Withdrawn from the Fish Market sets up a fish stall piled high with carp. In China, the carp is a cherished symbol of perseverance, prized in Confucian thought for swimming steadily against the current. In Australia, where it was introduced decades ago, it multiplied rapidly and devastated rivers such as the Murray-Darling, prompting costly eradication schemes.

Shen Shaomin’s long-running series Chinese Carp answers with hyper-real painted fish, glass-eyed and gently breathing through small internal mechanisms. Like the species itself, they migrate and multiply across galleries, museums and art fairs. Restaged in response to the relocation of the Sydney Fish Market, and shown alongside the carp’s end as canned food, the work likens the carp’s stirring of riverbeds to migrants reshaping new homes. It asks how a single decision, species or structure can ripple through an entire system.