As part of Chinese Culture Month, the Business Confucius Institute has put together an exhibition of Chinese watercolours at the Stanley and Audrey Burton gallery. The Institute, whose focus is to facilitate relationships between the UK and China, has produced an exhibit that captures this sense of multicultural exchange. The two artists displayed, neither of whom professional, draw on both Chinese and British watercolour traditions.

The collection opens with The Educational Consul of the Chinese Consulate General in Manchester, Mr Wang Ying, who studied the art of bird-and-flower painting and calligraphy as well as gaining a BA in Life Sciences in China. His work gives us a glimpse of the quintessential English landscape he encountered during a yearlong stay in Manchester, seen through a filter of Chinese artistic techniques. ‘Manchester – A glimpse of the centre’ conveys this sense of cultural exchange most strikingly. The bright pink blossoms – a speciality of Mr Wang Ying’s, and an emblem of Chinese watercolour – foregrounding the scene contrast strikingly against the industrialised nineteenth century architecture of Manchester. His paintings of traditional English landscapes such as Hope and Buxton portray Britishness as it exists in a multicultural world. A strong sense of Chinese identity flows off the canvas, but doesn’t feel out of place in Didsbury or at ‘Castle Howard’.

This sense of cultural coexistence is continued with the Bamboo Paintings of Sir Konstantin Novoselov, a Russo-British Nobel Prize winner for his work with graphene. His research closely connected him with electronic companies in China, which is where he studied Chinese painting. His work is minimal and delicate, executed with a microscopic crispness, like scientific specimens carefully arranged, and the grey black tones could even be reminiscent of graphene. Novoselov successfully adopts traditional ink and water techniques to create art that not only draws on different cultural influences, but is also reminiscent of scientific botanical drawings.

The overall exhibition creates a multicultural, interdisciplinary space reflective of our modern world. The aim of The Business Confucius Institute, to build business bridges and friendships between the UK and China, is certainly the prominent narrative of the show. It‘s definitely worth a visit.

Katie Robertson

Image: Leeds Business Confucius Institute