Artist Profile – August 2019

18

Editor’s

Note

T

here is a lot to experience in and beyond the pages

of issue 48 of Artist Profile.

To begin with, we are delighted to be a major partner

of this year’s Sydney Contemporary – Australia’s largest art

fair. This partnership is our newest initiative in support of

‘the artists behind the art’. We are showing this issue’s cover

artist, Guo Jian, at the fair in ‘Living the Dream’, curated by

Lauren Harvey and Campbell Robertson-Swann. These new

paintings engage with traditional Song dynasty landscapes

to interrogate the relationship between the disposability of

celebrity and the destruction of minority cultures in China.

Some of the paintings selected for the exhibition are featured

in this issue.

Alongside Guo Jian’s project, the magazine’s forty-eight

editions will be displayed, highlighting the hundreds of artists,

writers and photographers we have featured. You will find us

at booth G01.

I am also pleased Linda Jaivin was able to write Guo Jian’s

profile, as she is one of Australia’s most respected critics on

Chinese-Australian art and culture. Linda Jaivin will talk

with Guo Jian at Sydney Contemporary on Saturday 14

September between 2:30 and 3:30 pm, about what Guo Jian

calls China’s ‘rubbish culture’ and ‘culture of violence’ and

how he reflects on them in his work. They’ll also discuss his

installation The Meat and why, thirty years after Tiananmen

Square, he won’t let go.

For many thousands of years the Barka (the Darling River)

nourished the Barkantji peoples. Today the Barka has dried

up, evoking another state-sanctioned, politically-driven,

cultural genocide. Tara Callaghan’s profile on Barkantji Elder,

Badger Bates, is an inspiring read about the river as a source

of life and culture, and how his prints and carvings resonate

messages for a healthier Barka future.

The artists in this issue examine a diversity of political and

sociocultural perspectives within and beyond our community,

which I hope will challenge, confront and inspire you.

Guo Jian calligraphy, photograph by Gary Heery. Story page 62 Kon Gouriotis

Artist Profile acknowledges the Gadigal

people of the Eora Nation, the traditional

owners of the land on which we work.