9 SEPTEMBER 1999 - 26 JANUARY 2000
QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY, AUSTRALIA
Presaging the Future
The Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art opened at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia, on September 9, 1999. Included in the exhibition were the works of 77 artists from twenty countries in Asia and the Pacific. On September 10 a remarkable performance by Indonesian artist Dadang Christanto served as a symbol for the entire Triennial project. Entitled 'Api di bulan Mei 1998' (Fire in May 1998), Christanto's work, comprising 47 life-size papier mâché human figures, was set alight in a moving ceremony related to the recent tragedy of hundreds burned to death in riots and revolution in Indonesia. Christanto also referred to the events in East Timor. The immediacy of this work reinforces the Triennial's purpose of understanding through an informed dialogue with artists in Asia and the Pacific. It is not that the Australian, Asian, and Pacific curators set out to present political art, but they do seek out art that engages with issues reflecting the dynamic and changing nature of art and society in the Asia-Pacific region today.
By CAROLINE TURNER
There are other equally powerful statements within this Triennial: Hiroshi Sugimoto's extraordinary photographs of a Japanese temple built to prepare for the Buddhist millennium centuries ago challenges Western notions of time, Katsushige Nakahashi's life-size replica of a crashed World War Two Japanese Zero fighter which will be burned at the end of the exhibition in a Buddhist ceremony reminds us the next century may be as full of human conflict as previous centuries; Cai Guo Qiang's bridge to the future is about the meeting of cultures and the difficulties of such engagements - those crossing the bridge must pass through a shower of water at its centre; Tribal Indian artist Sonabai's clay sculptures remind the viewer of the continuing, rich folk traditions dating back thousands of years contrasting with Ravinder Reddy's sculpture of a gilded fibreglass goddess, itself a mixture of ancient tradition and street exotica in today's India.From the Pacific there are works of spectacular creativity such as the collaboration between Samoan Michel Tuffery and Futuna Islander Patrice Kaikilekofe involving communities of Islander Australians in a performance utilizing bulls made of bully (i.e. corned) beef tins - a commentary on how Pacific lifestyles changed with the coming of Europeans since the eighteenth century. Perhaps most impressive of all are the new works by senior Australian Aboriginal artist and elder, Michael Nelson Jagamara, which are an explosion of ancient signs on canvas done in ways which recall the force and mastery of Chinese calligraphy. Representing a new Australia in this exhibition are the works of Australian artists Guan Wei and Ah Xian, both of whom came to this country ten years ago after the events of Tiananmen Square. Ah Xian's ceramic heads are decorated with traditional Ming dynasty designs and the artist is currently the recipient of an Australia Council grant to return to China for further study on the decorative motifs of Imperial Chinese porcelain.
Genuine dialogue
Inaugurated by the Queensland Art Gallery nearly ten years ago, the Triennial project includes exhibitions, publications, and conferences, an extensive library research collection of catalogues, and more recently a commitment to forming a collection of the contemporary art of the region. An innovation for this Third Triennial is the Virtual Triennial and associated website (http://www. apt3.com). The Third Triennial also has a children's event for age groups three to twelve and a strong youth and education emphasis. The educational aspects of the project underpin its origins in a belief that Australians needed to know more about the region in which we live. An important principle of the Triennial has been that Australian curators are not attempting to dominate debates but that Australians should listen very carefully to what our colleagues in the region are saying about art and social and political issues. One major concern of some critics has been the lack of one overall unified viewpoint. In fact, this diversity has been the project's strength, allowing challenges to West-centric methodologies and genuine dialogue based on mutual respect.
Contemporary art in this region is the product of centuries of tradition combined with the more recent engagements with the West as well as the social, political, and technological changes which have pushed the world to a global society. The art in the Asia-Pacific Triennials, however, reinforces knowledge of the survival of cultures, demonstrates how the art emerges from diverse cultural traditions as well as reflecting contemporary issues, confronts and refutes the notion of a global sameness and opens up real challenges for Western art historians in terms of future directions and developments. The theme of the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial was 'Beyond the Future' but it is clear that, whatever the future of art in this region, it will not be dominated by Western perspectives and Western 'influence' may well come to seem insignificant to the historians of the future.
The 1993 exhibition was the first in the world to bring together contemporary Asian and Pacific art. This raw mixture has also given the project some unique features and allowed the exploration of complex questions regarding the continuation of traditions, the significance of folk art and popular culture to contemporary expression, and the contemporaneous nature of indigenous art from the Pacific. This entire project has had a remarkable impact in Australia with audiences at the three exhibitions held this decade reaching 350,000 close to two per cent of Australia's population. In the process the Triennial has gained an international profile, not only within the Asia-Pacific region, where it is now accepted as one of the major forums for the discussion of contemporary art, but with increasing interest from North America and Europe. After the 1996 Triennial Judith Stein wrote in Art in America that '... it is clear that the Queensland Art Gallery's Asia-Pacific Triennial series is affecting the global discourse of contemporary art.' If this is the case it is because the until recently neglected contemporary art of the Asia-Pacific region has an important message for artists and audiences internationally.
The Conference
Coinciding with the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art an international conference was held in Brisbane, Australia, from 10 to 12 September 1999. Seven hundred delegates attended from every continent, making this the largest art conference ever held in Australia. Ninety speakers, many of them artists, looked at developments in art in Asia and the Pacific over the decade. The conference was organized by the Queensland Art Gallery, Griffith University, and the Australian National University. Speakers stressed the necessity of exploring the contexts in which the art is produced and the need for a more sophisticated understanding of diverse cultural traditions, the renewal and evolution of those traditions, the long histories in the region of cultural engagement over the centuries, and the complexity of the intermarriage of ancient tradition with more recent encounters with the West. The relevance of the concepts of post-colonialism and post-modernism to this region were challenged as was the idea of an experience of modernity giving way to post-modernism, especially in Asia as well as the idea of ownership of these concepts by the West. Speakers agreed on the need for a new language of art criticism but rejected the concept of a meganarrative.
The globally mobile nature of art today has raised new questions. Economic and political crises have continued to affect the work of artists in the region, many of whom are directly involved with their communities in raising awareness of issues such as poverty, civil war (as in Sri Lanka), the place of women within Asian and Pacific societies, ethnicity, rapid urban development, environmental degradation, and social dislocation. Speakers pointed to the need for ethnic and cultural understanding, and to the continuing importance of community, family, religion, and spirituality. Paris-based Chinese artist Chen Zhen, for example, in his dramatic work 'Invocation of Washing Fire' seeks to confront the 'fever' of Asian capitalism and economic 'greed' ironically by evoking ancient spiritual cleansing through a medical-alchemical fire in a furnace constructed of thousands of abacus beads, Chinese wooden chamber pots, and broken computers. Dutch-born Indonesian artist Mella Jaarsma asked audiences to consider racial and ethnic questions through a work where one could imagine wearing another's 'skin'. Her costumes in the exhibition are constructed from chickens, frogs, fish, and kangaroo. Several artists dealt with communication through language, including Xu Bing's new English calligraphy, (English written in Chinese characters), Shigeaki Iwai's dialogue project where participants speaking different languages give the illusion of understanding one another, and Vong Phaophanit's fragmented Laotian script constructed in neon which defies translation in its focus on materials and light rather than the meaning of language.
Sessions on screen culture, new technology, and web art were held in conjunction with MAAP99 (Multimedia Art Asia Pacific). Sessions were also held in Chinese, Bahasa Indonesia, and Japanese. An indigenous welcome was delivered to the conference by Aboriginal artist and elder, Lilla Watson, representing the traditional owners of the land, and there were a number of sessions devoted to indigenous issues in Australia and the Pacific. Delegates also called for support for the people of East Timor. The conference unfolded against the turmoil and bloodshed of the referendum aftermath, reminding all who attended of the volatile and unpredictable contexts in which the art in the exhibition is produced. *
Caroline Turner, Deputy Director Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia, and Project Director for the Asia-Pacific Triennial series, 1993, 1996, 1999, wrote this report while the APT3 was taking place.
Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery
P.O. Box 3686
South Brisbane QLD 4101, Australia
Tel.: +61-7-3840 7298
Fax: +61-7-3844 8865
Http://www.apt3.net