{"id":343884,"date":"2026-03-23T15:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T15:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/343884\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T15:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T15:58:11","slug":"all-and-nothing-review-inspiring-tale-of-the-chinese-artist-who-cultivated-a-grassroots-scene-in-cumbria-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/343884\/","title":{"rendered":"All and Nothing review \u2013 inspiring tale of the Chinese artist who cultivated a grassroots scene in Cumbria | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to a documentary relaying the obligatory biography bits, doing it through the medium of abstract art is fitting for Chinese artist Li Yuan-chia, who set up the LYC Museum and Art Gallery in Brampton, Cumbria in 1972<\/a>. At one point, a friend of Li\u2019s leafs through a book of embossed designs on white card that, as dots and lines appear and rearrange themselves on the pages like giant braille, represent the stages of his life: \u201cHere the two families are united in his parents\u2019 marriage. And there\u2019s another dot. Who\u2019s that? It\u2019s Li.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe such abstractions are what all lives boil down to. But it would have been nice to know a bit more about the background of this extraordinary man than what is supplied within this pensive but hazy film. The facts offered are scant: born in the southern Chinese city of Guangxi in 1929; part of Taiwan\u2019s Ton Fan art collective, which irked the island\u2019s nationalist governors; a stint squatting in a furniture factory in Bologna; then tip-toeing into swinging London\u2019s avant garde scene. \u201cPushing, pushing, pushing, on the road, on the street, on the path, in the city,\u201d as Li described his solitary art quest.<\/p>\n

What is indelible is the community-transforming impact of the LYC, which occupied a dilapidated husk of a farmhouse. Apparently largely renouncing his own practice to manage it, Li (known to local people as \u201cthe Chinaman\u201d) welcomed all there and nourished an emancipating creativity in this little corner of England. Staging an average of five exhibitions a month, he prioritised the work of regional artists over the metropolitan elite. Rather than the money-corrupted art market, it was grassroots art that sustained him.<\/p>\n

Sensitively collaging their film together from Li\u2019s art, photography, paraphernalia, readings and interviews with favoured Cumbrians, directors Liao I-ling and Chu Po-ying certainly capture his essence. The dot was at the conceptual heart of his work: all and nothing, as per the film\u2019s title. In later installations, this motif expanded to planet-sized suspended circles covered in magnetic shapes people could move around; the LYC gallery, inside which Li corralled other people\u2019s expression, was this participatory ideal writ large.<\/p>\n

But the dot\u2019s essential irreducibility says something else about the man, a privacy Liao and Chu struggle to penetrate. There are fleeting hints of his inner world, like his seemingly umbilical link with his mother \u2013 but as with Li\u2019s artwork, this film leaves us pondering over many blanks.<\/p>\n

All and Nothing is in UK cinemas from 27 March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it comes to a documentary relaying the obligatory biography bits, doing it through the medium of abstract…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-343884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}