The café, perched above the 798 art district, was empty, giving the sunlight a golden opportunity to shadow wooden tables. The setting seemed apt as across the table from me sat Chen Qingqing, a leading light, in more ways than one, of Chinese contemporary art.

With a major exhibition, “Fantasy Museum” showing at the Yuan Art Museum, her first in three years, Qingqing is relishing the chance to show her work, which focuses on wooden drawer installations, fiber hemp grass garments and light boxes, to a new audience.

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Students at Tsinghua  University  Sculpture workshop. 

Having sat for four sessions this week for clay sculpture class of Prof Pan Yiqun at Tsinghua, it was a good exercise for me to learn to sit still for a change. My friend Pan Yiqun has been a long time participating artist with the annual Irish Wave exhibitions, even before I joined  many years ago.

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Each IRISH WAVE  exhibition is theme based and also interlaced with a poem of WB Yeats as 2015 celebrates his birth 150 years ago. The Beijing shows will be opened by Alan Kelly TD, Irish Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government and the Ambassador of Ireland Paul Kavanagh will also be present.

“They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me ”  Oil on canvas, Ginko leaves 110 x160 cm

This post takes a look at some of my work that will be showing in the various shows. The following post will look at the highlights from these group shows once they have been installed over the coming days)

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President Higgins State visit to China.

I have always admired orators, well spoken words can take us out of ourselves, giving a shared experience rather than an isolated one. They are non material and work beyond and outside routine categories and yet can deal with daily experience in a transforming way.(*) The arrival of President Higgins to Beijing embraced and expressed many aspects of culture shared by the two countries.

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