THE RICE IS ALREADY COOKED, 2015, 100 x 200cm, Acrylic on Canvas

china dream

SALT Gallery, 2015, New Zealand
The Millennium Public Art Gallery, 2016, New Zealand

CHINA DREAM - FROM HUTONG TO HIGH RISE, 2016 by Anna-Marie White, The Suter Art Gallery Te Aratoi o Whakatu
In 2013 and ‘14 Chandler undertook two artist residencies in Asia, the first, supported by the Asia New Zealand Foundation, at Instinc Gallery in Singapore, and the second at Red Gate in Beijing. Her residency applications were based on her active research interest in the ‘non-places’ of global cities, of which Singapore and Beijing were prime examples. Chandler soon discovered that these places were growing into mega cities with the insidious effects of globalisation becoming more apparent: from the loss of local culture to gross economic disparities and environmental pollution.

During Chandler’s Red Gate residency, the Chinese government implemented a massive expansion programme that would see Beijing at the centre of a planned megalopolis - Jing-Jin-Ji - encompassing Tianjin and areas of Hebei, with a projected population of 130 million. Jing-Jin-Ji is intended to invigorate and revitalise China’s culture, economy and identity; a reformist agenda that is summarised by the motto ‘The Chinese Dream’, which is inspired, in part, by the middle class ‘American Dream’.

‘Non-places’ will proliferate in the planned development yet Chandler found herself drawn to hútòngs, original alleyways that network through the city. It is here that indigenous culture still exists, though as Chandler describes, in Third World conditions. Initially she was shocked by the extreme contrast between the ‘local’ and ‘global’ spaces of Beijing and began to investigate the projected impacts of Jing-Jin-Ji.
Read Anna-Marie’s full essay here

Read an article by Judith Ritchie, The Nelson Mail, New Zealand, October 2014