All and Nothing review – inspiring tale of the Chinese artist who cultivated a grassroots scene in Cumbria

2026-03-23 - 11:19

In 1972, Li Yuan-chian set up the LYC Museum in a ramshackle farmhouse – and this inventive documentary provides a fitting, if sparse, tribute to his legacy 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. At one point, a friend of Li’s 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: “Here the two families are united in his parents’ marriage. And there’s another dot. Who’s that? It’s Li.” 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’s Ton Fan art collective, which irked the island’s nationalist governors; a stint squatting in a furniture factory in Bologna; then tip-toeing into swinging London’s avant garde scene. “Pushing, pushing, pushing, on the road, on the street, on the path, in the city,” as Li described his solitary art quest. Continue reading...