Friday, April 22, 2011

I arrive in London the day before the South African photographic show, ‘Figures and Fictions’, opens at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The show has had terrific pre publicity, with an eight page spread in the London Sunday Times. On Monday April 11, Lisa Brice and I head for the opening. Some of the artists are here – Terry Kurgan, Lolo Veleko and Pieter Hugo – and it is good to catch up with locals art historian Annie Coombes and artist Joy Gregory. ArtThrob’s international editor Amy Halliday is there, and so, of course, is curator Tamar Garb. The show has great energy.

Zwelethu Mthethwa’s Untitled from The Brave Ones series at the V&A

Across town, dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has filled the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern with more than 100,000,000 porcelain sunflower seeds, each handformed and painted by 1600 porcelain workers in the town of Jingdizhen over a two year period.

Ai Weiwei with Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern

Simply called ‘Sunflower Seeds’ the piece has many layers of meaning, During Mao’s cultural revolution, sunflower seeds were often the only food available, so they are both a symbol of repression, and of a small way of sharing in those austere times.

On April 3, Ai Weiwei was arrested at the airport as he attempted to leave mainland China for Hong Kong. An international outcry has followed. The Chinese authorities refuse to release him and have said he was arrested for tax evasion.

Earlier this week, I signed a petition calling for his release. Today Good Friday, comes the news that the change.org site is under cyber attack from within China, evidence that the petition is working. Here is the link. Please sign, http://www.change.org/petitions/call-for-the-release-of-ai-weiwei