Talking About Rice While Eating Rice

Thursday 11 August

6.00PM – 7.30PM

Free

Join us for an evening with this most ubiquitous of grains.

Building on his recent visit to a rice farming enterprise in Guangdong province, Lucas Ihlein hosts a conversation with artist Vic McEwan, recipient of the Arts NSW Regional Fellowship 2014-15 (NarranderaNSW), and rice farmer Tim Randall (Griffith NSW). Discussion will focus on asking what social, environmental and economic factors affect rice farming communities in Australia and China today?

Several varieties of Randall Organic Rice will be sampled on the night!

This 4A Centre for Contemporay Asian Art public program is a co-production with the Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation (KSCA) and the Material Ecologies Research Network (MECO) at University of Wollongong.

Presented as part of Sea Pearl White Cloud海珠白雲, an exhibition of new work by Lucas Ihlein and Trevor Yeung, produced by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in partnership with Observation Society, Gaunzghou, and supported by the City of Sydney.

盧卡斯艾靈Lucas Ihlein (b. 1975, Sydney, Australia) is a Wollongong-based artist whose current work explores the relationship between socially engaged art, agriculture and ecological management. He is a founding member of artists’ collectives SquatSpace, Big Fag Press, and Teaching and Learning Cinema. Exhibitions include The Yeomans Project (with Ian Milliss), Art Gallery of New South Wales (2013-14); Green Bans Art Walk, The Cross Arts Projects & Big Fag Press, Sydney (2011); In the Balance: Art for a Changing World, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2010); There Goes the Neighbourhood, Performance Space, Sydney (2009); and The Bon Scott Project, Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth (2008). Ihlein completed a PhD at Deakin University, Melbourne, in 2008 entitled Framing Everyday Experience: Blogging as Art, which was awarded the Alfred Deakin Medal for best Doctoral Thesis in Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2015 Ihlein was awarded a prestigious Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship for Emerging and Experimental Arts. He is currently an ARC DECRA Research Fellow at University of Wollongong, Australia. http://guangzhou-delta-haiku.net

Image caption: Linda Tan 谭静远 tending her rice field, Xiangyang Village, Guangdong, China, May 2016. Photo: Lucas Ihlein.