It’s a pleasure to be here tonight, to launch this intriguing exhibition as part of the City’s celebrations of Chinese New Year. I hope many of you were at the parade last Sunday – it was fantastic! – and have taken part in some of the events of the festival.
It began as a local community celebration but has now grown into the largest Lunar New Year festival outside Asia and over the years it has become ever richer and more diverse.
This exhibition highlights the importance of art – not only to the festival, but to Sydney itself. It enriches our lives and makes for a more beautiful and more engaging city.
We have a wonderful Public Art Advisory Panel to help us select and foster works that will stimulate and engage and also stand the test of time. Some of that will be bearing fruit in new artworks associated with our improvements to the streets and laneways of Chinatown.
We also support artists in a variety of ways – by providing studio space, for example, or by supporting exhibitions such as this as a Chinese New Year Festival Associated Event.
But perhaps not so many are aware of her equally successful career as a ceramic artist – a pursuit she has followed since the late 1970s.
She is a serial collector of degrees and qualifications – from UTS, from Sydney College of the Arts and now, as a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney.
This exhibition – Women Who Speak – comprises three separate series:
• Her Clothes, Her Life uses a range of Qing-style women’s costumes to denote their membership of different social strata and the unequal treatment meted out to women of all castes
• My Clothes, My Life embodies memories of childhood and the day-to-day life of women of Nancy’s own generation and finally
• Their Clothes, Their Lives expresses the freedoms that social change, cultural integration and globalisation can offer women today
It is a challenging exhibition – particularly challenging, perhaps, for Chinese males! – and one that reflects Nancy’s consistent interest in, and insights into, the position of Chinese women. Fittingly, it runs until March 10, meaning it will be on exhibition for International Women’s Day on March 8.
I would like to thank the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, and Australasian Art & Stageworks Incorporated for bringing us this timely and thought-provoking exhibition.
Above all, I would like to thank the artist, Nancy Ma, who brings the same dedication, determination and thoughtfulness to her art as she has to her work in, and for, the Australian Chinese community.
I have great pleasure in declaring the exhibition officially open.
Thank you.