The Bathurst Regional Art Gallery in 2014 hosted an\u00a0exhibition\u00a0in which it employed the innovative idea of using \u2018Chinese\u2019 artists to reflect on the Chinese-Australian history of Bathurst. The artists were a mix of Australian-born and China-born with varying degrees of knowledge of Chinese language and little or no knowledge of Chinese-Australian history before they participated in the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The results were an interesting range of the artistic and the historical. Most of the artists visited sites at Hill End and Sofala, though only one consulted with an historian specialising in their chosen topic \u2013 the Chinese bushranger Sam Poo. While another artist, who never left China, had his images displayed in the town of Sofala itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This exhibition is considered an \u2018object\u2019 not for the purposes of review \u2013 hopefully such a review will be forthcoming \u2013 but to highlight the increasing number of interpretations and re-interpretations of Chinese-Australian history that are arising \u2013 most not by historians. These re-interpretations include but are by no means limited to Young\u2019s Lambing Flat Festival<\/a>, Tasmania\u2019s Trail of the Tin Dragon<\/a>, Sydney\u2019s Celestial City exhibition<\/a>, Ballarat\u2019s Open Monument<\/a>, and a recent film on Chinese Australian history entitled The Change<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Bathurst Regional Art Gallery in 2014 hosted an\u00a0exhibition\u00a0in which it employed the innovative idea of using \u2018Chinese\u2019 artists to reflect on the Chinese-Australian history of Bathurst. The artists were a mix of Australian-born and China-born with varying degrees of knowledge of Chinese language and little or no knowledge of Chinese-Australian history before they participated … <\/p>\n