32 staff members from the GSA's School of Fine Art exhibited across three different locations in China for the touring exhibition Sharing a View: Contemporary Art from Glasgow. The exhibition includes 114 artworks across painting, sculpture, video and photography, and has been organised by Professor Alistair Payne, with John Quinn and Xiaoai Wang, and has been curated by Xiaoai Wang.

It is the culmination of the GSA's relationship with Luxun Academy of Fine Arts (LAFA), which began with the 2017 LAFA exhibition SoFA Presents: East and West Walk Forward: Luxun Academy of Fine Arts (China) Teachers' Exhibition, curated by Xiaoai Wang, in the GSA's Reid Building.

premiering at:

Luxun Academy of Fine Arts 23 Oct 2020 - 7 Nov 2020

then touring to:

The Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 20th Nov – 4th Dec 2020

Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou, 29th Dec 2020 - 28th Jan 2021

Real Life is Dead – Long Live Real Life – Sino-Scottish Version. Lu Xun/Glasgow
This installation is built around 2 video works: “The Ballad of 20 Years of Real Life” and “Real Life is Dead” seen on monitors in close proximity. In the first Sinclair is pictured performing a song in his studio that reflects on his ‘Real Life Project’ and its many iterations punctuating two decades of frenetic activity. The second video documents the addition of the words “IS DEAD” to the “REAL LIFE” tattoo ambiguously indicating a new phase of the project that could signal the end– or conversely perhaps a new beginning. This work also utilises and image of the artist literally facing up to the most famous ‘Scottish’ painting: The Romantic landscape fantasy “Monarch of the Glen” by Sir Edwin Landseer, which is framed by 4 traditional style Chinese banners made in Shanghai that proclaim: Real Life is Dead/Long Live Real Life in English and Chinese. A selection of small placard/posters/records with the same message will lean around this arrangement implying the possibility of activity and dialogue. An audio selection plays songs recorded by the artist and students reflecting these ideas sung in English And Chinese. Where is identity located? How is it constructed? Can we blend the Scottish and Chinese understanding of culture and art?

This exhibition includes 100 works, ranging across painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, and video. It is the first group exhibition of the School of Fine Art at GSA in China.
Aside from these highlights, however, and of a perhaps more significant nature, this exhibition also represents a deepening of understanding on the larger scale, between Scotland and China, and a signpost of the continuing development and
maturing of the intercultural space, which, increasingly, we share. This is the space in which we must cooperate to address the ever more pressing challenges of shared global citizenship, and the need to find shared understanding and solutions. Most importantly, from the educational point of view, it is the space into which our students graduate, and assume responsibility for giving voice to our aspirations from both our individual perspective, and our common one, as citizens of the world. As such, it represents a shared space, created through transnational and transcultural communication, in which dialogue and cultural exchange are possible beyond the barriers of language.
The range of practices and subjects, transitional and contemporary, demonstrates even in this small sample the wealth of skill and insight found amongst GSA’s academic staff. It further points the way forward, to new possibilities in practice through exposure to one another’s cultures and ideas, through mutual learning, through the sharing of insights, and the opportunities for exchange and enrichment
that partnership of the kind celebrated here makes possible.