When important people arrive it always rains

The Opening for Parklife at MOCA Shanghai, China 2014-04-26
The Director of MOCA explained that in China there is a saying that when important people are due to arrive it always rains!

Parklife Poster - English Version - MOCA - People's Park - Shanghai

The City Squares project is a project based on a partnership of exchange between students studying Public Art at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts and students of Fine Art and Interior and Spatial Design at Chelsea College of Arts. The focus of research and exchange has been the role of art in creating value in public spaces. In October 2013 staff and students from SIVA installed the project “Shine” airing textiles sharing information in the sun, a shared history of British and Chinese business in the growth of Shanghai as a world city in the 20th century. “Parklife” is set of interlinked responses to the natural aesthetic and historic context of People’s Park. The values already present in the aesthetic experience of the park are the inspiration for the students from Chelsea as they draw attention to what is already there. Thanks to Dingyi and Wang Yijia and the staff and students from SIVA who have instigated this project along with Philip Courtenay and Martyn Simpson from Chelsea College of Arts.

Portal

Yichi Duan, Marina Fahim, Chiaki Matsumoto

Connecting London and Shanghai using zoetropes, originating in China and influential in the history of the moving image. As you look through a peephole you will be transported to a different place and animated with each turn of the drum.

Soft Stones

Anta Germane, Yi Qiu, Henry Cheng, Naomi Figueiredo

A harmonious moment of transformation between the traditional style of Taihu Shi stones in the park and the lines of modern architecture seen in the MOCA building. Creating a place for resting.

Bird Song

Lexi Stones

Inspired by the love of Chinese birdsong Lexi has brought the sound of the ‘dawn chorus’ from an English countryside to the people of Shanghai, contained in boxes inspired by our Chelsea College of Arts.

Deep in the City

Korina Cruz, Abdul Jabber Juneida, Natalia Davtyan, Joey Phinn

Our visions are blurred in hectic pace of vast metropolitan cities, but underneath there lies hidden natural treasures.

Auspicious Eight

Jheni Arboine

Eight abstracted rose petals with eight stripes of eight different shades of red in eight locations creating another circle within the park.

Parklife - People's Park - Shanghai

Parklife

Shine SIVA public art project for Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground - Chelsea College of Arts

At the beginning of October 2013 some of our partners in the City Squares Project, a group of teachers and their students, arrived in London from the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts to install a public artwork on the Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground on the Chelsea College of Arts campus.

Bamboo poles, rope and rocks from the Thames riverbank were used to create a number of structures in the centre of this city square that looks on to the Tate Britain art museum.

Bamboo poles are traditionally used in Shanghai to hang washing out to dry in the sun. This is where the title of the work "Shine" comes from. It is about sunshine and its drying and refreshing power.

Hanging from the bamboo structures are textiles reminiscent of the bedding that would traditionally in Shanghai be be hung out of doors and aired when the sun comes out. The students from SIVA used these textile sheets to visually communicate how in their city there is a fascinating history of links between British business and the way Shanghai became in the 20th century a rival in Modernity to New York, Paris, Berlin and, of course London. So this project celebrates the links between China and the United Kingdom, and Shanghai's connections to British business and the capital city of the UK. Shanghai and London have been sister cities since 1996.

Last proposal post from SIVA today

And another proposal from SIVA