Shanghai surprise

VISUAL ART:A co-operative project between Irish and Chinese students, based on the Shanghai Expo, has produced some truly unexpected, refreshing works of art, writes CLIFFORD COONAN

IN THE PORTERHOUSE bar at the Shanghai Expo, students from Ireland’s DIT School of Art and Design and their teachers are considering just how to put into context the massive human effort that has gone into staging one of the truly spectacular events of our time.

Outside the Expo pavilion, it’s scorching hot. Tens of thousands of people are milling around the world fair in China’s biggest city, Shanghai.

“The aim was to visually document our personal responses to this exciting event during a two-week period in September: an exciting proposal and a very creative and challenging brief,” says artist John Short who, with fellow artist Tom Kelly, led the group of 10 students to collaborate with 10 of their counterparts from the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art (SIVA), part of Fudan University.

Their brief was to visually record the event and display the creative results in the VIP gallery of the Irish Pavilion, which was voted one of the top five pavilions at the Expo.

Among the characters to emerge from the collaboration were aliens, the Chinese Eight Immortals of Taoist legend, a Panda umbrella, Chairman Mao with a camera and can of cola, Wayne Rooney and even St Patrick himself.

The Expo, which ends tomorrow, is the kind of public event that cries out for an artistic response – and this is the challenge that students had to rise to. Even finding your way around it can be problematic. It’s a vast site – spectacular, but difficult to get your head around.

On the banks of the Huangpu river, the fair features 190 countries and 30 Chinese regions, plus Hong Kong, Taiwan and 48 international organisations. There are five large themed and 18 corporate pavilions, all presented with the slogan: “Better city, better life.”

Short and Kelly were undaunted. “We had already co-operated with the SIVA students and their teacher Jane Zhou on a project called City Types, whereby students had to produce a series of visual interpretations of portraits of citizens of both Dublin and Shanghai. It was a great success, most enjoyable and with insightful results,” says John Short.

Short and Kelly were keen for the students to bring their own interpretations of the Expo – the architecture, the atmosphere, the diversity, the people, the fantasy and the humour of their experience – which led to very individual pieces of work from both sets of students.

During a trip to Shanghai in 2008, they outlined their plan for the Expo project to the Irish Consul, Conor O’Riordan and, with the support of the director of Culture Ireland, Eugene Downes, the project was on.

Kelly and Short spent six weeks in Shanghai co-ordinating the project, and the students spent a busy two weeks working on the site.“Both sets of students had already worked together, which helped. The DIT students involved had already been on a field trip to China with us and were familiar with Shanghai and working there and that also helped,” said Short.

The heat in Shanghai – in the 30s a lot of the time – combined with the colossal numbers of daily visitors to the Expo, made for a challenging environment. “The pressure of having to deliver a professional piece of work to the exhibition deadline was terrifying for most – actually, for all – of the students. This was good. Many had to work through nights to achieve professional results. The 24-hour pizza delivery guy was devastated to see them go,” says Short.

The results were worth the effort. “The architecture of the pavilions was set out as a designer meal and consumed by young Chinese trendies. The birth of the ubiquitous Haibao, the blue Expo logo, was revealed and another student, in comic graphic detail, foretold the end of Expo. Various techniques were used, from traditional Chinese paper cutouts to acrylic paintings on wood, watercolours, and from photomontages to digitally manipulated images/photographs.”

The most enjoyable parts of this experience were the many debates about the work with the SIVA students, particularly getting a feel for the cultural perspectives.

“These were the real learning parts. Also being able to observe the reaction and obvious curiosity of visitors, predominately Chinese, to the exhibition was very interesting – useful and fun for all of us. They were obviously delighted and intrigued.”

Sarah McGinty from Drogheda said that one of her immediate impressions was how different everything was: “The food, the culture . . . I had read up a lot before,” she says. McGinty’s interest was in exploring the religious dimension of the Expo, how it is a form of Mecca for the visitor. “Also the style. They are very up to speed and into it and imaginative. They cotton on to things in fashion very quickly,” she says.

One of the Chinese students, Li Xinyi, says the exchange with the Irish artists stood out as one of the most special memories of her college career so far. “I learned a lot from the Irish professors and classmates during our time working together. The Irish artists respect and cherish your original idea, and to them our personal ideas were very important,” she says.

“To me, one of the biggest differences between Chinese students and Irish students is that we mostly think about ‘big’ subjects on a macro level, while they are always concerned with ‘little’ in a micro way. They can express each of their little concepts in their productions. Less is more,” she says.

The Chinese students have visited Dublin and found the rhythm of life there slower than in Shanghai. “It seems all the people are enjoying their easygoing life in that beautiful city. So the kind of expression in Irish art comes across as free-spirited and natural. I love the life in Ireland, and I adore the art there,” says Li.

Co-operation with the Irish contingent helped the Chinese students get ideas from a completely different angle.

“This show gave Irish and Chinese students the chance to exhibit their productions, and the chance to do our exhibition together on the same platform. This is so great, because we can exchange the advantage and disadvantage from both sides in the most direct way,” says Li.

“Personally I appreciated this opportunity a lot, and I hope we will have more chances to communicate in the future – because art needs communication beyond borders.”

Tom Kelly and John Short’s exhibition of prints from their field trips to Morocco, Tunisia, China and Ireland runs at the Tramyard Gallery, Dalkey, next Monday to Saturday. See johnshort.ie