The diptychs in Looking for Enemies show troops sweeping across the Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts and squadrons of aircraft advancing over the Indian Ocean to Christmas Island; the dun- oloured map of Australia in Guan Wei's major work of the series is more allegorical, the names of geographical features reminiscent of Pilgrim's Progress (Mt Contemplation; MtGroan; Mt of Despair; Plains of Solitude; Endless Sands). Territory is marked out in words and phrases conveying mixed emotions and associations: love; shock; duty; pity; suffer; trek; ruin; bread; babe; up to you; run wild; nervous; and so on. Casula, the site of the arts centre near Liverpool, Sydney, where Guan Wei made the work, is memorialised, along with his birth date (1957). In two medium- ized works, the artist's witty insertion of armed troops searching for Ned Kelly - white Australia's 'original' terrorist- introduces a lighter note, reflected in a more optimistic palette, yet the question remains: Who are the enemies - and who the victims - in the war on terror? Could the enemy be fear itself?
  Guan Wei's art is characteristically one of social and political comment, relating to colonisation, migration cultures, Western science, belief systems, the environment and the plight of refugees. Titles such as Treasure Hunt, Zen Garden, Looking for Home and Island carry with them notions of escape or transcendence.  Australia, in these works, is conceived of (or implied) as Utopia, the fabled island continent under southern skies removed from the planet's more brutish realities. Since 9/11 and the terrorist bombings in Bali, there is no Utopia.
 

 The world is at war, but it is a war like no other, The benign red targets frequently used by the artist to indicate acupuncture points in earthly and ethereal bodies assume their literal function in Looking for Enemies as markers of death and destruction. Yet, on closer examination, the targets are seen to be diffuse, bearing no relation to what is happening on the ground. They miss the mark, violating the body of earth, creating fear and chaos.
  Guan Wei is no stranger to displacement. Three years after graduating from high school, during the Cultural Revolution, this son of the Manchu nobility was evacuated to the countryside where he worked as a shepherd. He spent his spare time painting portraits and landscapes, later studying fine arts at Beijing Capital University and qualifying as an art teacher. Three times invited to Australia as a resident artist before applying to settle here permanently after the Tiananmen Square atrocity, Guan Wei gained residency in 1993. In the past decade, his reputation as an artist has grown steadily, both within Australia and internationally. Whether he is depicting harmony, as in Feng Shui, his enormous mural for the new Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne's Docklands, or discord, as in Looking for Enemies, Guan Wei keeps surprising with fresh ideas, uniquely realised, gently prompting his audience to engage with his art and significant issues of our time.

Laura Murray Cree
1 Shepherd, quoted by Irris Makler in Our Woman in Kabul, Bantam, Transworld, Sydney, 2003, p. 110