Page 57 - Annual Review 2008

RESOuRCES / 57
People holding flowers is the most ambitious sculpture
to date by collaborative artists Zhu Weibing and
Ji Wenyu. This exceptional work, which reflects the
artists’ growing international profile, is comprised of
400 individual figures made from the same mould: their
hands, faces and feet are painted with bright plastic
colours, and each wears an immaculate matching
black business suit. Their colourful faces are blank and
expressionless, although a sense of dynamism and
movement is created by their poses and the lush, tactile
fabric of the flowers.
ZHu wEiBiNG AND Ji wENyu
People holding flowers 2007
Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu / People holding flowers (detail) 2007 / Acrylic paint on resin; velour,
steel wire, dacron, lodestone and cotton / Purchased 2008 with funds from Michael Simcha
Baevski through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Early acquisition for APT6,
opening Dec 2009
The flowers inevitably recall Chairman Mao's dictum
'Let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred schools of
thought contend', which preceded the bloody purges
of his ‘100 flowers campaign’ of 1957. As artists of
the post-Cultural Revolution generation, Zhu Weibing
and Ji Wenyu endow these flowers with an additional
significance, representing the increasing consumerism
of contemporary society.