Ai Weiwei at The Royal Academy

 Ai Weiwei at The Royal Academy, London

My recent visit back home to London included a very inspiring and influential visit to one of my favourite exhibitions to date; the work of the world renowned artist Ai Weiwei.

Ai Weiwei is not only a contemporary artist but an activist also. He has been highly critical of the Chinese government's stance on democracy and human rights. Because of this, he is a very controversial figure in China and was once held for 81 days in small room watched by two guards 24 hours a day without any official charges being filed. 

What inspired me most about this amazing exhibition was the careful consideration into the materials and processes used to create and form these structural masterpieces. At first some of the work may not seem as ore inspiring as when you find out where the materials were sourced from and how they were sourced. This is why the audio guide is crucial in fully understanding and engaging with the work.

This piece is made up of thousands upon thousands of steel rods, sourced from the rubble of the devastating earthquake in China in which thousands of people were killed. The Chinese government did not do enough, in Ai Weiwie's eyes, to help the people affected by this natural disaster and so it inspired this sculpture. There is a TV mounted on one of the walls of the exhibition hall that shows how each metal rod was hammered by hand at least 200 hundred times to straighten it out. He describes this piece as a way of remembrance.

The names of all the people killed by the earthquake were written up on two walls facing each other, surrounding the sculpture pictured above. It shocked me how many of the names had birth dates very close to mine which made it that little bit more real.

The two images above show a sculpture made out of rubble that Weiwei collected when his newly built work space and gallery was demolished. In January 2011, a demolish team turned up to his studio and completely tore it down in the space of a day. Ai Weiwei left convinced that it had something to do with his political activism.

 The piece shown on the right is a series of marble sculptures laid out in rows. These marble sculptures are tufts of grass, remnant of the park Weiwei would push his little son through in a push chair. There is then a push chair, also made out of marble, situated in the left corner. This push chair is simply an example of excellent crafting skills. Marble is extremely brittle making for a very difficult material to work with.

The image above on the left is part of a series of boxes, roughly 4 x 2 metres. Inside these boxes are scenarios from when he was captivated by the government for 80 days in solitary confinement. Two guards stood over him all day and all night and he was fed basic rations. The only light source was a dim lightbulb. This confinement was obviously a scare tactic to put Ai Weiwei off activism.

I thoroughly enjoyed this exhibition as it wasn't only about aesthetically pleasing pieces of art work that are simply nice and interesting to look at, but it was more about the materials used and the story behind those materials. I was blown away by so much of it and it left me wanting to find out more about his life and the events which have inspired his work. The little insights into his life in China are simply amazing and make you want to be part of it.