4A will be open late until 8pm over two consecutive nights, Friday 8 and Saturday 9 February during the City of Sydney’s Chinese New Year Festival’s opening weekend.See Song Dong’s exhibition and join us for gallery floortalks held on both nights at 7pm, before making your way to one of the many celebrations around Sydney.
Come and celebrate the Chinese New Year, Year of the Snake with us! Share the Facebook Event with you friends.
Gallery Hours
Fri 8 February 11AM – 8PM
Sat 9 February 11AM – 8PM
Floortalks led by gallery staff on both nights at 7PM
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
181-187 Hay St, Sydney NSW
Contact: 02 9212 0380 Maplink
Dad and Mum, Don’t Worry About Us, We Are AllWellis an exhibition of work by Song Dong spanning the last 30 years
Emerging as an important artist during a period of significant cultural, social and economic transformation in China, Song Dong’s work reinforces the family unit as a microcosm for society at large.
Song Dong creates spaces in contemporary art where members of his family from the present and the past are able to reunite and establish connections. Family members are featured in the artist’s earlier experimental video, photographic, sculptural and neon works which present compelling portraits of parent and child relationships and the power of simple actions in the process of memorialising and remembering. Song Dong’s experimentation with video over the past three decades – superimposing images of himself, his father, his mother and his daughter – bears the hallmark of emotional and spiritual connections but with the impossibility of physical contact ever materialising. Since his parent’s passing, Song Dong created his neon work, Dad and Mum, Don’t Worry About Us, We Are All Well (2011)which faces the direction of the sky and relays a personal message from his family to his late father, Song Shiping and late mother, Zhao Xiangyuan.
Coinciding with Dad and Mum, Don’t Worry about Us, We are All Well isWaste Not presented at Carriageworks, Song Dong’s most celebrated work previously exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2009 and London’s Barbican Art Gallery in 2012.
Dad and Mum, Don’t Worry about Us, We are All Well andWaste Not are presented by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and Carriageworks in association with Sydney Festival.
Song Dong (born 1966) lives and works in Beijing and has been at the forefront of conceptual art in China since the 1990s. Known for combining aspects of performance, video, photography, sculpture, and installation, Song Dong’s works are often ephemeral and utilize modest materials that explore notions of transience and impermanence in personal, local, and global spheres. He has long been part of a traditional, tight-knit Beijing community, and his work reflects the everyday concerns and realities of his neighbors. Song Dong graduated from the Normal University in Beijing in 1989 and has exhibited widely in Asia and abroad. Recent exhibitions include Song Dong (2008) at the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai; Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China (2004-2006) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; and Oalors, a chine: Chinese Contemporary Art (2003) at the Center Pompidou in Paris. His work was presented at the 2004 Sao Paolo Biennale in Brazil and at the 2003 Istanbul Biennale. He was also shown in the exhibition Inside Out: New Chinese Art Exhibition (1998) at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center.
VIDEO INTERVIEWS
Song Dong and curators, Aaron Seeto and Lisa Havilah were recently interviewed about the exhibitions, Dad and Mum, Don’t Worry About Us, We Are All Well presented at 4A and Waste Not presented at Carriageworks. With thanks to Das Platforms.
Carriageworks and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in association with Sydney Festival proudly presents, Waste Not by Song Dong.
From his family home in Beijing, to the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Barbican Art Gallery in London, Waste Not presented at Carriageworks is a transformative installation by one of China’s pre-eminent artists, Song Dong. Conceived by the artist following the death of his father, the work represents his mother’s process of mourning and remembrance. Consisting of the entire contents of his mother’s house, Waste Not reflects a journey of hardship and grief, resulting in a display of personal resilience and ultimately a celebration of life.
Coinciding with Waste Not is Dad and Mum, Don’t Worry About Us, We Are All Well, presented at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, an important survey of Song Dong’s work from the last three decades which reinforces the power of simple actions and the process of remembering.
Song Dong (born 1966) lives and works in Beijing and has been at the forefront of conceptual art in China since the 1990s. Known for combining aspects of performance, video, photography, sculpture, and installation, Song Dong’s works are often ephemeral and utilize modest materials that explore notions of transience and impermanence in personal, local, and global spheres. He has long been part of a traditional, tight-knit Beijing community, and his work reflects the everyday concerns and realities of his neighbors. Song Dong graduated from the Normal University in Beijing in 1989 and has exhibited widely in Asia and abroad. Recent exhibitions include Song Dong (2008) at the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai; Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China (2004-2006) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; and Oalors, a chine: Chinese Contemporary Art (2003) at the Center Pompidou in Paris. His work was presented at the 2004 Sao Paolo Biennale in Brazil and at the 2003 Istanbul Biennale. He was also shown in the exhibition Inside Out: New Chinese Art Exhibition (1998) at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center.
VIDEO INTERVIEWS
Song Dong and curators, Aaron Seeto and Lisa Havilah were recently interviewed about the exhibitions, Dad and Mum, Don’t Worry About Us, We Are All Well presented at 4A and Waste Not presented at Carriageworks. With thanks to Das Platforms.
