Chinese artist Song Ling designed Kong Fu – our dream 1, as a commission for Deakin University in 2009.

The graphic style, characteristic of Ling’s work, lends itself perfectly to the University environment. Ling manipulates his chosen imagery using a computer to deconstruct, exaggerate and intensify the elements or layers he is working with. He uses printouts of these manipulated images as his template, and then hand-traces them onto canvas. While from a distance his paintings look like computer-generated prints, when the viewer moves closer, the hand of the artist is clearly visible on the canvas’ surface.

This tapestry is not as straightforward as it may initially appear. The challenge for the weavers was to match the colours of the tapestry as tonally close to the original painting as possible. The weavers used a silver Lurex thread for the silver grey towards the top of the image. Circles can be very difficult for the weavers to get perfect as steps are generated along the horizontal axis.

The artist was curious to see how his work would translate at a larger scale. During his visit to the Workshop he decided the yellow used in the samples for the background was too strong and came forward too much, dominating the other colours. After discussions, a lighter, greener yellow was chosen, to sit into the background. He also pointed out on his visit to the Workshop that the Chinese characters are not an exact translation of the English text. The Chinese text translates to “Come on...”, but Song Ling decided that “I’m ready!” was a stronger comparative translation.

Song Ling is represented by Niagara Galleries in Melbourne.