Melissa Chiu

In the early 1990s, I was a student taking the art history and criticism Bachelor of Arts degree at UWS. Although it was a very new course at the University, and over one hour’s travel from my home each day, I had decided on it over other degrees because it offered a fresh approach to learning about art that included art history, theory, and studio practice. It also encouraged professional practice and internships that in hindsight helped greatly in gaining a fuller understanding of the arts ecosystem.

During my study, there were many opportunities such as my work with Professor Cheo Chai-Hiang at Space YZ, a small gallery space for curated projects and student exhibitions. One of the highlights was an exhibition I worked on with six Chinese artists who had only just migrated to Australia, and then decided to stay in Sydney following June Fourth. Looking back, this was a life-changing moment for me to meet these artists such as Guan Wei, Shen Shaomin, and Xiao Lu. Learning their stories and about their art encouraged me to travel to China to meet with their peers who had remained in China.

Years later, it led me to do my PhD at UWS focused on this generation of artists with an account of Chinese contemporary art, one of the very first PhD’s in the West to undertake this research, later published as a book in Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China.

This interest sparked by the exhibition of Chinese artists also led to my involvement in founding the Asia-Australia Arts Center (Gallery 4A) in 1997 where the curatorial focus was as much on artists from Asia such as Ah Xian and Emil Goh as Australian-born Asian artists. At the time of founding there were few galleries for these artists to show, and Gallery 4A provided this, in addition to professional experience for emerging Asian-Australian curators and museum professionals.

My experiences while a student at UWS were formative because of the opportunities to curate and write, not to mention the connections to the art world they provided through the faculty, notably the leadership of David Hull and Anne Graham, the work I did on the University collection and Space YZ with Cheo Chai-Hiang, and Helen Grace, my art history professor and PhD supervisor.