Pouring Tea Until It Is All Evaporated

Pouring Tea Until It Is All Evaporated is the cumulative efforts of artist, Jingwei Bu, and a myriad of guests to her studio—a productive and meditative space for both art-making, collaboration and ceremony. The evidence of her three-month residency surrounds the gallery in several forms—sculpture, soundscapes and performance enshrining the gallery with stories and experiences shared between strangers and new friends.

Central to the exhibition and to the heart of Jingwei’s intuitive practice is a simple deed—an open invitation, an action, a cup of tea.

Through a generous and intimate moment with the artist, the act of sharing tea presents a journey through Jingwei’s experiments showcasing a range of art-making practises and its relational processes. The different stages of tea production—the selection, brewing, steeping, its presentation and performativity take on alchemic form. The result is a humbling, hospitable experience where guests are invited to take part in a contemporary interpretation of the utmost precision, steeped in history and tradition.

Here, generosity and performativity are at the fore recalibrating the triad of ‘artist—work of art—audience’ into a participant-led series of experiences. For Jingwei the methodical process of a repetitious action echoes the meditative state of Chan Buddhism—centralising one’s attention to process and in turn finding inner peace. The outcome has been transformative for the artist, encouraging openness and acceptance to guide the development of her work and, in turn, her final installation at Nexus Arts Gallery, Tartanya-Adelaide.

Utilising every remain from every ceremony over the course of Jingwei’s residency, the gallery space is an installation of disassembled elements. The stained paper (used as placemats) from each visitor’s time with the artist is stacked, losing its material temporariness, transforming its functionality from ceremonial tool to art-object. Remnants of the tea itself has been compressed to form stable, sculptural forms—a physical amassment of the artist’s labour and commitment to process. Imposing itself on surfaces like paper, board, stained cups and stored as a dark pigment, the excess ‘material’ has been collected; its value recalibrated and open to new interpretation. Through this deconstruction and revaluing of ‘objects’ and methodology Jingwei can question relational ontologies between custom, cultures and the capabilities of sharing experience and knowledge.

Jingwei’s project sits alongside an increasing wave of practices that formalise themselves less within the paradigms of ‘producing artworks’ but situate its aim in fostering connectivity and acts of hospitality between the artist and their audience. The piece is enduring in nature, from the functionality of performing the ceremony repetitively, step-by-step, whilst engaging with each guest in English (Jingwei’s second language) for an extended period of time, to collecting and analysing the ‘debris’ left behind from each encounter. Moreover, this space has been an opportunity for learning—guests have brought materials from First Nations culture, ceramic cups have been exchanged for future ceremonies and variations of tea from around the world has been consumed. Through a process of data-collection and self-archiving Jingwei has ‘stored’ this knowledge both physically and metaphorically. As Jerry Saltz once said “art-making has the capacity to simultaneously alter and explore consciousness—it is about knowing, learning, unlearning, initiating long-term artistic dialogues and making connections”.

Jingwei’s residency and exhibition revolves around personal and shared communal traditions which fundamentally focus on bringing people together incorporating diverse cultural spaces, practices, and temporalities. It challenges and expands the social dimension of art, inviting people from all walks of life to inhabit the special and personal spaces that she has constructed and to communally engage in shared rituals and actions.

Rayleen Forester

July, 2022