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42 Earth and Elsewhere | Contemporary Works from the Collection
Earth and Elsewhere | Contemporary Works from the Collection 43
Guan Wei
/ China/Australia b.1957 /
Echo
2005 / Synthetic polymer paint on canvas / 42 panels: 273 x 722cm (overall) / Acc. 2006.247a–pp / Purchased 2006.
The Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund
Guan We i
Echo
2005
Guan Wei’s work is informed by his interests in history, the
environment and cross-cultural migrations. Here he has
appropriated images of Europeans exploring the Pacific Ocean
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from early books
and later historical paintings of European exploration. Guan Wei
reconstructs and grafts images onto the famous Chinese
landscape painting
Jiu Ri Shi Cheng Tu Juan
by Wang Yuanqi
(1641–1715). In doing so, he compares China and Europe:
the former drew in on itself, becoming culturally introspective,
while the latter aggressively expanded, absorbing other cultures.
Echo
is a contemporary history painting about some of the most
complex and troubling issues of the present: migration, conquest,
reconciliation, even Australia’s status as a refuge. Its title
suggests that the past continues to affect the present but will
diminish like an echo with time, allowing new voices to resonate
into the future.