Centre For Chinese Contemporary Art

Our professional development module took us offsite today, with a visit to the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) in Manchester.  Having already attended a talk by the Artist Samson Young, who is currently exhibiting at the centre, there were no surprises for me in the projects and events that take place at CFCCA. As I had already seen Samson Young's 'One of two Stories or Both' exhibition, it was good to see the exhibition in gallery 1, 'From Ocean to Horizon'.  To have the curator talk us through the process of selecting the artist for this exhibition, and how the themes are planned through out the year, gave us an insight of what is involved and the time span required for the exhibition to become an event.

The current artist in residents is Tzu - Ting Wang.  She arrived in the UK two weeks ago, and has made the studio her home already.  The discussions around her working in different environment and how she responds to those spaces were really interesting, and has made me think of my own reaction when working in a new environment and how that will effect my creative work. Her use of materials made perfect sense to me, having commuted to Manchester by train for 6 years whilst studying at MMU, this makes you limit yourself as to what you can physically carry.  This may be a constraint on your creativity, or it can been seen as a way of reducing the amount of choice of media we have as artist therefore working within set limits.  I found her approach to creating new work interesting, as she was planning work for a specific place, that being one of the gallery spaces with the centre.  As I have only ever created for myself or for assessments, and then had to negotiate space to exhibit, I feel very envious of the opportunity that Ting Wang has.  This will help me to think about my placement next year, and planning future residencies.

RESIDENCY: TZU-TING WANG

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Tzu-Ting Wang
Taipei Artist Village; Artist in
Residence exchange
8 October – 19 December
Open studio:
Thursday 30 November, 6 – 8pm
Recent fine art graduate Tzu-Ting Wang will take up residence at CFCCA as part of our annual exchange programme with Taipei Artist Village. Tzu-Ting Wang plans to use the residency to continue her interest in finding ways to create visual representations of the different states of emotion. Her work incorporates a diverse range of mediums such as painting, book binding and installations.

After our talk and I had a meeting with Marianna Tsionki, the research curator at the centre.  I had already approached the centre and registered my interest in doing voluntary work for them, to prepare me for this MA.  At present the CFCCA has Lottery Heritage funding for cataloguing their archive.  As part of my PDP, I will be volunteering my time one day per week at the centre, to help with this work.  As I am interested in how archives can support, inspire and educate, this seems appropriate for me to develop these skills and gain a better understanding of the process of cataloguing an archive.  This may also determine my choice of placement for next year.  Marianna's own research project for her PhD is also fascinating, and I like the idea of spending time with other academics and PhD students, to discover if this would be a suitable route for me to go down, as I'm uncertain of the commitment that I would have to make and the research I would want to do.