by Chi-wen Gallery Location: Chi-wen Gallery
Artist(s): QIU SHIMING + LUO HAIMING
Date: 7 May - 12 Jun 2011
Chi-Wen Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by Qiu Shiming and Luo Haiming: "Fang / Grain Rain" on May 7. The Chinese character “Fang”(方) has the meaning of dialect(fang yan), local chronicles(fang zhi), local products(fang wu) or prescription(chu fang). “Grain Rain” is one of the 24 Solar Terms in the Lunar Calendar. It is between 19th and 21st of April while the increase of rainfall benefits the cultivation of corn. “FANG / Grain Rain” is a special art project developed from researching the former site of “Feng Qiao Photo Studio” located in Feng Qiao Town in Zhejiang Province. Artists turned the studio into a working camera chamber, and re-developed its stock pile of preserved memories into a seasonal cycle of regeneration. In transforming this factory of memories into a camera chamber, the artists also signify the passing of a way of life and the memorialising of a living culture. The video is made with twenty thousand still photographs. Its narrative is formed out of countless broken memories, and reconstructs a separate, coherent time. The exhibition also includes an archive of materials that tells the history of the Maple Bridge Photography Studio and people who had worked here since the early years of the People's Republic, which in itself constitutes a full sixty-year cosmic cycle of Chinese history. On screen, the year has come full circle and its ritual is being observed on film.
