High Tea at the Palace (from The Asian Century)
Artist/Maker and role
Greg Leong (Australian, b.1946): Artist
Production date
2012
About this object
This artwork was donated to the MRAG Collection for ‘The piano has been drinking (not me)’, a Maitland Regional Art Gallery exhibition that celebrated the retirement of Cultural Director Joe Eisenberg in 2015. All the artists and donors participating in this exhibition were responding to Joe Eisenberg’s final ‘begging’ – a request to create a work on paper inspired by the lyrics of the Tom Waits song, ‘The piano has been drinking (not me)’ and then to donate that artwork to the MRAG Collection. This major act of goodwill and benefaction resulted in a parting gift from Eisenberg to the City of Maitland of 174 artworks valued at over $100,000.
From Greg Leong:
My work over the years has been about being a Chinese Australian and how Chinese in particular fit into the national identity. This work belongs to the series, The Asian Century. In 2012 Prime Minister Julia Gillard commissioned the 2012 White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century. In this work Julia Gillard is immortalised as a menial palace handmaiden while her predecessor Kevid Rudd floats ethereally, sainted and garbed in Chinese Emperor's robe. The main figures are two empresses from a former time taking tea. Cixi the Empress Dowager (Leong) who ruled the Chinese Government for 47 years until she died in 1908 and Queen Victoria (1819-1901). The British empress started her long reign when her empire began to reap the benefits of the Opium Wars. The question is, 175 plus years on, whose palace is this high tea being enjoyed at? this work also includes other historical figures and comments on a variety of themes including women in power, historical ironies tec. The young emperor and his bride Pu Yi, the Last Emperor of China.
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