NGV Winter Masterpieces: Terracotta Warriors and The Transient Landscape

The National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) annual Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition has become an event that many Melburnians look forward to each year. NGV has blessed us with many marvellous exhibitions in the past, such as Napoleon, MoMa, and Van Gogh and The Seasons in recent years. This year, we are treated with a world-exclusive dual presentation from China.

The double exhibition of Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality and Cai Guo-Qiang: The Transient Landscape celebrates Chinese art, culture and history. Regarded as the eighth wonder of the world, select pieces from the Terracotta Warriors are displayed amongst Cai Guo-Qiang’s contemporary artworks, made using traditional Chinese materials such as paper, silk and porcelain, alongside gunpowder.

The story of the Terracotta Warriors is one of chance. Farmers digging for an irrigation well in 1974 came across fragments of the army in the Xi’an district, finding a warrior’s head and some bronze arrowheads. The army of approximately 8,000 warriors protect the tomb of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shihuang. The emperor’s tomb, which included towers, palaces, animal sculptures and river simulations(!), paints a picture of the preparation for the afterlife and the quest for immortality, both central to Chinese culture.

Warriors aside, the exhibition also features more than 150 Chinese ancient artefacts from leading museums and archaeological sites from across the Shaanxi province. Many of these artefacts were created for use in burial rituals, ancestor worship and encouraging good fortune, and are made of either jade, bronze or gold.

At the Terracotta Army Museum in Xi’an, the display of the Terracotta Warriors can only be observed from a height, in an airplane hangar-type structure. At the NGV, you get to see eight of the 8,000 Terracotta Warriors, along with two life-size horse statues, right in front of you. We’re talking one and a half arm-lengths!

The warriors vary. Among them are two generals, two military officers, one infantryman, a civil official and two archers. Upon close inspection, you will notice that each figure differs in their facial features, expression and their rank in the arm is differentiated by their outfits. Talk about dressing for the job you want, aye?

In parallel, contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang has created a new body of work referencing the backdrop to the reign of Emperor Qin Shihuang, presenting an intersection of ancient and contemporary Chinese art and culture. A fan of the Chinese invention of gunpowder, Cai has experimented with the material in his art for the last thirty years.

He travelled to Melbourne in March this year to produce the five artworks featured in The Transient Landscape exhibition, including a porcelain sculpture of peonies, and a breathtakingly immersive installation, Murmuration. The 10,000 suspended porcelain starlings, which greet you after you’ve seen the warriors and artefacts, resemble a shanshui brush and ink painting of the sacred Mount Li, the location of Qin Shihuang’s tomb and his Terracotta Warriors.

The dual exhibition is on at NGV until October 13 2019.

Terracotta Warriors and The Transient Landscape
Till Sunday, 13 October 2019
National Gallery of Victoria, 180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/terracotta-warriors-cai-guo-qiang