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Go Figure!

Contemporary Chinese Portraiture

Previous exhibition
from Thursday 13 September 2012 until Sunday 17 February 2013

The National Portrait Gallery and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation present the exhibition Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture to Canberra and Sydney audiences.

Untitled, 1995 by Fang Lijun
Untitled, 1995 by Fang Lijun

Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture is the result of a partnership between the National Portrait Gallery and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney. The two-site exhibition brings together works by artists living and working in mainland China who engage with the circumstances of life through portraiture, broadly defined. The portrait of a figure or a face becomes a means to express larger concerns about the situation of China and its people in the present. The works, spanning the decades since the beginning of China’s ‘open door’ policy in 1978, are drawn from the Sigg Collection, Switzerland and the M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong, together one of the world’s most important collections of experimental Chinese art.

National Portrait Gallery, Canberra
13 September 2012 – 17 February 2013
$10 / $8 Circle of Friends and concessions
Children 12 and under free

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney
15 September – 1 December 2012
Free

17 portraits

1 Portrait no. 3, 2005 by Li Dafang. 2 Pimple, 2007 by Yang Na. 3 Mao Zedong, red grid no. 2, 1988 by Wang Guangyi. 4 Red child, 2005 by Zhang Xiaogang. 5 Untitled (Mao Marilyn), 2005 by Yu Youhan. 6 Untitled, 1997 by Zeng Fanzhi. 7 Newspaper reader, 2004 by Ai Weiwei.
Go Figure sponsors
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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.

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