Journey to the West (solo exhibition details)

Preview: 25 October 6-8pm (all welcome, no booking required)

Exhibition open: 26 October - 27 November 2024

St Marylebone Art Space

London NW1 5LT

Journey to the West presents a series of paintings weaving together archival images of the Chinese Labour Corps during the First World War, literary references, and biblical stories.  

Two major themes include commemorating and humanising undervalued labour, and the insularity of our own culture.

The watercolour studies and silk paintings are based on images of the Chinese Labour Corps from the Imperial War Museum archive. Over 140,000 Chinese men were employed by the British and French during the First World War for manual labour, often involving highly dangerous tasks such as recovering bodies and unexploded shells from the battlefield. Despite being the first large-scale migration of Chinese people to Europe, they are little known today. The archival photographs show the labourers loading sacks, sawing timber and hauling carts as well as celebrating festivals and interacting with British officers. How do we remember and commemorate thousands of unknown labourers? Surviving letters dictated by the largely illiterate men to their families along with skilfully carved sculptures present a different side to their arduous existence. The paintings attempt to humanise men of whom little is known and add complexity to their lives which, although hard, were not devoid of agency or creativity. 

Literary and biblical references reflect on our own culture whilst exploring the particular role of the artist. Various paintings refer to characters from Chinese literature, including Lu Xun’s short story The True Story of Ah Q (1921) and Sun Wukong from Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West (1592). Both characters embody a sense of moral superiority which is applied here to draw a parallel between the moral and racial superiority of the British imperial mindset with the self-absorption and increasing intolerance of our own culture. In a similar vein, Sun Wukong is a trickster monkey with transforming superpowers but whose downfall is frequently his own pride. In Chinese folklore, the monkey often represents a person’s playful shadow. Here he symbolises the artist, in the attempt to push creative boundaries whilst avoiding temptations of vanity and parochialism. Biblical references, to the Tower of Babel and the story of Nebuchadnezzar, draw on the long tradition of biblical painting in Western art history with similar warnings against pride. 

Silk has a rich history in China, dating back four millennia and involving imperial courts, ceremonial rituals and particular painting methods. This silk has been treated (or sized) in a traditional process using bone gelatine and alum. Traditional elements of Chinese landscape painting have influenced the works, as well as the layering techniques of contemporary artists Michael Armitage and Cathrine Raben Davidsen. 

Colours are inspired by Chinese porcelain, specifically the distinctive bright blue and purple Junyao ware produced since the Song dynasty. Chinese ceramics are further explored in the porcelain takeaway boxes (shown at the preview only) which continue the examination of diasporic labour today, contrasting the undervalued labour in Chinese takeaways and restaurants with the high esteem given to Chinese art. This questioning of how labour is perceived runs throughout the show, providing the starting point for reflections on the role of the artist and the values of our own society. 

This exhibition has been kindly funded by The Elephant Trust.