Renowned Chinese-Australian artist Jiawei Shen has just completed a monumental artwork that he says gives meaning to his whole life. This former Red Guard, still famous in China for painting one of the most famous images of the Cultural Revolution, “Standing Guard For The Great Motherland”, has created a fantastic parable of the history of Communism in the style that has established him as one of the world’s great history painters.
Epic in concept and scale and painted over 7 years, his ‘Tower of Babel’ masterpiece depicts over 400 famous and infamous characters including politicians, soldiers, scientists, artists, writers and filmmakers who were won over by the utopian vision of the Communist movement, as well as many forgotten people who tragically lost their lives to Revolution. It also includes remixes of 130 iconic artworks by left wing artists including Picasso, Matisse, Léger, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in an immersive artwork that totally surrounds the viewer in his vast 3-story studio.
As Jiawei paints his new masterpiece, he and his artist wife Lan Wang tell their own stories of lives shared with millions of others in Mao’s China through the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution, before the traumatic events of June 1989 in Tiananmen Square saw them settle in Australia.
Welcome To Babel puts an intimate and human face to the story of their generation in China. And it asks whether the present can learn from the past.
James Bradley has worked in film and TV for 40 years, currently as a writer, producer & director and previously as an editor of numerous documentary films and series. He has a reputation for telling powerful stories and a passion for cross-cultural collaboration. His editing credits include many award-winning Australian Indigenous projects including the dramatic feature Radiance and documentaries Dhakiyarr vs The King, Mr Patterns, 5 Seasons, In My Father’s Country, art + soul and Occupation: Native.
In 2007 James produced Sonja Dare’s comedic documentary Destiny In Alice and in 2011 produced and directed the multi award-winning documentary Ochre and Ink, the story of Chinese-Australian artist Zhou Xiaoping and his 23-year collaboration with Aboriginal artists. In 2014 James produced and edited Blown Away, the untold story of Cyclone Tracy for the 40th anniversary of the devastating cyclone. Recently he co-produced Helen Browning’s Under a Pagan Sky aka Pagans Down Under.
James has taught at METRO Screen, the University of Western Sydney, AFTRS, and Macquarie University.
James shared the 1994 AFI Best Documentary Award for 50 Years of Silence and won the 2005 AFI Non-Feature Editing Award for Mr Patterns. In 2019 James received the 19th Stanley Hawes Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Documentary Sector in Australia.
