—Dispatch #1, Summer 2009.

At the cusp of the next decade, in the midst of global recession, Sally Lai is surprisingly calm. Lai is freshly appointed (2009) as the new CEO of The Chinese Arts Centre: the U.K.’s foremost gallery for Chinese contemporary visual arts, sub-titled as an international agency for Chinese contemporary artists. A fundamental question occupies her mind: What relevance does a Chinese arts centre hold in today’s contemporary art world? It is a question that begs a big, broad discussion on ethnicity – long since the elephant in the room of contemporary art. But let us focus…

The Chinese Arts Centre (C.A.C.), based in Manchester, U.K., is in to its third decade of operations. It is a laudable achievement for any arts organization. The CAC’s timeline has seen it grow from a small, niche interest gallery to a medium-sized stalwart of the U.K. art scene.

As a funded gallery, it has committed support from the relevant local (city) and regional authorities. Indeed the CAC has secured ‘Regularly Funded Organisation’ (R.F.O.) status which in the UK means that its core operational costs are covered consistently, annually, rather than on a per project basis.

RFO status is much sought-after by cultural NGOs across the UK… yet accusations of ‘governmental policy box-ticking’ by inept local authority workers are also rife. Is the CAC getting money simply because of that ethnic prefix? It would be a shame in more ways than one. For the CAC has consistently beaten other galleries for my attention and interest over the past decade – purely by the quality of the work on show… regardless of the artist’s ethnicity.

With the arrival of the young Miss Lai, the CAC is at a crossroads. The CAC (the legal entity) and the CEO are having to negotiate a transition in respect of what and who it supports.

Why? From its birth in 1986 to the present day, a shift has occurred, away from the traditionally placid, restrained, neutral, sanitised Chinese art to as the novelist Joseph Heller coined it in Catch-22, “graceful and shocking” contemporary art.

The crossroads facing the CAC and the CEO is a catch-22.

Do you continue flagging up a, literally, red flag for Chinese art?

Do you try to avoid a red face by dropping that ‘Chinese’ tag?

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The CAC’s art comes from multifarious sources: different generations of British-born Chinese artists alongside artists from the global Chinese diaspora. The most recent show (Spring-Summer 2009) was by Toronto-based installation artist Ed Pien (www.edpien.com)

In the UK context, the CAC has long been at the forefront of professional development, bringing artists from the global Chinese diaspora to the U.K. Its residency program —“Breathe” (established 2003)— remains innovative in the UK.

Artists live on site, in a purpose-built wing of the venue complete with studio space alongside bedroom and kitchen and shower rooms. The rest of the building is just as diverse, consisting of a resource centre, corporate suite, and tea house beyond the main gallery.

The Breathe residency has conjured up a long list that dovetails between “emerging talent” and “experimental professional.” The painter Gordon Cheung is a standout memory of the past ten years (See: www.gordoncheung.com).

It is the rare elements like Breathe that has helped the CAC to become a most intriguing proposition for art and its audiences: a firefly in the dark for British contemporary art.

In other words, the CAC has fought the rounds and won: it has established its own credentials in its 21 years… and yet into the 21st century, the knotty ball of ethnicity has not been unravelled.

One major factor to consider here is that during this first post-millennial decade, Chinese contemporary art enjoyed a previously unheard of international profile.

So you would be forgiven for conjuring up an untroubled, utopian storyline of ever-rising success for the CAC. Yet come 2009, the snowballing global recession has brought serious questions into focus at the CAC just as it has for contemporary art – Chinese or not.

Demand for Chinese contemporary art dropped in the second half of 2008, as the credit crisis took its toll by slowing sales at the Hong Kong and Beijing art auctions.

In the specific U.K. context, the current recession has come at a particularly bad time. It couples with deep financial cutbacks by the UK government in order to bankroll the 2012 Olympic Games to be held in London. Even NGOs with the magic RFO status have bitten the dust.

So how does the new CEO view this complex, pivotal moment?

“The Chinese Arts Centre started in 1986,” says Lai, sitting in her mezzanine-level office that hovers between backstage administration area, the main gallery space, and a front-of-house tearoom. She leaves her office door open—an encouraging sign of transparency.

“1986 is a long way back in terms of what happened with Chinese contemporary art internationally.” She laves a pause to let that penny drop before resuming. “What happened was that the Chinese Arts Centre caught the wave of what was interesting to the U.K. Arts Council.” Honesty is a good policy so this CEO is making a good start…

As the chief funding body for art in the UK, the interests of the UK’s Arts Council is paramount to arts NGOs. The CAC’s birth dovetailed with the diversity agenda, already of interest to the Arts Council and others beyond art (for example, a new terrestrial TV station, Channel 4, was only given the green light in 1981 due to its commitment to promote diversity).

So the CAC started with a very narrow focus: ostensibly flag waving for a specific ethnicity. Yet Lai foregrounds the subsequent changes that have led to the present ‘identity crisis’ for the CAC.

“From 1986, and even from 2003, when the current building opened, a lot has changed externally; the political climate or interest in culture and artistic practice has changed. So does the program that we do still work? Is it relevant?”

The CAC’s back story makes obvious reading: a birth inside Chinatown (Manchester, UK); a step out of Chinatown to a small space in a run-down enclave of empty shops in the city centre; and then, after many years, a leap to a multi-million-pound, purpose-built space.

Lai explains: “The move to the new building meant a greater visibility and a better space for presenting art. The old space never really worked as an art space and never had the clout or visibility. It was tucked away on the back street.”

There is a footnote here. In the decade or so since the CAC inhabited that second site in a no man’s land of derelict buildings, the surrounding cross-hatch of back streets has steadily become reinvigorated. Today that pocket of the city is bustling with cultural activity, full of cafés, boutiques, and little art spaces, and feted by everyone from Hollywood film crews on location to trend setters, culture vultures and even the local city council in its marketing strategy for ‘its’ city.

Lai’s arrival at the CAC coincided with plans for post-millennial expansion, involving a move to the third, current, location. Lai continues: “This current building opened in 2003, and I started at the Chinese Arts Centre in 2002—specifically because they were going to have this building,and they did not have a curator.” Lai clarifies: “I’ve never been an artist. Only a curator.”

Some may find this worrying. A young CEO, inexperienced in the business side of an art space. But there is hope…

Having worked in Hong Kong for a couple of years at a contemporary art gallery—”a commercial one” that Lai leaves un-named—Lai helped two investors to start a contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong. The contemporary bug had gripped Lai: “I thought, look, I need to do this in some way properly so I went back to university and did an M.A. practising as a Curator, which is where I got to grips with what it actually meant to curate with the freedom of being outside the commercial art world as it was in Hong Kong at that time, a world that was quite restrictive.”

Aside from state funders, there were also early signs of interest in the CAC from the art establishment. Even back in its Chinatown days, it was selected as a venue for one of the U.K.’s major periodical tours: The British Art Show.

“There was one thing that lots of people remember,” recalls Lai. “The CAC being based in an upstairs location in Chinatown yet showing part of The British Art Show.”

Kwong Lee was the time Exhibitions Officer of the CAC and presently Director of Castlefield Gallery, a key artist-initiated space in Manchester. Kwong did a show with Cai Yuan, one half of the internationally infamous duo Madforreal alongside JJ Xi (See: www.madforreal.com.cn)

Lai recalls: “They had to put Cai’s paintings behind this little curtain as they were explicit. And I don’t know if that made it worse because you had to ask to view the piece.” A quick telephone call to the aforementioned Kwong Lee has him soon confirming: “Cai had painted 200 versions of famous artist’s works and the ones in question, to be viewed by permission, included Jeff Koons.” Enough said.

Mention of Madforreal brings up one highpoint during Lai’s first stint at the CAC, as curator. “Happy and Glorious” was a 2005 exhibition by the aforementioned Madforreal. It was, if there is such a thing, ’signature CAC’.

“Happy and Glorious” was a show with varied interests but the title, a well-known phrase lifted from the UK’s national anthem, promoted a core interest in politics beyond art: a serious, overtly politicised critique of the immigrant experience in the UK, circa 2005.

For example, in a performance piece used to open this 2005 show, the two artists hung by ropes, upside down, from wooden gallows. They were naked, though draped in Union Jack flags, and invoked the roles of immigrants ‘pledging allegiance’ to the UK by citing absurd references and singing the national anthem.

This was topical, political, art. It cut straight to a major issue of the day. In the proceeding months, the afterglow of UK politician David Blunkett’s contentious time as Home Secretary (responsible for UK home affairs) was still burning.

Although at the time feted as the only serious rival to Gordon Brown as the successor to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, Blunkett’s political career stalled in late 2004 when he was forced to resign his role after a scandal. Still, his legacy included proposals dating back to 2001 related to immigration. They had polarised opinion across the nation.

They included a woeful general knowledge test to gauge the potential ‘Britishness’ of immigrant applicants for UK residency. It was made for ‘Madforreal’.

This was the kind of political move that smacks of insensitivity and ineptitude. It was ripe for lampooning, challenging and critiquing via art. And so Madforreal in collaboration with the CAC made a memorable show that managed to merge art and culture, society and politics, conjuring contemporary art withdebates at the time over immigration in the U.K – debates that linger to the present time of writing.

And this had nothing to do with whether any particular artist showing was Chinese.

Just as she was riding high on the back of shows like “Happy and Glorious” Lai, improbably, moved on from the CAC for what turned out to be an extended sabbatical.

She explains: “I’d been at Chinese Arts for three years. I’d done what at that time felt like a reasonable amount of work with particular artists that I was interested in: Xu Bing which was co-curated with Karen Smith, Ming Wong, Erika Tan, Song Dong, and Patty Chang. And I worked with great curators, new partners and new voices in genuine collaboration about artists, and ways of representing work.”

So what has kept Lai away from the CAC until now? In a word, development.

“I left CACin 2005,” says Lai, “to do something called the CLORE Leadership Programme.” The organisers of the aforementioned 1-2 year programme declaim it to be: ‘professional development for the leaders of tomorrow’. Mmm.

Lai says: “It was really good. It exposed me to a lot of people working across different art forms. It let me be part of wider, higher debates about the culture sector and what culture does, as it involved working with Chris Smith” (a former member of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet in the role of Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, 1997-2001).

As Lai reveals, she kept in touch with contemporary art: “Alongside CLORE, I carried on curating—I couldn’t quite help myself. I’d intended to do this CLORE program full-time for a year, but ended up doing it part-time for two years as I was getting work to curate various exhibitions.I curated for an artist-led space down in Brighton; I co-curated with Yuen Fong Ling, Howard Chan,and Siu King-Chung, a show about Hong Kong and U.K. Artists. The last work I’d done was filling in for a person on maternity leave with an organization called ‘firstsite’ (sic.) in Colchester (South East region of England). They were going through a capital campaign worth £18 Million (€22 Million).” Some experience of the financial side then.

Her experiences meant that the decision to return to the CAC was not easy. “Whether to even apply for the job was incredibly difficult . . . Do I want to go back to an organization I already know? Do I want to be somewhere else and do something else? Is there still any meaning and relevance to having a Chinese Arts Centre?”

Ah, there is that fundamental question again.

It was a tricky decision on a personal level, too,as Lai candidly reveals: “For myself, do I just want to work with Chinese artists?”

So Lai canvassed expert opinion. “What I did was email six to eight Chinese artists and had a bit of a debate with them about what they thought the CAC could be and what it would need to do in order to make it work for them.”

The result of the process is manifest as Lai sits in the CEO’s chair.

“The mandate is to support, promote, and commission Chinese artists—those who are international as well as U.K. based. This is done through exhibitions, commissions, agency work, etc. That has been explicit—to work with Chinese artists.”

So what’s the problem?

“The language around why the organization existed in the past was something like, ‘To showcase Chinese artists who were under-represented.’ No,” lai suggests, “that doesn’t wash anymore.”

Why?

“Chinese artists are now more well-known than many other artists on the international level. If you have people with significant shows at Guggenheim, Saatchi, etc., you just can’t claim that anymore.” It’s a solid enough line of logic. It is true for the U.K. context that a lot of Chinese artists are very active, very successful, with strong practices, and areshowing on the international level. So Lai proposes ‘a rethink.’

“I think with all organizations, and even physical spaces, you need to re-think, What is its role? Even though you were initially set up with some role, everything outside is changing—has changed. You need to change, too.”

Of course change management is a cottage industry in many walks of life. What does Lai have in mind for the CAC?

“Change can be as simple as how the building is used, or how we program, how we work with artists or curators, or what the artistic practice is now if we’re looking primarily at Chinese artists.”

So the CAC is sticking, solely, with Chinese artists? Change involves keeping the focus on Chinese artists?

Lai clarifies: “The CAC needs to be a lot more open. Even though our primary focus will be Chinese artists, if people are collaborating, that is more interesting to us. How are ideas being shared between Chinese and non-Chinese artists, or Chinese artists and musicians, etc.? If you are to talk about any kind of shared understanding – and that’s where it’s at – then you need collaboration in practice.”

So it seems the natural next step for the CAC, beyond purely Chinese, is – in a word – hyphenation. Chinese-British, for example.

Art made in collaboration, or complementary fashion, between different ethnicities. Of course, hyphenations can be found in one human being (‘a British-Chinese artist’) or in collaborators (‘a British aryist working with a Chinese artist’). The beauty of hyphenation, beyond its natural implications for intercultural and polycultural dialogue, is the invocation of ‘endlessness’ . There are infinite possibilities.

So rather than facing the end, perhaps the CAC is securing its future – satisfying funders and maintaining meaning for a critical contemporary art crowd. So does this mean a re-brand of that name?

“No. But partnership is something we’d like to do more of,” says Lai, “particularly in the artistic community in the UK’s northwest and also the non-art Chinese community.”

Hold on. Change also hinges upon courting the Chinese community? Lai is poker-faced about this disingenuous remark: “There’s an assumption that the Chinese are automatically ‘our audience’. They’re not. An audience takes a long time to nurture and develop.” To this end,Lai is setting up a ‘Programme Advisory Group’ —made up of artists, curators, and academics— to inform the programming.

Lai is looking further afield too. She confesses to an interest in setting-up ‘twinning relationships’ with other international arts organizations.

“We’re always interested in working with international artists,” Lai says. “We want to open up opportunities internationally for artists we work with and, if you curate Chinese or Hong Kong art and show it here in the U.K. then there’s something different about that perspective than someone curating in China for a Chinese audience with Chinese artists.” Fair enough, but this is still the Chinese diaspora.

There are major financial challenges, globally. Though, until 2011, the CAC’s ‘RFO status’ is secure until 2011 (to the tune of £180000 per annum, about €210000). Lai is pragmatic and good humoured about financing: “We also earn our own income from our workshops and hiring out the space. We need to develop a lot more sponsorship and a wide-ranging fund-raising strategy.”

In terms of strategyLai is looking East.

“I guess the advantage we have is that if we align ourselves with Asia, then there is still a huge amount of incentive to work with us for those who are investing or looking to invest in Asia—for example, setting up manufacturing plants in Asia. Those are people we need to look at more.”

The private sector, exclusively?

“Also the area of trusts and foundations – how they respond to the economic downturn. It is all a challenge, but we should be looking at more sources, especially at international sources, to support what we do artistically. Ultimately that is the aim.”

Sally Lai, as she herself declares, is an inexperienced financier. This may be a crucial weakness in the current financial climate. Yet Lai has strengths, potential counterbalances, such as her open-mindedness, her energy, her ‘curator’ heart and awareness.

Awareness is the, easily overlooked, attribute that could prove most pivotal in the next year or two for the UK’s CAC – and, indeed, any arts organisation that has been used to strongly and avidly foregrounding and flag-waving its particular ethnicity for identity and finance.

Lai and other curators or gallery directors could take note of ‘the elephant in the room’ rather than try to ignore the inevitable. It is no longer as effective for Chinese contemporary artists (or any ethnicity) to claim that they need special consideration, special treatment, extra help, and so on. This may sound harsh, but in effect this is a happy ending.

This is the result of hard fought rounds in previous decades – of the racialised and embattled 70s, of the identity politics of the 80s, of the diversity agenda of the 90s. If anything positive has come from those final decades of the 20th century – indeed, the lifespan of the UK’s CAC and its young CEO – it is the fact that the 21st century noughties have begun the endgame for ethnicity.