Pickled Art Centre Opening (2008) with Jinkelong (2012)
The people pictured in the much-enlarged snapshot installed in the courtyard of the Varley Art Gallery were attending an opening at Pickled Art Centre, Beijing in October 2008. A barbeque and a mixing of artists and visitors from various walks of life always accompanied these events. We're posing in front of Jinkelong 2008, an artwork I made of sign vinyl (435 x 475 cm). This photo came about towards the end of the opening when an Austrian artist, Jasmin Ladenhaufen, suggested we line up for a group photo. Everyone gathered and this snapshot marks that moment.
By chance, I showed this photo to Doug Lewis and he suggested including it in (Da bao) (Takeout). I decided I liked the way it showed an adhoc community gathering, like other kinds of group photos of family occasions or school class pictures. And I liked that Jinkelong 2008 became a backdrop for this photo-op and that this would be a new artwork.
Jinkelong 2008 is one of two sign vinyl works that I had fabricated in Beijing's Olympic year. My project looked at the wrapping of food in the Jinkelong grocery store, and the presence of vinyl signage in the city. I then used the same vinyl material to make the artwork. I made an accompanying artist book Your Choice (edition 200) documenting multiple examples. The two large jars of fermented tofu, a traditional Chinese breakfast food, are memorialized at a time when western highly processed food is increasingly present on grocery store shelves.
Pickled Art Centre is a project of artist Li Gang, a bi-cultural Beijinger who completed his MFA in Australia. The location is a former pickle factory that he converted first into a foundry and then into an art exhibiting space that continued at this location until 2009.
The people in the photograph are as follows: Back row (left to right): He Yia Qi, Lo Xiaofeng, Shen Jingdong, Sun GuoJian, Scott Conarroe, Christine Cheung, Garry Kennedy, Gordon Craig, name unknown, Tony Scott, name unknown, Hu Shengping, Lan Guozhong, name unknown, Wang Chuan, Zhang Tian, Fern Helfand. Front row: Li Gang, Chen Kun, Amertah Perman, Cathy Busby, name unknown, Nathaniel McMahon, Luis Cantillo, Song Bing, Wang Yanjun.
(Da Bao) (Takeout) was first exhibited in 2012 at the Varley Art Gallery (Markham, ON), before travelling to the Art Gallery of Mississauga (Mississauga, ON, 2012), and to Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art (Winnipeg, MB, 2014).