Instrument Practice

Luyuan Zhang

26 Feb–14 Mar 2020

Instrument Practice attempts to subvert common conventions of the white cube, the practicing studio artist and their tools. The artist’s intuitive action bear a deep resonance with their experience of growing up in China, learning instruments chosen by their parents. In repositioning this reluctant gesture into the space of art, a deep nostalgia is provoked.

Isolating themselves with only workshop tools, it allows the artist to contemplate and redefine each tool’s purpose and identity. Transforming the space and its internal sense of time, the audience is led into a new perspective of the world.

Luyuan Zhang, Instrument Practice, installation view at Blindside. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Nick James Archer.

Documentation of opening performance presented as part of Instrument Practice at Blindside. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Siobhan Sloper.

Onsite, Exhibition, Performance

Overview

Instrument Practice attempts to subvert common conventions of the white cube, the practicing studio artist and their tools.

Key Dates

Opening Night: 27 Feb 2020, 7am

Opening Performance: 27 Feb 2020, 8am

Closing Performance: 14 Mar 2020, 5am

Acknowledgment

This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.

Biographies

Luyuan Zhang is a Chinese multi-disciplinary artist based in Melbourne. Zhang works from the perspective of a queer, immigrant artist. They work within the mediums of installation, video, and performance. Zhang‘s work has a comedic approach, presenting slapstick humour with deadpan irony, using sugar-coated bullets aimed at provoking understanding and criticality towards contemporary social phenomena.