Jiawei Shen, Cr John So, 2003, portrait, Lord Mayors
Summary
Artist Statement
This portrait is a milestone in my career, because this is my first official commissioned portrait in Australia and Mr So is such a legendary personality. This is why I painted one more for the Archibald Prize. The possum skin is a key to suggest, as the first directly elected lord mayor, his popularity is very wide. The portrait has a similar composition to most old [portraits] in the council collection, but this is a Symbolist portrait: from sitter's pose to abstract green and red background, all suggest the loyalty, responsibilities, traditions and innovations.
Jiawei Shen
Melbourne's first popularly elected lord mayor was also its first of Asian descent. Born in Hong Kong, John So came to Australia as a 17-year-old, in 1963. After working first as a teacher and then a businessman, he became a Melbourne City councillor in 1991. He served as lord mayor from 2001 to 2008, and this portrait was painted two years into his first term in office.
Shen's full-length portrait captures some of the complexity of So's story, and it symbolically says something about Melbourne's growing confidence and maturity as it enters the new millennium. The painting is compositionally located within the tradition of official portraits, with So formally attired in the robes and chains of office but without the traditional mayoral winklepicker shoes. He wears the possum-skin cloak that was given to him by an Aboriginal elder at the time he rose to office, pointing to So's sense of responsibility to the people of the Kulin nation, on whose country Melbourne was established more than 165 years earlier. Looking confident but not entitled, and comfortably 'displaying' his own cultural background, John So seems to exude not only a sense of deep humanity but also a desire to serve Melburnians in all their diversity. He holds his hand to his heart as if in a pledge.
This work of art was exhibited in the exhibition 'Good Looking: Portraits form the City of Melbourne Collection', curated by Phip Murray and held at City Gallery from February to April 2013.
