How Go - A Constructed World
Hao did not come to Australia to study commerce, and once upon a time his father may have been disappointed about that. During the eight years Hao has been in Australia Chinese art has become so commodified that many a Chinese parent may have wished their daughter or son had studied art. Recently we spent three months in Guangzhou in southern China doing research. We were based at Vitamin Creative Space, maybe the coolest, most interesting gallery space in the world, (Frieze magazine, in a ‘what’s hot’ list, rated it the most interesting gallery in Asia – not that I much care for what’s hot and what’s not, but nevertheless). Despite that strange Chinese mix of communist/commercialism, they have managed to focus on ideas, theory, desire, the artists, writing, Confucianism, and sticking with the objectives. The creative directors, Zhang Wei and Hu Fang, get around all over the place speaking, representing their artists, presenting the project and promoting another kind of art made by artists from China rather than the overinflated nationalistic presentations seen in big galleries in Paris, London, New York, Beijing.

Not long after I met Hao he changed his name to How? He wanted his name to be a question. After thinking about it for a while he decided his father might be upset so he sold us his name and reverted back to his family name. A number of works Hao has made explore the emerging sexuality of an avatar he reinvented over and over (the artist himself?). The first penisless version was exhibited with ACW in How low river rose, curated by Rosemary Forde at Victoria Park gallery. The final sexualised version was recently exhibited in an ACW project, coordinated by Liv Barrett and James Deutsher, at CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux. Although it evolves the figure always remains in a kind of no-space zone, an erotic immigrant, or emigrant, losing and regaining its genitals. Perhaps this has been Hao’s pleasure, loving what-is-missing rather than longing for its return. How will this Chinese guy stop being an artist from Australia and become an artist from China?

Hao has created an education for himself in Australia that has much in common with the objectives of Vitamin Creative Space; collectivity, marking out a theoretical space and taking big risks, and being aware of who he is and where he is. Perhaps all along he has been preparing himself to move between the two cultures without really knowing it.

January 2009
Melbourne
 
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