Printed from Woolley & Wallis

Description

JU MING (ZHU MING), 1938-2023
TAICHI SERIES - SINGLE WHIP

A large bronze sculpture, signed in Chinese, numbered 16/20 (incised to the reverse), edition 16/20, 65kg, 73cm wide x 47.3cm high x 40cm deep.

Provenance: from the collection of Lady Linda Wong Davies, purchased from Johnson Chang at Hanart TZ Gallery in late 1980s by her former husband.

Lady Linda Wong Davies has been called the ‘Queen of Chinese cultural diplomacy’. Born in Singapore and raised in Malaysia, she is the Founder and Chairman of the ground-breaking KT Wong Foundation, which she established in memory of her late father, Dato Wong Kee Tat, the renowned Chinese-Malaysian businessman and philanthropist. The Foundation was launched in 2007 to ‘bring contemporary China to the British public’ and more broadly serving as a bridge between the arts and cultural industries in China and the West. Early successes of the Foundation include the Gold Medal winning Chelsea Garden created by Shao Fan, and the staging of its pioneering production of Handel’s Semele, directed by Chinese artist Zhang Huan. It was the first time a baroque Opera had been staged in China.

In the 1980s she married and lived in Hong Kong whereby her former husband and she became involved with Hongkong Land. It was through Hongkong Land’s commission of the Ju Ming sculpture Single Whip Dip from the Taichi series in Exchange Square, that the present lot came to be part of Lady Davies’s impressive collection of contemporary art.

朱銘
太極系列—單鞭下勢
銅雕
款識：朱銘 16/20 (刻於背面下方)

來源： 黄鈴玳爵士夫人的收藏，由她的前夫於1980年代末購自漢雅軒(Hanart TZ Gallery) 藝術總監張頌仁先生。

黄鈴玳爵士夫人 (Lady Linda Wong Davies) 一直被譽為「中華文化的外交女王」。她出生於新加坡並在馬來西亞長大，黄鈴玳是拿督黃紀達基金會的創辨人兼主席。慈善信託基金會於2007年成立，其目的是為了紀念她的父親，馬來西亞著名的華人慈善家及企業家黃紀達。基金會在「將當代中國帶入英國公眾視野」及作為中國與西方藝術與文化產業之間的橋樑，這兩點上作出了巨大貢獻。基金會早期廣受讚譽的成就包括，委託藝術家邵帆操刀設計的花園作品參加英國切爾西的皇家花卉展，並獲得金獎殊榮；主辦製作並邀請了中國行為藝術家張洹執導，由十八世紀音樂家韓德爾創作的歌劇《塞墨勒》，成為首次在中國公演的巴洛克歌劇。

在1980年代，黄鈴玳婚後移居香港生活，她及前夫與香港置地集團有過很多合作。這次上拍的朱銘的《太極系列—單鞭下勢》經典雕塑 (拍品編號38)，來自黄鈴玳爵士夫人的珍貴收藏。購入這件藏品的緣分源於當時另一座朱銘的同一系列大型作品《單鞭下勢》由置地集團旗下購入（現今依然屹立香港中環交易廣場富臨閣）。