Screening for talent

• Source: Global Times
• [09:34 July 16 2010]
• Comments

Nini Sum at work.

A poster for Sub-Culture Photos: Courtesy of Source

By Tom Mangione

Over the last several months, devotees of Shanghai's Shelter-based dubstep music collective Sub- Culture may have noticed something different about its posters. The screen-printed adverts for their shows are markedly different from the photoshopped ones displayed around them, not only in execution, but also style. One two-tone print for a show on June 19 playfully displayed birds cavorting around an upside-down birdcage in front of scrolls with the show's information written in flowing cursive. The multi-colored poster for Sub-Culture's upcoming show on July 24 with Thai DJs Orawan and Seed is a psychedelic rendering of a number of open hands that appear like wings framing a single open eye above a menacing bird's beak. The details for the show are written in lightening bolts radiating from the bird's eye. These are the works of Shanghai artist, Nini Sum and her screen printing studio, Idle Beats.

Sum has been garnering a great deal of attention lately. On July 14, she was featured in a series of interviews by the BBC with different young Chinese artists on the state of the arts in China. "It was a very exciting opportunity, and the interviewer from the BBC was very interested in what I was doing," said Sum. "He said he wanted to pack up and move to Shanghai and join my studio." Despite her burgeoning reputa-tion, Sum still can't pursue her work full-time. "During the day, I do commercial web design, graphic design, stuff like that. But I prefer to do more creative things."

Sum became interested in screen printing when a friend of hers from Holland came to visit her in Shanghai and asked her where he could do screen printing.

She looked around and found that in both Shanghai and Beijing there were few places that offered screen printing services, and the only ones that did were workshops involved in producing high art, charging high prices for their services. Soon afterward, Sum took to making screen prints on her own, founding her own studio. "The idea for me was to offer art that anyone could afford - pieces for 100 yuan ($15) to 300 yuan. Or if they wanted, they could learn to make their own designs."

Sum will be participating in an event tomorrow planned in conjunction with the skateboard fashion brand Volcom, creative-consultancy Neocha and the Shanghai hipster fashion outlet Source. The event will feature a barbecue, free beer and a chance to join Sum and four other Chinese artists from Shanghai and Beijing for an afternoon of screen printing. Those attending the event are welcome to try and find art for themselves.

Add: Source, 158 Xinle Road, near Donghu Road

Time: July 17, 4 pm onward