Ink Remix at CMAG: Chinese traditions remixed in cutting-edge collection

These are the things that most commonly spring to mind when it comes to Chinese ink art – ancient methods and traditional subjects, perhaps reinterpreted in a contemporary context but always recognisable. Recognisable and safe, from both a local and a western perspective.

And yet, in the past decade, traditional Chinese ink art has been swiftly and comprehensively turned on its head, with a new generation of artists using the medium to question tradition, experiment with form and ruminate on what it means to be an artist in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong today.

For Canberra-based curator and writer Sophie McIntyre, it's an irresistible phenomenon, and one that demands a second look. The Brisbane native has a long-standing fascination with China, dating back to the mid-1980s, when her parents were posted there to work on various aid projects. An art student at the time, she travelled frequently to see them, initially in the remote south-western province of Yunnan where they were based, and, later, more widely through the rest of China and Taiwan.

"I found it really, really interesting on a cultural level, and it was just before the kind of opening up of China. I think when you go, particularly in that period, you can't help but be impressed in different ways, and for it to impress itself on you," she says.

She was instantly hooked on the place, and, a trained painter herself, has immersed herself in the country's artistic sector ever since, studying the language and culture both in situ and back in Australia.

"I'd never call myself an expert, because there's always just so much more to learn, and my focus has been fairly much on post-World War II 1945 onwards, more on the contemporary side, and particularly work from this region – Hong Kong, China and Taiwan," she says.

Now based in Canberra, a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, she has watched with fascination as contemporary Chinese ink art has taken the art world by storm, featuring in several major exhibitions at leading international institutions and fetching record prices in the global art market.

When, two years ago, she pitched a new exhibition showcasing the movement at Canberra Museum and Gallery, director Shane Breynard didn't hesitate – seeing an opportunity to engage with a wider audience, reinterpret the meaning of "regional" when applied to the capital's main gallery, and bring some hipster cred to Civic Square.

The perfect setting then, for a show like Ink Remix, a collection of works in which ink is more often than not replaced by a diverse range of media, including Coca-Cola, tea, biro and ink-jet prints, interspersed with video, photography and animation. McIntyre has spent the better part of two years researching, travelling, speaking to artists, and whittling down her brief to encompass the work of 14 artists from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, most of whom were born in the 1970s and '80s and are presenting works created in the past five years, questioning or reinterpreting preconceived notions of Chinese ink art.

When she first set out to research the contemporary ink art movement, she was dubious as to whether it could even be described as a phenomenon, she says.

"There are certain cynics that argue it's just completely market-driven ... but at the same time, I was a little bit sceptical, I must say, at first," she says.

"I thought, 'well, there's this whole emergence of a middle class in China who are very wealthy, with disposable incomes to buy art, and traditionally Chinese have tended towards buying more traditional works, so obviously this ink tradition links with ink art' ... But also western collectors like to, for whatever reason, buy work that kind of assimilates eastern-western traditions or has a language that they can understand. So this does it too because the artists are working in a range of media and exploring very global concerns."

In other words, the movement tied in neatly with certain environmental and social issues that were preoccupying certain sectors of the art market. But when she began speaking to artists, she realised they were motivated by something far more complex and less easily defined.

"They describe this sense of disorientation, dislocation, there was a sort of nostalgia that was coming through that I found quite interesting, and also a degree of nationalism amongst the mainland Chinese artists, that they're sort of wanting to reclaim their heritage," she says.

Many had been brought up, through modern education systems or books and popular culture, on a western-oriented diet, and were now yearning to learn more about their own traditions.

She worked her way through a vast field of artists, deciding early to limit the exhibition to artists born after the 1960s, thus cutting out an entire generation. She says there were far more eligible artists than the 14 she eventually selected, but she was searching for work that contained a particular discourse.

"What I was really interested in was not how artists were replicating the ink tradition or obviously doing it just for commercial reasons, I was interested more in the ones who had really done research into it, who were quite serious about it, and who were also critiquing it and subverting it," she says.

"I was looking for that critical engagement ... Westerners tend to think of Chinese art as either very political or, when you say ink, traditional kind of landscapes and [calligraphy]. That was very much of a conscious decision too, to try and select work that really challenged that idea. The stylistic diversity I think is one thing that is really striking in the show."

She was also very conscious of including artists from Taiwan and Hong Kong, who have their own take onChinese traditions. McIntyre's PhD focused on art and politics – identity issues, essentially – in Taiwanese art, and the ambiguous relationship between Taiwan and China.

"One of the artists ... is commenting partly on the mainland Chinese infiltration of Chinese simplified characters," she says.

"He's mourning the loss, in a way, of his culture, even though he was born in China, of the traditional characters, because increasingly these simplified characters are supplanting the complex characters."

Another artist from Hong Kong also mourns a loss, that of many of the old buildings that made up Hong Kong's heritage – "the buildings he remembers as a kid".

"I think there is a bit of nostalgia to this, but I think it's also very much a response to the rapid pace of change that's happening in these societies."

She says creating the exhibition for a small gallery like CMAG has been a boon when it comes to generating a contemporary snapshot of an entire movement.

"It's very current, it's very fresh, and that's the wonderful thing about working in a gallery like this, or in a smaller gallery as distinct from the National Museum or the National Gallery – you have to respond fairly rapidly to what's happening," she says.

Breynard says the exhibition is a perfect fit in this point of the gallery's evolution – a small institution with a deceptively large brief.

"A big part of CMAG's brief is to present exhibitions that tell the story of our region, which is often considered to include the NSW councils areas bordering the ACT," he says.

"We have stretched this boundary a bit over recent years, and from a global perspective, mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong are, of course, near neighbours." He points out that this broader focus is one factor that has driven increased visitation to CMAG, which has doubled in recent years.

He sees the show as "an opportunity to respond to our region's curiosity about contemporary China, and satisfy the desire for a sophisticated understanding of our Chinese neighbours". And it's a show as much for the city's Chinese residents and visitors – most of whom come from China – as for those with Western roots.

"I recognise it would always be an exhibition where unfamiliar cultural references require an interpretation for a Western audience, but we also want the art selection and presentation to feel natural for people whose heritage lies within the region – we want it to feel the same as it would to walk into a leading contemporary gallery in Beijing, or Shanghai, Taipei or Hong Kong."

It will also be CMAG's biggest touring exhibition to date, and after Canberra will travel to the Bendigo Art Gallery, the University of NSW Galleries in Sydney and the Museum of Brisbane.

For all the boldness of the subject matter, the works are not as politically fraught as the average viewer might expect.

"In some ways, [the movement] ties in quite nicely with the official ideology, so in some ways, that's another criticism of this movement, is that it's kind of officially condoned," McIntyre says.

"But none of them are doing particularly radical things, as the political pop artists did with Mao and all the rest, so it's not in your face. But it is still, I would argue, a critique of society, of political decisions that are being made – bulldozing a mountain to allow a train line to go through, or the whole eradication of nature and heritage and their childhood memories, really. So there is a real sense of disillusionment that I've picked up in talking to these artists."

But above all, McIntyre says, the exhibition is imbued with a sense of wonder, and playfulness: printed coins; an entire, ravaged landscape rendered in a delicate glass bowl, terrarium-style; delicately painted silk slippers and knee-high boots; willowy female figures that evoke the Hong Kong cityscape; and the mysterious goings-on inside one young artist's own mouth.

"Most of these artists they appropriate quite randomly from traditional Chinese artists, from the internet, mostly, but they don't actually even recall the names of the artists," she says, laughing.

"I guess in the postmodernist context – it's just not important to them. To them what's important is how traditional works convey a kind of sentiment or a message that can be interpreted in an international and contemporary context. They're quite adamant, all of these artists, that they're not ink painters, they don't see their works as a continuation of this tradition ... They see themselves as creating a new language that draws from tradition but also draws from global cosmopolitan cultural influences."

Contemporary ink art is, in other words, as diverse as whatever the world has to offer – reworked, reinterpreted, and retold in a new and exciting light.

Ink Remix: Contemporary art from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong opens at Canberra Museum and Gallery on July 3 and runs until October 18.