Post by University of Melbourne

Last night, UniMelb's Buxton Contemporary opened its new exhibition, Poetry goes no further than language, bringing a defining yet underexplored moment in Chinese contemporary art to Australia for the first time. The exhibition, curated by Dr Carol (Yinghua) Lu, a Faculty of Arts alum and Director of Beijing’s Inside-Out Art Museum, together with artist Liu Ding, examines the emergence of conceptual art in China during the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Through works by the Beijing collective New Measurement Group and Shanghai artist Qian Weikang, it invites audiences to consider how language, systems and chance came to define a generation of artists. It also features a new commission by Victorian College of the Arts graduate Darcey Bella Arnold, whose language-driven practice responds to these historical works through a series of text-based paintings and sculptural forms. Poetry goes no further than language runs from 1 May to 3 October 2026 → unimelb.me/4w2FQbL 📸: Installation view of Poetry goes no further than language: A historical moment of art becoming art again, Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne. Featuring Darcey Bella Arnold, Fruit of Chance 11 2026. Courtesy the artist, commissioned with funds from the Buxton Contemporary Circle. Photography by Christian Capurro.