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UNE students embrace traditional Chinese art form

July 01, 2005

Calligraphy.thumb.JPGA unique course in Chinese calligraphy at The University of New England is reaching out to students and art-lovers in Armidale, Australia, and the world.

Now in its second year, the one-semester course uses modern communications technology in teaching this traditional Chinese art by distance education.

An exhibition of the students’ work at UNE provides an eloquent testament to the success of the course, which is coordinated by a lecturer in Chinese at the University, Dr Cuncun Wu. The exhibition, titled “Flying Brush, Dancing Ink 2005”, is still on show in Room 102 of UNE’s Arts Building, ending today (Friday 1 July) at 4 pm.

The Director of the New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM), Dr Janice Lally, in officially opening the exhibition last Friday, commended Dr Wu for enabling a diverse range of students to gain practical experience of this important Chinese art form. (The photograph displayed here shows Dr Lally, right, Dr Wu, and calligraphy student Aaron Moore, with Aaron's work in the background.) All of the 20 students enrolled in the course this year submitted works for the exhibition. While some of them are on-campus students, others are from as far afield as Cairns in Australia and Hong Kong abroad. The exhibits themselves range from works on paper to ceramic utensils and seashells inscribed with Chinese characters. “It’s a credit to the students that we are enjoying this exhibition,” Dr Lally said.

Dr Wu uses the Internet to keep in touch with the distance-education students, requiring them to mail her examples of their work about once a fortnight. Dr Wu and her colleague Isabel Tasker, who also lectures in Chinese, have created a DVD that enables the students the study the techniques involved in great detail.

One of the distance-education students, Ann Somerville-Charles from Sydney, said that she had developed her skill by practising every day and attending the two residential schools that are part of the course. “I’m proud of my work,” she said, standing in front of her exhibit: a Chinese character etched onto copper. She, like many of the students, has no working knowledge of the Chinese language, approaching calligraphy as an artist rather than as a linguist. (In her UNE Arts degree she is focusing particularly on music education.)

Dr Wu, a talented calligrapher herself, confirmed that anyone with an interest in Chinese culture, whether or not they knew any Chinese, could enrol in the unit. “Calligraphy combines art and written language,” she said. “As well as opening a window on to the world of East Asian culture, practising calligraphy inspires some of the students to go on to study the language itself.” (Mandarin is also offered by distance education at UNE.)

Dr Lally mentioned the use of calligraphy as a meditative discipline, and the thought was echoed in one of the works: the writing of a Chinese couplet referring to the “inner tranquillity” required by the successful calligrapher.


Media contact: Dr Cuncun Wu, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, UNE (02) 6773 3580, Isabel Tasker, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, UNE (02) 6773 3504, or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at July 1, 2005 10:04 AM