Life in A Chinese Art Village: Julian Tolhurst
Glasgow-based Canadian artist Julian Tolhurst discusses his three and a half years living, teaching and working as an artist in China
For three and a half years, newly Glasgow-based artist Julian Tolhurst taught and lived as an artist in China. Breaking the Canadian expat’s “five minute rule” (“you have five minutes to talk about where you used to live then you have to shut up because no one cares”), he gives an insight into his experience of teaching, making and exhibiting work in China.
When Tolhurst says he worked within a Chinese art community, there’s a more literal edge as he lived in an art village called Songzhuang. “It’s 30 minutes outside Beijing. There are people that are just barely getting by, making and painting whatever they want. Then there are people that are really rich, all in that one community. But the entire community, about 7000 people, all make their living either selling food to artists, stretching canvasses, or running foundries for artists.”
Some of the success of the Songzhuang artists’ colony may be explained by the availability of large and affordable studios. Tolhurst worked in a “huge” studio with its own bedroom, kitchen and bathroom for 3000 Canadian dollars (about £1500) a year. There were a few false starts before Tolhurst found himself in a comfortable set-up. Initially, he visited Songzhuang a few times before being able to learn of any opportunities. “It was so inaccessible because I didn’t speak the language. A lot of people do speak English but it’s not as prevalent as people would think.”
Gradually picking up the language, he was able to rent a space within the building for a special effects company. “After two months, everything was knocked down apart from my studio. They waited for me to get all my drawings and paints out, then they knocked it down. It hadn’t been scheduled to be knocked down for six more months but they just got ahead of schedule.”
Gentrification and Political Engagement
While studio space might still be relatively cheap, “those opportunities are disappearing as more people hear about it and go for residencies.” Though in this case on a more international level, he sees a parallel too with the kind of gentrification that’s more familiar within areas of specific cities that host artist communities until they become prohibitively expensive. “There was a place downtown called 798. It was the hip place for artists to live and make work. Now it’s only where the galleries are. It’s all shops and restaurants around them. There are barely any artists – unless they’re well to do – that live there.”
As well as the more generous spatial economy within Songzhuang, the increased political engagement within his community of friends and artists began to inform his work. Some care was necessary when making this kind of work within China’s current political framework. “You can do it in a quiet way and you’re probably okay. But if suddenly you get a lot of exposure from it you might get into trouble.” With careful reserve, Tolhurst chose not to exhibit a lot of the works made in Songzhuang at the time.
With the village’s reputation as a dense community of artists, it attracted different kinds of public and private attention. “A woman just showed up on my door and she was just looking around artists in the village, for works to collect. She was from Shenzhen, to the South in China, a city which has become wealthy by building things for the entire world. She just came to my studio and was looking around.”
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Just the same, being known as a centre for artmaking, there were often visits from police officials. “They come around and look at what you’re making.” During his time there, Tolhurst knew of one artist who had acquired Australian citizenship then returned to China and began to make models of Tiananmen square from ground meat. “He was picked up [by police] in Songzhuang. I don’t know how long he disappeared for before people found out. I only knew of him from going to openings… He made the mistake of publicising one of the works, as well as speaking out on a radio programme in Singapore.” These kinds of interventions “came in fits and waves.”
Coextensive with this atmosphere of top-down authority and supervision, there’s a certain novelty of certain first-time experiences “like if you go to an indie rock club there. It’s not that long ago that just wouldn’t have existed. It may have existed before 1989, but then been quelled for a good number of years after. Quite regularly you’ll show up and the whole place will have just been shut down. So weird things do still happen in an authoritarian way. When you see people enjoying it and dancing ... [there’s] the added tension, which also makes it more exciting in some ways, or more relevant.”
On a more collective scale of activism, Tolhurst brings up the political protest Umbrella Movement, the political group that spontaneously formed during street protests in Hong Kong. Recently, he began a sculptural collaboration with a tattoo shop in Hong Kong that had been involved in the front line of street protests during the Umbrella Movement’s formation.
“I went down and interviewed [the people in the] tattoo shop that had been involved. I took a bunch of sculptures of heads that had been gagged. It was in Chinese New Years when I went down, carrying a whole suitcase of subversive sculptures. But that wasn’t unusual, people would carry chickens, or whole cases of eggs. So they [officers] see six heads and think fuck it, go through.” He left the heads with the tattoo shop workers, who have made various interventions, like chiselling the eyes out and drawing on top of them.
A Form of Respect
As an active participant in both the contemporary art and the teaching communities, Tolhurst experienced the duality of the avant-garde intentions of practitioners and the “strict ways of schooling.” Often, schools are “based on being technically really good at life drawing, controlling oil paint or calligraphy” and “following your teacher.” Even among courses that emphasised contemporary art practice, there was still the emphasis on making work that looks something like the work of your teacher. “Teacher” can be used as a mark of respect. “If you’re an artist and you’ve been doing it a long time, as a form of respect you’re called Teacher.”
Now recently settled in Glasgow, Tolhurst stays in contact with friends and contemporaries in China with social media apps like WeChat. Doing a quick search online for these kinds of apps, there are plenty of Facebook substitutes – currently banned in China – or the YouTube replacements like Youku and Toudu. Apps like these are important for Tolhurst, so he can maintain an artistic, as well as social connection with China while in Glasgow. He set himself a goal of posting a new artwork each day in the Moments section – broadly similar to a Facebook wall.
Looking forward to his own return to China in the future, Tolhurst advises me, “As a journalist you should go out there. There are so many journalists living in China full time because the stories that come out every day.” With this last suggestion, he tells me a saying that’s equal parts encouragement and disclaimer: “Every day you see something in China you’ve never seen before in your life.”