A dog licking words onto a wall with dog food, intricate Asian landscapes using Coca-Cola and biro, and flattened coins painted with microscopic images may not be the things that come to mind when thinking of Chinese ink art.
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But the works are all among the diverse Ink Remix exhibition featuring more than 35 pieces never before seen in Australia by 14 artists from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong opening at the Canberra Museum and Gallery on Friday.
Curator Dr Sophie McIntyre said the works, all created in the past decade, were diverse in style and media with everything from video art and animation to paintings using tea and Coca-Cola.
"It's a phenomenon emerging over the last decade or so with a lot of artists in this region looking back to this tradition of ink painting and exploring it in a very contemporary context and dealing with a range of global issues," she said.
"One of the objectives is to challenge people's preconceptions of what ink art is, people just think of it in the traditional scroll-like context with ink and brush, but it's been changing over the centuries and it's not a static genre."
Visitors to the gallery will be able to hear from four of the featured artists including Ni Youyu at a talk on Saturday July 4 from 1pm to 2.30pm.
The Shanghai artist's installation Galaxy features hundreds of coins from around the world beaten until flat and delicately painted with body parts, tiny landscapes, and other images all without using a magnifying glass.
The piece was inspired by his poverty stricken situation post-art school coinciding with the GFC.
Mr Ni said he sees the work as a reflection of the cycle of value – the coins are devalued when they are beaten flat but the art adds value and the significant historical figures on the coins such as Queen Elizabeth are humanized when they almost obliterated from the coin and painted over with a skull.
Dr McIntyre said the exhibition was loosely themed around landscape, the body, language and metaphysics and spirituality.
But many of the works combine ideas such as three traditional ink paintings by Hong Kong artist Wilson Shieh which reimagine the city's famous high-rise buildings pre and post 1997 as slender women.
Taipei artist Yao Jui-Chung specially created his large biro and gold leaf piece for the exhibition with the seven panels featuring the artist and his family in typical Australian settings floating in front of a distinctly Chinese backdrop – even Canberra gets a nod with balloons hovering over Parliament House.
While Rising Mist a video animation by Yang Yongliang shows city scenes merged into Chinese mountains gradually dissolving to white as pollution takes over, others like Peng Hung-Chih's Canine Monk series are more playful with the videos showing the artist's dog licking Chinese calligraphy and religious phrases off the wall and then magically licking them back on again.
CMAG director Shane Breynard said the exhibition recognised Canberra's curiosity about the region especially at a time when the ACT government was opening lots of doors in Asia.
"It's a cultural literacy program as much as anything and there's a real hunger for it," he said.
The exhibition runs until October 18 before it tours the Bendigo Art Gallery, University of NSW Galleries Sydney and the Museum of Brisbane.
