Yishu is pleased to launch the September/October 2010 issue, a special edition focussing on off-site art at Taipei Contemporary Art Centre. Editor-in-chief Keith Wallace and guest editor Lu Pei-Yi will discuss how off-site art is practised in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.

Special Issue: Off-Site Art in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China

Date: September 8 Wed., 7:30-8:30PM

Venue: Taipei Contemporary Art Centre

Speakers: Keith Wallace, Editor-in-chief of Yishu; Lu Pei-Yi, guest editor.

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EDITOR’S NOTE

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Lu Pei-Yi, guest editor of Yishu 40, who proposed developing this special issue on off-site art as it applies to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China. She has perceptively selected seven texts that explore both the differences and the parallels in off-site art in these regions, and it is clear that the projects discussed emerge from circumstances quite different from those in the West, where off-site art, or what is better known as public art, is more object-oriented and functions in most cases as a form of decoration intended to complement the urban environment. In the Chinese context, and in the texts presented in Yishu 40, there is an interest in process over product; it isn’t the physical artworks that are so important, it is the engagement with the public, especially with those perhaps less familiar with contemporary art. As Lu Pei-Yi notes in her introduction, off-site art in these three regions was formed through resistance to conservative aesthetic values and to an alignment with official state ideology; it responds to political policies, urban development, and gentrification, and explores alternatives to an overwhelmingly market-oriented art system.

photo (top): Wei-Li Yeh, Yang-Ren & Chi-Hung in THTP Garden, 2006, from the THTP Project/Phase Five/Oversight/2008, off-set print, 86 x 112 cm. Courtesy of the artist.