Chinese contemporary art finds a home near the Bund

A regular series on entrepreneurs who hae set up businesses in Shanghai

Political turmoil was the order of the day when George Michell made his maiden trip to Shanghai, back in 1979. Then a student, he took a much-anticipated stroll along the famous Bund promenade, only to witness a parade of army trucks filled with terrified individuals forced to wear big-character placards listing their supposed crimes.

It was the immediate post-Cultural Revolution period, when old scores were being settled. He and his fellow Australian study-group travellers were in the country as members of a friendship society, able to secure much-sought-after visas because of the group's left-leaning agenda. It proved to be a shocking introduction to the Chinese system for Mr Michell - whose father is from Hainan Island and mother from Adelaide.

Fast forward three decades and the fluent Putonghua-speaking Mr Michell is recalling that first, turbulent introduction to Shanghai in his swanky art gallery, Studio Rouge, located just off the Bund. Some of the canvasses on display caricature the Communist Party and its icons, including Mao Zedong himself, unthinkable in earlier times, when it could have led to death. Nowadays, locals and tourists alike pay up to US$20,000 for these often-provocative works that go under the blanket banner of Chinese Contemporary Art. The gallery is doing a roaring trade and Mr Michell, 49, is poised to open a second gallery in the suburban art complex of Moganshan.

Business wasn't always so brisk. Studio Rouge opened in the immediate post-Sars era, as life in Shanghai, and other parts of Asia, was beginning to return to normal.

Mr Michell signed a lease on the rundown cobweb-covered 1,300 sq ft former office, and invested US$30,000 on turning it into a minimalist exhibition area suitable for hanging modern art.

'It took six months from finding the location, negotiating and taking the lease and doing the renovations,' he recalls. 'They say that 85 per cent of start-up businesses collapse in the first year and there were times when I thought we would go down the tube. But after the first year, business picked up dramatically.'