White Rabbit Gallery

I've been meaning to visit The White Rabbit Gallery in Chippendale for years, but it was spotting a friends post on Instagram from the Vile Bodies exhibition that prompted me to finally go.

I'm not sure I can say exactly why the mass hanging of nude male figures was the prompt I needed except perhaps I was feeling in need of being challenged.

Zhang Dali's, Chinese Offspring is challenging to all your senses whichever way you look at it.

And there's plenty of viewing options - it fills the air space in the main entrance foyer and it can be seen from each level of the staircase.

Cheng Dapeng's Wonderful City was an amazing collection of body parts and hybrid creations artfully displayed on a 9.6m long lightbox. The mutant forms were strangely appealing.

Yang Xin's, Original 5 mixes organic and inorganic pigments to "produce multicoloured blobs that resemble living cells".

Xu  Xinping's clasped hands were a calming feature in this rather startling exhibition.

"Gigantic clasped hands, rendered in white chalk pastel on red paper in twelve separate panels, loom out of the black charcoal background, like a monumental sculpture. Is this a gesture of prayer, of supplication, or of patient resignation?"

Exotic Flowers and Rare Herbs Series by Cang Xin features a "menagerie of invented, hybrid life forms, with luxuriant plants growing from the bodies of creatures including porcupines, cockroaches and scorpions."

The Gallery also contains a Tea House - the bird cage ceiling display, whilst sipping one's green tea, was far more relaxing and rustic than the exhibition.

Vile Bodies was surprising, bizarre and confronting at times.

I'll be curious to see what turns up in the space next year.

"The White Rabbit Collection is one of the world’s largest and most significant collections of contemporary Chinese art. Founded by Kerr and Judith Neilson, it focuses on works produced after 2000."

This post is part of Saturday Snapshot.