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The focus on China during this year's Beijing Olympic Games has presented an apposite time to look at the engagement between Chinese and Australian culture. Following initial discussions with the curator, Dr Zeny Edwards, in collaboration with Jane Watters, the Director of Sydney's S. H. Ervin Gallery, and myself, the exhibition 'Yin-Yang: China in Australia' sets out to explore this confluence of cultures, examining the contribution made by Chinese art and culture in the shaping of Australian society. The tangible effects of this blending of Chinese culture are made manifest in the show, culturally and aesthetically, principally through the medium of painting.

Early colonial trade between Australia and China was the catalyst for the introduction of Chinese culture into the country. Shortly after the settlement of Sydney in 1788, Chinese ceramics and porcelains began arriving as tableware; as trade flourished more household goods, including vases and figurines of Chinese deities, found their way to the young colony. Economic fortune also allowed wealthy citizens to order wares made to their specifications. Prime examples are the exhibition's two magnificent punch bowls, c. 1820, painted with panoramas of Sydney in enamelled porcelain, from the State Library of New South Wales and Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney...

A popular curiosity in China led a number of Australians to visit the country from around the turn of the last century. Amongst these were artists, including Mortimer Menpes (1887), John Farmer and his wife Polly Hurry (1921), William Hardy Wilson (1921), Margaret Preston (1926 and 1934), and Ian Fairweather (1929-33 and 1935). While the paintings and sketches made by Menpes, Farmer and Hurry during and after their travels show no discernible influence of Chinese culture, the visits of Wilson and Fairweather, by contrast, proved to be defining moments for their work. Preston's trips, in particular, helped to blend her knowledge and admiration of Chinese art with other powerful influences which shaped her practice, particularly through the 1940s.

Wilson's three-month immersion in Chinese art and architecture culminated in his drawing plans for a visionary Australian city to be built at Kurrajong in the Blue Mountains, designed adopting Chinese architectural principles to an antipodean context. Fairweather's creative epiphany came when he saw the classical paintings and calligraphy of the Forbidden City's collection during his 1933 visit to Beijing. It was then he came to understand that 'in China the art of writing and that of painting were closely interlocked by history and aesthetic values'. The influence of Chinese culture would resonate through the following four decades of his painting practice. Fairweather's painting and Wilson's architectural drawings are illustrations of the influence of China upon Australian culture, the theme explored by this exhibition.

This article appears in excerpted form. You can read the entire article in Art & Australia's Spring 2008 issue.