Untold Stories | Week 9 Blog 

Recently, I have visited the Terracotta warriors & Cai Guo Qing exhibition at the NGV. The exhibition begins with porcelain birds hanging from the ceiling, which leads and accompany us throughout the viewing of the exhibition. I think the idea of using birds that be coloured grey and black by explosion take us through the exhibition is very engaging, it not only enhances the audience’s experience, makes the exhibition playful but also gives an idea of the gunpowder paintings that you gonna see later. The audio tour that can be borrowed before the exhibition allows me to have a deeper understanding about the idea behind the artwork, hear the explanation in your preferred language, which brings the audience closer to the artist and their artwork. The most impressed artwork to me is the explosion painting of flowers and a monumental installation of 10,000 suspended porcelain birds. The peony flower’s explosion painting uses a surrounding wall to reveal the colourful colour and painting of the peony in 360 degrees. The installation bird is very spectacular. It uses different lengths of the line to let the birds hang at different heights to create a continuous and endless stream of Chinese mountains pictures. When you stand in the middle of the birds, you will feel a strong visual impact. On the way you went out, there is still a short video showing the making processes of Cai Guo Qing making these artworks, drawing the shape and putting gunpowder on the paper, using paper covering it and then ignite it. Just like what Cai says at the seconds you ignite it, all you can do is pray, you will never know what the outcome is and that’s the charm of gunpowder painting. By showing the producing process, the audience may feel more appreciate about the artworks.

In the reading, I understand the importance of getting people engaging in the exhibition. For instance, in the example of Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed ‘uses a performative practice that builds through dialogue and speculative questions. Each project engages dialogue about contentious issues. It’s a way of getting people to think，respond and discussion to the project rather than only receiving information from the artist. In our final project audio tour, in order to encourage the audience to participate in the exchange, we will bring up some questions in the audio tour and get them to respond and bring up more questions. When they get back to the visitor centre, we can discuss these questions together and their feelings and experience of this tour.

Thank you very much!