“In this time of “Know my Name” and the restoration of hidden women to the artistic canon (and to the art market) the current exhibition at Sydney’s Vermilion Art hits the zeitgeist.” – Luise Guest
On the occasion of Dorveille’s showing at Vermilion Art, art writer Luise Guest published a blog post, “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This: Dorveille at Vermilion Art”.
“Dorveille” takes us into the personal imaginaries of each artist. Individually they explore their dreams, desires and fears, and the exhibition as a whole, beautifully installed in the gallery space, suggests the exposure of otherwise elusive, hidden worlds. But perhaps there is also another kind of ‘dorveille’. In some ways the experience of diaspora mirrors that liminal zone between sleep and wakefulness.
Living on the cusp of East and West, often moving across borders and between cultures, exhibiting internationally, wondering where is home, the artists in ‘Dorveille’ have each developed a visual language of material, image and form that examine the connections and disconnections of the diasporic experience.
(excerpt from “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This: Dorveille at Vermilion Art”)
Luise Guest is an independent art writer, lecturer and researcher with a focus on contemporary Chinese art. Her writing has appeared in numerous print and online journals including the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, Australasian Art Monthly, Artist Profile, and Yishu Journal. Her book about women artists in China, ‘Half the Sky‘, was published by Piper Press in 2016. She wrote the text for ‘99 Contemporary Chinese Artists‘ published by the White Rabbit Collection in Sydney in 2019. Luise has recently submitted a PhD thesis examining the work of four contemporary Chinese artists working with ink, examined through lenses of gender and Chineseness. Currently she teaches at UNSW Art & Design in the Masters of Curating and Cultural Leadership, and continues writing and lecturing about contemporary art in the People’s Republic of China.
To read the full blog post click here.
