ARTISTS TALKING

# 27 [1 February 2010]

www.sarahsanders.co.uk

# 26 [23 June 2009]

Friend's of Yan Yan

Zheng Li is doing a residency at Quad, Derby. 

http://www.derbyquad.co.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/ar...

Yingmei Duan. Marina Abramovic Presents..The Whitworth Art Gallery.

She is naked and walking slowly around the space. She pauses between each step and sways gently. I watch her move and hear her breathing as she walks towards me. She touches her breasts. Her eyes are closed and I am looking at her. I notice there are people watching her and keeping their distance. A man walks slowly into the room and pauses close to her. I watch her walk slowly towards him. She passing around him, touching her breasts and breathing. She finally passes him and he walks away from her. She slowly walks towards me, swaying. It is as if she can sense me. I am frozen. I think about leaving but my feet are determined to stay put. I want to know what is going to happen. She gets closer to me and it is too late to move. I can feel every eye in the gallery turn towards us. She is very close to my body now and for a moment I don't know where to look. My heart is beating very fast. I close my eyes and concentrate on her movements and her breathing. Before she leaves me she pushes her body into mine. I am surprised and at first I am worried that I have done something wrong. She walks off slowly pausing between each step and sways. I pause for a moment and think about what just happened, resume then walk away. 

Yingmei Duan performed at the Vital festival at Chinese Arts Centre in 2006 and 2007. http://www.vitalfestival.org/index.html

http://www.yingmei-art.com/en/

# 25 [23 June 2009]

2 days before departure

Enjoying spring Chicken on South Mountain surrounded by cherry blossom and Bonsai trees. 

This is Chen. She is very talented. She is a musician, artist and for a living works on the radio playing the latest trends in music. She is also very good at operatic singing and classical dancing. Later that evening she demonstrated this to me and got me to join in after a stomach filling, of sadly, my final hotpot. Well I'm not one for saying no. She is truly inspiring! 

Long swaying grass, throwing stones, jumping in the sand, drinking tea, playing cards, tickling our noses with rolled up tissue to make us sneeze, holding hands, the city lights and music from all over the world filling our ears. 

# 24 [22 June 2009]

Celebrating my exhibition. 

# 23 [22 June 2009]

Performance

# 22 [22 June 2009]

stopstart preview

# 21 [7 April 2009]

My five-week residence uplifted and daunted me. Understanding culture differences was probably the hardest thing for me to deal with. Repulsion to touch, smell and see. Unfamiliar tastes and noise repelled and disturbed me from the environment at the worst of times. The best way to deal with these difficulties was to just get on with what I had to do; get up, eat, work, smoke and drink beer. If I didn’t like what I saw then I didn’t look. If I didn’t like the smell then I held my nose. I soon found myself behaving more and more like the Chinese; spitting, making nasal sounds, eating everything and with my mouth open! If you can’t beat them join them.

Actually getting down to do what I needed to do was not always straightforward. Pressures from myself about the Arts Council, the blog and the residency began to paralyse me. Every time I was in my studio I felt like I should have been outside ‘seeing Chongqing’ and every time I was ‘seeing Chongqing’ I felt like I should have been in my studio. I struggled to juggle them for a while until I realised that I was the one creating the paradox. So I stopped blogging and e-mailing. I stopped thinking about the Arts Council and everybody and started to think about what I wanted to do. Very quickly everything came together. It was incredible! I realised that there is no right or wrong and to fail is a good way to start. It was very liberating. 

# 20 [10 March 2009]

Angela Euder. Kassel. 6 month exchange programme with Sichuan Art School.

# 19 [10 March 2009]

Baoding Shan at Dazu.

This site is the life work of the monk Zhao Zhifeng, who raised the money, designed and oversaw the carving between 1179 and 1245.  

# 18 [10 March 2009]

I met Zhang Yi in the Himalaya Bookshop and asked to see some of his work at his  apartment. At last I have found something I really like, and, like in my work he is very interested in Chinese painting and doing something modern and thought provoking from traditional art practice. He studies works of old Chinese painting with enthusiasm and then paints a background wash of colour. Using one line he draws the entire work with a brush and re-creates an old painting. This technic is inspired by the way old masters used to draw water.