The following is a brief preview - the full content of this page is available to premium users only.
Click here to subscribe...
Surface Paradise: from the dreams of Li Ji Although graffito's form is radical, its message often serves the ruling class. This was the case with a now famous example depicting a map of Australia with 'full' written across it. Lt involved unlawful violation of property, and yet the most highly paid spin-doctor could not have promoted more effectively One Nation's anti-Asian policies, or Liberai/Labor's hostility towards 'illegal immigrants'. In her latest exhibition, From the Dreams of Li Ji, Kale Beynon appropriates this xenophobic image and reverses its message. Replacing the word 'full' with Asian-styled script, she superimposes the defiant image of warrior girl Li Ji, Beynon's cartoon heroine, and frames her with the Chinese and English words for 'welcome'. By scrambling the visual signs that meaning inhabits, Beynon acknowledges the inadequacy of representation and the utopian aspect of her enterprise.
Politically speaking, however, she does not mince words. In the context of Beynon's oeuvre, From the Dreams of Li Ji is a 'return to painting'. Continuing her story of Li Ji, a contemporary Australian Chinese girl who appears in different eras and lives, it comprises seven large canvases, two of which form a diptych, in brightly coloured acrylic paint and aerosol enamel. The series was displayed in the main room of the Sultan Gallery, while seven small canvases, with imagery relating to the first cycle, adorned an adjoining room. Featuring Li Ji, members of her family in various mythical incarnations and historical settings, plus an array of attributes and symbols, the series as a whole suggests the iconic splendour of European Renaissance dynastic portraiture. The iconography, however, which includes the Phoenix, a dragon, the Longevity Tree, and a tiger