China Art Projects (China) and Niagara Galleries (Australia) collaborate to present a unique exhibition of two artists - Angelina Pwerle and Hu Qinwu.

These two artists are from two ancient cultures which ostensibly appear to be radically different, but there is a strong cultural connection which cuts across time and place. The spiritual and ancestral connection between the now and then and the relationship of the physicality and spirituality contained within all things is a commonality shared by both.

Hu Qinwu and Angelina Pwerle work in not dis-similar ways with each transcending their intellectual control over the process of creating, recording, mark-making and expressing – they are agents of a greater force, rather than protagonists who create self-consciously as artists.

For each artist, the process of working is critical to the end result – the subconscious state of allowing the Dreaming (Pwerle) or the Kong (the Buddhist idea of empty space) to emerge and reveal the infinite (space, time), the order and chaos of the universe, the continuity of life and the connectedness between past, present and future.

Angelina Pwerle was born in 1946 and she lives and works in Ngkawenyerre, Utopia, Northern Territory, Australia. Like many of the Utopia women artists, Angelina began producing work with the Indonesian technique of batik in 1986. Not long after, canvas and acrylic paint was introduced to her community and it has largely been in this medium that Angelina has come to national and international prominence.

Angelina's work is predominantly concerned with representations of the bush plum dreaming. This subject matter has been given varied forms of expression, but is most often characterised by intense areas of fine dotting using a clear and refined colour palette.

Both Angelina Pwerle and Hu Qinwu’s works are richly textured and layered. Intense or subtle colour reveals dark shadows beneath surface layering.

A myriad of seemingly organised dots, lines and monochromatic colour traverse the surface of each work. There are no images, there are no focal points or centre, the works have an over-all quality suggesting infinity, continuity and harmony.

Hu Qinwu reveals the world as he interprets his experiences – his mosaic metaphor suggests that our perceptions of reality are made up of taking individual lines and divisions and putting them together to form a whole. The process of layering marks is a critical element of his work.

For him, the harmony he creates is an open and unlimited feeling – like the Buddhist idea of ‘kong’, or empty space.

He accepts that his paintings do not fall into a traditional Chinese aesthetic, but he is resistant to be categorised as either Chinese or modern, abstract or other. To refuse definition is his prerogative. “I have my own language”, he remarks.

The exhibition, curated by Reg Newitt, will be opened on Saturday 25 June at the Space Station Gallery in 798 Art District. It is part of the Year of Australian Culture in China - Imagine Australia cultural program - and will be opened on 25 June by the Australian Embassy.