celebrate and critique the Grand Tour and its relationship to contemporary tourism, master planning, waste and landscape traditions within fine art. It directly references the historic Grand Tour – the traditional ‘rites-of-passage’ form of travel by upper-class young European men first begun in the 17th Century. The tour is a programme of new work by Gayle Chong Kwan presented at mac, Birmingham; Arts Co, London, Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, Italy; and ArtSway, Hampshire. Supported by National Touring, Arts Council England.

‘INVISIBLE TWINNING’, 2011
Gayle Chong Kwan, Guilia Giannola and Francesca Mila Nemni
Commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
Designed by Anja Lutz, The Green Box, Berlin
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-3-941644-29-8                       BUY NOW  €12.00  The Green Box, Berlin

Referring to the unofficial twinnings that reflect Berlin’s current immigrant population instead of the official equivalents of the city, the project explores the city’s long tradition of urban horticulture and reveals ideas of health in the widest sense: as balance and imbalance as well as on a societal and personal level, looking at how people navigate and share resources within a city. www.invisibletwinning.blogspot.com

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-mottisfont/

‘Invisible Twinning’
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
September 6 – 17 2011
www.invisibletwinning.blogspot.com

Referring to the unofficial twinnings that reflect Berlin’s current immigrant population instead of the official equivalents of the city, the project explores the city’s long tradition of urban horticulture and reveals ideas of health in the widest sense: as balance and imbalance as well as on a societal and personal level, looking at how people navigate and share resources within a city.

Berlin Liste 2011, Fair for Contemporary Art and Photography
TRAFO, Köpenicker Straße 70
10179 Berlin
8 – 11 September 2011
www.berliner-liste.org

I am also delighted to announce the launch of the publication and exhibition ’Invisible Twinning’ at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, created during a year long project I developed in Berlin with artist Guilia Giannola and curator Francesca Mila Nemni, which was commissioned for Meridian Urban by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. The publication was designed by Anja Lutz and is published by Greenbox, Berlin:

‘Invisible Twinning’
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
September 6 – 17 2011
www.invisibletwinning.blogspot.com

Referring to the unofficial twinnings that reflect Berlin’s current immigrant population instead of the official equivalents of the city, the project explores the city’s long tradition of urban horticulture and reveals ideas of health in the widest sense: as balance and imbalance as well as on a societal and personal level, looking at how people navigate and share resources within a city.

Commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, as part of Urban Meridian and the Asia Pacific Biennale. This year long project was developed in Berlin with artist Guilia Giannola and curator Francesca Mila Nemni. The publication ‘Invisible Twinning’ was designed with Anja Lutz, published by The Green Box, Berlin, is on sale for €12 through The Green Box:

Referring to the unofficial twinnings that reflect Berlin’s current immigrant population instead of the official equivalents of the city, the project explores the city’s long tradition of urban horticulture and reveals ideas of health in the widest sense: as balance and imbalance as well as on a societal and personal level, looking at how people navigate and share resources within a city. www.invisibletwinning.blogspot.com