Image credit: Zhang Peili 张培力, At Sea 海上 2024, three channel digital video utilising computer-generated imagery (colour, sound), 17 min 3 sec. White Rabbit Collection, Sydney.

HOTA Ideas is a forum for leading artists, thinkers and cultural practitioners to share perspectives through public lectures and in-conversation style talks.  

What if the same exhibition could exist in two places at once, and mean something entirely different in each? 

Join Dr Kim Machan for a talk coinciding with This Moment: Highlights from the White Rabbit Collection of Chinese Contemporary Art. Dr Machan will discuss a major collaborative project that was presented at the State Library of Queensland between 2010-2012, and simultaneously toured throughout China, visiting the National Library of China, and the National Art Museum of China, among others. This site-specific exhibition of five Chinese and five Australian artists unfolded in both contexts, revealing how meaning shifts as art moves between cultures. Rather than treating Chinese contemporary art as something “over there,” this project asked how we see each other, how Australian audiences read Chinese art, and how Chinese audiences interpret us in return. It emphasises thinking about art not as fixed, but as something transformed through context, dialogue, and exchange. This project included artists Zhang Peili, Wang Gongxin, and Lin Tian Miao whose works are in the White Rabbit Collection.