24 September – 21 November 2004
Chinese Arts Centre will be presenting the first full-scale exhibition of the bad boys of Chinese art, Cai Yuan and JJ Xi (aka ‘madforreal’) in September 2004.
The provocative and often controversial artists will be creating new work, which will centre on their own rendition of the National Anthem. Their previous work includes subversive actions such as swimming across the Thames, jumping on Tracey Emin’s bed, running naked over Westminster Bridge with a giant toy panda (Tony Bear), creating an alcoholic concoction from a penis and pissing on Duchamp’s urinal. Their work is usually deceptively simple, satirical and politically motivated, tackling social and political questions through the preposterous use of unexpected intervention in well-known British settings. The title evokes classical Chinese culture of New Year calendars with fat babies and gold fish and Maoist culture of the high communist rhetoric of the 1950s even though it has been lifted from the National Anthem.
Happy and Glorious is an upbeat, ironic exhibition, touching on topical issues such as transnational identities, immigration and citizenship. Their own experience as transnational subjects in a postcolonial and globalising world gives it a particular, personal potency. Features of the exhibition include a quirky dark space in which ‘evidence’ of past performances is put on display, such as toy machine guns and combat suits. Suggesting hospitality on the one hand but also restricted movement and fencing off, a carpeted, cordoned-off area ‘guides’ the audience into the centre to view performances interspersed with media coverage of their work. A projected video of a naked performance of the artists enacting the citizenship oath and singing the National Anthem highlights the absurdity of the process of becoming ‘British’.
As a continuation of Cai Yuan and JJ Xi’s recent investigation of the boundaries of institutionalised artwork and the realm of public and popular culture, the exhibition integrates the artists’ performance-based work with other strands of their practice. It creates a new context in which to view their work while maintaining its popular appeal. Other work within institutions includes ‘Monkey King creates havoc in the Heavenly Palace’ at the British Museum (2004) and ‘Soya Sauce and Ketchup Fight’ at Bluecoat Gallery, as part of the Liverpool Biennial (2002) and Live Culture at Tate Modern (2003).
The artists were born in the People’s Republic of China. They have lived and worked in UK since the 1980s and trained at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art. For further information on the artists please visit www.madforreal.com.
Happy and Glorious is jointly curated with Katie Hill.
