Queensland Art Gallery - Queensland Government
Queensland Art Gallery - Queensland Government
Queensland Art Gallery - Queensland Government
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Publisher<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Stanley Place, South Bank, Brisbane<br />
PO Box 3686, South Brisbane<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> 4101 Australia<br />
www.qag.qld.gov.au<br />
Published for ‘The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of<br />
Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>’, organised by the <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> and held at the <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> and the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Brisbane,<br />
Australia, 5 December 2009 – 5 April 2010.<br />
© <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, 2009<br />
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as<br />
permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no<br />
part may be reproduced without prior written<br />
permission from the publisher. No illustration in<br />
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permission of the copyright owners. Requests<br />
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should be addressed to the publisher.<br />
Copyright for texts in this publication is held by<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> and the authors.<br />
Copyright for all art works and images is held<br />
by the creators or their representatives, unless<br />
otherwise stated. Copyright of photographic<br />
images is held by individual photographers and<br />
institutions or the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>.<br />
Every attempt has been made to locate holders<br />
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would be grateful to hear from any reader with<br />
further information.<br />
Care has been taken to ensure the colour<br />
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-<br />
Publication data:<br />
Author: Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary<br />
<strong>Art</strong> (6th : 2009 : Brisbane, Qld.)<br />
Title: The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial<br />
of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>.<br />
ISBN: 9781921503085 (pbk.)<br />
Subjects: <strong>Art</strong>, Asian--21st century--Exhibitions.<br />
<strong>Art</strong>, Pacific Island--21st century--Exhibitions.<br />
Other Authors/Contributors: <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>.<br />
Dewey Number: 709.50905<br />
ISBN 978 1 921503 08 5<br />
Notes on the publication<br />
The order of the artists’ family names and given<br />
names varies depending on the conventions used<br />
in their respective home countries, or the artist’s<br />
own preference.<br />
Text for this publication has been supplied by the<br />
authors as attributed. The views expressed are not<br />
necessarily those of the publisher.<br />
Dimensions of works are given in centimetres (cm),<br />
height preceding width followed by depth.<br />
Captions generally appear as supplied by lenders.<br />
All photography is credited as known.<br />
Typeset in Avenir and Clarendon. Printed by<br />
Platypus Graphics, Brisbane, on Novatech Satin<br />
from Raleigh Paper.<br />
Cover (including back cover and inside gatefold details):<br />
Kohei Nawa<br />
Japan b.1975<br />
PixCell-Elk#2 2009<br />
Taxidermied elk, glass, acrylic, crystal beads /<br />
240 x 249.5 x 198cm / Work created with the support<br />
of the Fondation d’enterprise Hermės / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and SCAI, Tokyo / Photograph: Seiji Toyonaga<br />
Page 6–7:<br />
Subodh Gupta<br />
India b.1964<br />
Line of Control (1) (detail) 2008<br />
Stainless steel and steel structure, brass and copper<br />
utensils / 500 x 500 x 500cm / Image courtesy: The artist<br />
and Arario <strong>Gallery</strong>, Beijing<br />
Page 8–9:<br />
Rudi Mantofani<br />
Indonesia b.1973<br />
Nada yang hilang (The lost note) (detail) 2006–07<br />
Wood, metal, leather and oil / 9 pieces: 260 x 45 x 9cm<br />
(each) / Collection: Dr Oei Hong Djien / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and Gajah <strong>Gallery</strong>, Singapore / Photograph:<br />
Agung Sukindra<br />
Page 10–11:<br />
Kim Gi Chol<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1959<br />
The Songchun River Clothing Factory team arrives<br />
(detail) 1999<br />
Ink on paper / 135.5 x 250cm / Collection:<br />
Nicholas Bonner, Beijing<br />
Page 12–13:<br />
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian<br />
Iran b.1924<br />
Lightning for Neda (detail) 2009<br />
Mirror mosaic, reverse glass painting, plaster on wood /<br />
6 panels: 300 x 200cm (each) / Commissioned for APT6<br />
and the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Collection. The artist<br />
dedicates this work to the loving memory of her late<br />
husband Dr Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY
Contents<br />
16 Premier’s message / Anna Bligh<br />
68 Minam Apang Tales from the deep / Miranda Wallace<br />
140 Tracey Moffatt Plantation / Julie Ewington<br />
200 Building bridges: 10 years of Kids’ APT / Andrew Clark<br />
17 Sponsor message / Santos<br />
71 Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan In flight / Michael Hawker<br />
143 Farhad Moshiri Hybrid confections / Abigail Fitzgibbons<br />
206 Kids’ APT artist projects<br />
18 Sponsors<br />
72 Chen Chieh-jen On going / Naomi Evans<br />
144 Kohei Nawa Seeing is believing / Michael Hawker<br />
21 Director’s foreword / Tony Ellwood<br />
75 Chen Qiulin Salvaged from ruins / Angela Goddard<br />
147 Shinji Ohmaki Dissolving into light / Shihoko Iida<br />
76 Cheo Chai-Hiang Cash converter / Yvonne Low<br />
148 The One Year Drawing Project / Suhanya Raffel<br />
79 DAMP Untitled and indefinite / Francis E Parker<br />
152 Pacific Reggae Roots Beyond the Reef / Brent Clough<br />
218 Catalogue of works<br />
80 Solomon Enos Polyfantastica / David Burnett<br />
157 Rithy Panh Gestures of protest / Amanda Slack-Smith<br />
230 <strong>Art</strong>ist biographies<br />
24 A restless subject / Suhanya Raffel<br />
85 Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian Lightning for Neda /<br />
158 Reuben Paterson Pathways through history /<br />
242 Australian Cinémathèque Programs Promised Lands /<br />
32 Rites and rights: Contemporary Pacific / Maud Page<br />
Suhanya Raffel<br />
Angela Goddard<br />
The Cypress and the Crow: 50 Years of Iranian Animation<br />
42 Promised lands / Jose Da Silva and Kathryn Weir<br />
86 Subodh Gupta Cold war kitchen / David Burnett<br />
161 Campbell Patterson Intimate videos / Francis E Parker<br />
252 Acknowledgments<br />
50 The hungry goat: Iranian animation, media archaeology<br />
89 Gonkar Gyatso Trouble in paradise / Suhanya Raffel<br />
162 Wit Pimkanchanapong In-between spaces / Donna McColm<br />
259 Contributing authors<br />
and located visual worlds / Kathryn Weir<br />
90 Kyungah Ham Communication beyond<br />
165 Qiu Anxiong The new book of mountains and seas /<br />
58 The world and the studio / Russell Storer<br />
the unreachable place / Jose Da Silva<br />
Sarah Stutchbury<br />
93 Ho Tzu Nyen Of the way of the creator / Russell Storer<br />
166 Kibong Rhee There is no place / Donna McColm<br />
94 Emre Hüner Panoptikon / Naomi Evans<br />
169 Hiraki Sawa Active stillness / Mellissa Kavenagh<br />
97 Raafat Ishak Pathways in paint / Bree Richards<br />
170 Shirana Shahbazi A purely visual language / Bree Richards<br />
98 Runa Islam Things that are restless and<br />
173 Shooshie Sulaiman Who’s afraid of the dark? /<br />
things that are still / Kathryn Weir<br />
Ellie Buttrose<br />
101 Ayaz Jokhio Toward the within / Russell Storer<br />
174 Thukral and Tagra Dream merchants / Russell Storer<br />
102 Takeshi Kitano Fallen hero / Rosie Hays<br />
179 Charwei Tsai A space of contemplation / Ruth McDougall<br />
105 Ang Lee Quiet! The film is about to start / Ellie Buttrose<br />
180 Vanuatu Sculptors Innovation and tradition /<br />
106 Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio and art in North Korea (DPRK) /<br />
Ruth McDougall<br />
Nicholas Bonner<br />
184 Traditions and rituals in North Ambrym /<br />
114 Rudi Mantofani What is aslant and what is oblique /<br />
Napong Norbert<br />
Julie Ewington<br />
186 Rohan Wealleans Ritual and excess / Nicholas Chambers<br />
117 Mataso Printmakers / David Burnett<br />
189 Robin White, Leba Toki and Bale Jione A shared garden /<br />
120 Mapping the Mekong / Rich Streitmatter-Tran<br />
Ruth McDougall<br />
125 Bùi Công Khánh Contemporary story / Ian Were<br />
190 Yang Shaobin X – Blind Spot / Abigail Fitzgibbons<br />
126 Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba Breathing is free / Shihoko Iida<br />
193 Yao Jui-chung Wandering in the lens / Jose Da Silva<br />
129 Sopheap Pich 1979 / Mellissa Kavenagh<br />
196 YNG (Yoshitomo Nara and graf) Discovering new worlds /<br />
130 Manit Sriwanichpoom The agony of waiting /<br />
Nicholas Chambers<br />
Russell Storer<br />
199 Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu People holding flowers /<br />
135 Svay Ken Painting from life / Russell Storer<br />
Abigail Fitzgibbons<br />
136 Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu Between the two /<br />
Rich Streitmatter-Tran<br />
139 Vandy Rattana Fire of the year / Mellissa Kavenagh<br />
14 15
Premier’s message<br />
Anna Bligh mp<br />
Premier of <strong>Queensland</strong> and Minister for the <strong>Art</strong>s<br />
Sponsor message<br />
Rick Wilkinson<br />
President <strong>Queensland</strong> & GLNG<br />
The <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>’s Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> (APT) has become one<br />
of Australia’s most anticipated international cultural events, earning <strong>Queensland</strong> an enviable<br />
position in the contemporary art world.<br />
The <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Government</strong> has supported the Asia Pacific Triennial since its inception in<br />
1993, building the <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong> (GoMA) as a home for this spectacular exhibition<br />
and for contemporary art.<br />
APT6 incorporates more than 100 artists from many nations and across many disciplines.<br />
GoMA has dedicated more than 5000 square metres of gallery, cinema and children’s activity<br />
space to the exhibition, and the original <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> has also devoted significant<br />
space to the Triennial.<br />
The <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> is recognised as an international leader in contemporary Asian and<br />
Pacific art and has been building its collection for almost two decades. The APT is unique and<br />
remains the only recurring exhibition to focus on the contemporary art of Asia, the Pacific and<br />
Australia. It attracts strong interest from outside <strong>Queensland</strong>, with more than a third of visitors to<br />
APT5 coming from interstate or overseas. With the five exhibitions since 1993 attracting a total of<br />
more than 1.3 million visitors, it’s clear there’s an audience for art work from Asia and the Pacific.<br />
At Santos we have been putting our energy into <strong>Queensland</strong> for more than 50 years, unlocking<br />
the state’s vast natural gas resources. We also put our energy into the communities we are part<br />
of, supporting events and organisations that are valued by and enrich those communities.<br />
Santos has been involved with the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, an institution that is central to<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong>’s cultural life, since 1990. The art within its walls has the power to inspire and<br />
challenge us. It helps us to view the world in ways we might not have recognised before.<br />
We are delighted to be continuing our association with the <strong>Gallery</strong> as the Presenting Sponsor<br />
for ‘The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>’. Showcasing the creativity of our Asia<br />
Pacific region brings people and ideas together in all their diversity, and everyone benefits<br />
from this exchange.<br />
Santos supports the arts, because we’re not just an energy company, we’re a company<br />
with energy.<br />
I trust you will enjoy this publication, a record of what you have seen and experienced<br />
at this outstanding exhibition.<br />
This event brings together two of <strong>Queensland</strong>’s mainstays — our cultural and tourism industries<br />
— and I encourage <strong>Queensland</strong>ers to experience for themselves this fantastic celebration of<br />
contemporary visual art.<br />
16 17
Sponsors<br />
FOUNDING SUPPORTER<br />
PRESENTING SPONSOR<br />
Principal Benefactor<br />
PRINCIPAL PARTNERS<br />
Assisted by the Australian <strong>Government</strong> through the<br />
Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body,<br />
and the Visual <strong>Art</strong>s and Craft Strategy, an initiative of<br />
the Australian, State and Territory <strong>Government</strong>s.<br />
MAJOR SPONSORS<br />
TOURISM & MEDIA PARTNERS<br />
SUPPORTING SPONSORS<br />
Shirana Shahbazi<br />
Iran/Switzerland b.1974<br />
[Stilleben-22-2008] (from ‘Flowers, fruits & portraits’<br />
series) 2003–ongoing, printed 2009<br />
Type C photograph, ed. of 5 (+ 1 AP) / 150 x 120cm /<br />
Image courtesy: The artist and Bob van Orsouw<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, Zurich<br />
18
Director’s foreword<br />
Tony Ellwood<br />
With each iteration since 1993, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> has taken on<br />
new and surprising forms. It remains the only major recurring exhibition in the world to<br />
maintain a focus on the contemporary art of Asia, Australia and the Pacific, and ‘The 6th Asia<br />
Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>’ (APT6) reaches into a wider realm than ever before. It<br />
looks toward the dynamic region of West Asia and continues to explore the art of the Pacific.<br />
The exhibition includes more than 100 artists, many from countries which have never before<br />
featured in a Triennial: Tibet, North Korea (DPRK), Turkey and Iran, and countries of the Mekong<br />
region, such as Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma).<br />
The last Triennial in 2006 marked the launch of our second site, the <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong><br />
(GoMA). This time, the Triennial occupies this wonderful building in its entirety, along with the<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>’s iconic Watermall and adjoining galleries. The exhibition series has<br />
introduced many artists to Australian audiences, and this, of course, continues with APT6.<br />
An event of this scale will naturally strain at the bonds of any overarching themes, however, APT6<br />
has, at its core, a long-held interest in collaboration, interconnectivity and cross-disciplinary<br />
practice. This is expressed in many ways, from close partnerships between artists to larger scale<br />
and less predictable forms of connection and collaboration.<br />
Zhu Weibing<br />
China b.1971<br />
Ji Wenyu<br />
China b.1959<br />
People holding flowers (detail) 2007<br />
Synthetic polymer paint on resin; velour, steel<br />
wire, dacron, lodestone and cotton / 400 pieces:<br />
100 x 18 x 8cm (each) / Installed dimensions variable /<br />
The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Collection<br />
of Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong>. Purchased 2008 with<br />
funds from Michael Simcha Baevski through the<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Three major multi-artist projects examine some of these themes, and have been coordinated<br />
in collaboration with co-curators working in the field. Focusing on artists working in the Mekong<br />
River region of South-East Asia, The Mekong is an ambitious consideration of art from Vietnam,<br />
Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar. Another multi-artist project, Pacific Reggae: Roots Beyond<br />
the Reef, continues the Triennial’s engagement with the contemporary culture of the Pacific,<br />
in this case revealing reggae music’s responsiveness to influences of location and technology,<br />
and the genre’s ability to adapt from Jamaica to the Pacific. The third project presents a major<br />
display of works, in a variety of media, from North Korea (DPRK). A central component is a<br />
group of new works from the Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio in Pyongyang. These works, including loans<br />
from a key private collection, will be seen in Australia for the first time.<br />
Three exceptional filmmakers — Ang Lee, Takeshi Kitano and Rithy Panh — are profiled as<br />
APT6 artists with retrospective seasons during the exhibition. The Australian Cinémathèque<br />
also presents two cinema projects, Promised Lands and The Cypress and the Crow: 50 years<br />
of Iranian Animation, presenting contemporary cinema reaching from the Indian subcontinent<br />
to West Asia and the Middle East.<br />
The APT has, since its inception, played a leading role in the development of the <strong>Gallery</strong>’s<br />
contemporary Asian and Pacific collections. The value of this was demonstrated earlier this<br />
21
year through ‘The China Project’, a three-part exhibition which provided a fresh context for the<br />
contemporary Chinese collection and included many acquisitions from previous APTs. Further<br />
acquisitions will be made from this Triennial, continuing the <strong>Gallery</strong>’s long-term commitment to<br />
the art of the region and building on its internationally significant collections.<br />
I gratefully acknowledge the continuing support of the Triennial’s Founding Supporter, the<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Government</strong>, whose unwavering commitment to this series has been essential<br />
to its ambition and achievements. I welcome Santos as the Presenting Sponsor of APT6.<br />
Santos also sponsors the <strong>Gallery</strong>’s Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre, and I look forward to working together<br />
in this important new relationship. I also express our gratitude to the Australian <strong>Government</strong>,<br />
which provides support through the Australia Council and the Visual <strong>Art</strong>s and Craft Strategy,<br />
an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory governments. Visual <strong>Art</strong>s and Craft Strategy<br />
funds, administered by <strong>Art</strong>s <strong>Queensland</strong>, also support a regional program of the Triennial,<br />
which has included the travelling exhibition ‘Frame by Frame: Asia Pacific <strong>Art</strong>ists on Tour’<br />
(2008–10). This exhibition presents works from the <strong>Gallery</strong>’s Asian and Pacific collections at<br />
eight <strong>Queensland</strong> venues.<br />
I wish to thank the Triennial’s Principal Benefactor, the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation, which has<br />
generously supported Kids’ APT. I also acknowledge and thank the exhibition’s Major Sponsors —<br />
Industrea Limited, Ishibashi Foundation and the <strong>Gallery</strong>’s Chairman’s Circle — as well as the many<br />
media and tourism partners, cultural bodies, foundations and supporters, whose contributions<br />
are greatly valued. The <strong>Gallery</strong> is also extremely grateful to the many lenders to the exhibition.<br />
Thanks to all the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> staff who have contributed to this Triennial, and also to<br />
the co-curators who have collaborated with us. Finally, I thank the artists for their work, and their<br />
generous and enthusiastic support. The APT series has always depended on an extraordinary<br />
network of close and enduring relationships with the participating artists. In fact, these<br />
relationships are the foundation on which the Triennial’s achievements rest. The <strong>Gallery</strong>’s staff<br />
are privileged and honoured to work with the participating artists, and I trust you will enjoy their<br />
outstanding works in ‘The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>’.<br />
Subodh Gupta<br />
India b.1964<br />
The other thing 2005–06<br />
Steel structure, plastic, stainless steel tongs /<br />
206 x 211 x 63.5cm / The Lekha and Anupam Poddar<br />
Collection / Image courtesy: The artist and the Devi<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Foundation, Gurgaon<br />
22 23
A restless subject 1<br />
Suhanya Raffel<br />
The anthology What Makes a Great Exhibition? opens with an essay by the curator Robert Storr.<br />
He begins with the following words:<br />
It is customary in writing about what curators do to use the singular noun exhibition to cover<br />
what is in fact a plural category. From this, much confusion ensues in the experience and the<br />
judgment of the public. Rather than one form, exhibitions take many, some more, some less<br />
appropriate to their timing, their situation, their audience, and above all their contents. None of<br />
them is ideal and none exhausts the potential meanings of important art. A good exhibition is<br />
never the last word on its subject. 2<br />
The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> (APT) is an ongoing project initiated in 1993.<br />
It is one of very few regularly recurring international exhibitions with a declared interest in a<br />
specific region; it addresses culture and ethnicity and acknowledges historical diasporas. It is<br />
also one of the rare series sustained within a museum context. With every exhibition since the<br />
first, the APT has been the subject of much discussion and debate in the art world and it has<br />
developed a large, dedicated audience. Its uniqueness, asserted through geography, provides<br />
structure and agency.<br />
Today, one of the most prominent ways of seeing contemporary international visual art en<br />
masse is via the biennale or triennial platform. These exhibitions are characterised by their<br />
scale, together with an understanding by artists, curators, educators, administrators, funding<br />
agencies and audiences that they offer a distinct perspective on the cultural life of a particular<br />
place. They provide evidence of cosmopolitanism and a ground for the exploration of ideas; are<br />
platforms for dialogue; and advocate a range of intellectual, political, aesthetic and otherwise<br />
‘artistic’ views. They are also an important means of bringing a broad range of international<br />
contemporary art to local audiences who would otherwise not have the opportunity to see<br />
such work. They have bloomed across the world, multiplying most recently in places where art<br />
infrastructure is less established, particularly in Asia, thus allowing for a decentralised viewing<br />
of contemporary art. As the curator and critic Hou Hanru recently commented: ‘biennales are<br />
really the most intense moments we see in the art world’. 3<br />
It is interesting that most of the best regarded of these events are not staged in the major art<br />
capitals of London, New York or Tokyo, but rather in Kassel, Brisbane, Gwangju, São Paulo and<br />
Havana. These towns and cities provide a critical level of population, infrastructure and interest,<br />
at a scale that is not suffocating, yet big enough to present an international event that allows<br />
for both a physical space that is open and accommodating, and a conceptual space that is<br />
curious and engaging.<br />
Shirana Shahbazi<br />
Iran/Switzerland b.1974<br />
In collaboration with Sirous Shaghaghi, Iran<br />
Sirous Shaghaghi painting Still life: Coconut and<br />
other things 2009 in his studio, Tehran<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist / Photograph: Roozbeh Tazhibi<br />
24 25
The curatorial structure of the inaugural APT laid the groundwork for subsequent events.<br />
It eschewed the auteur in favour of a multitude of voices, initially because it was a pragmatic<br />
way of both engaging and reflecting the diverse cultures of the region. The structure was built<br />
around <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> staff working with curatorial partners in different countries.<br />
As <strong>Gallery</strong> expertise grew, this model evolved into an internal <strong>Gallery</strong> curatorial team seeking<br />
advice from curatorial colleagues and artists abroad and at home.<br />
In these two unique ways — regional specificity and no single directorial voice — the APT differs<br />
from other biennales and triennials. Importantly, it also provides opportunities for artists from<br />
the region to have external critical perspectives brought to their work. The APT advocates for<br />
decentralised positions, and was one of the first in this part of the world to concentrate and<br />
frame its ‘looking’ via this geography. Why is this important? It is an assertion that the work<br />
of artists from Asia and the Pacific be presented in a regional context within the international<br />
framework of the triennial. This productive focus offers significant perspectives generated by<br />
privileging location. As independent curator and publisher Sharmini Pereira notes:<br />
Even if an ambition to foster a world art history guided early APTs, its subsequent incarnations<br />
have highlighted the impossibility of such an enterprise. Defining itself in relation to Asia and<br />
the Pacific, the APT is, by choice, not geared to encompass a world art history. Through its<br />
exclusive regional focus, it has not only made a phenomenal contribution to cultural debates<br />
internationally but has provided rumination on problems of canons and linear narratives. 4<br />
With every APT the definition of the region is tested. APT6 includes the work of artists from Iran<br />
and Turkey for the first time, with the major thematic cinema program Promised Lands exploring<br />
the rich cultures of the Indian subcontinent through to West Asia and the Middle East. Looking<br />
to the immediate west was first mooted by a number of Indian and Pakistani artist and curator<br />
colleagues who, when talking about their own practices, would often frame discussion around<br />
Tracey Moffatt<br />
Australia/United States b.1960<br />
Gary Hillberg<br />
Australia b.1952<br />
OTHER (stills) 2009<br />
DVD transferred to Digital Betacam, single channel<br />
projection, continuous loop, colour, sound,<br />
7:00 minutes, ed. 1/150 / Courtesy: The artists<br />
Kyong Sik<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b. unknown<br />
The high-speed construction unit 1988<br />
Linocut on paper / 59.5cm x 72cm /<br />
Collection: Nicholas Bonner, Beijing<br />
Jae Yong<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b. unknown<br />
Untitled 1964<br />
Watercolour on paper / 26 x 19cm /<br />
Collection: Nicholas Bonner, Beijing<br />
the complex exchange of artistic and cultural ideas from the Middle East, especially Islamic art.<br />
It is, in fact, a natural extension, and allows us to acknowledge the considerable influence that<br />
Islamic art and culture have across the region.<br />
Also included for the first time is a presentation of work from North Korea (DPRK). Working with<br />
Beijing-based British filmmaker Nicholas Bonner as co-curator, the discussion about showing art<br />
from North Korea began in early 2005. Given Bonner’s long-term relationships with artists and<br />
filmmakers in the DPRK, the 13 commissions at the heart of the display have been developed in<br />
close consultation with the artists from the Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio, the curators and the <strong>Gallery</strong>.<br />
One clear aim of the exhibition has been to challenge assumptions, and therefore broaden<br />
understanding about what contemporary art is. The APT consistently addresses how artists live<br />
and work in diverse conditions. One of the great contributions this exhibition makes to broader<br />
discussions about art is the recognition of different, parallel art histories that have developed in<br />
the region in locally specific ways. For example, the art historical canons cited in the works from<br />
the Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio include the socialist realist styles that were imported from the Soviet<br />
Union and China as revolutionary artistic movements, a form also echoed in the iconography<br />
developed in trade union banners in Australia and the English Midlands. Yet, this is not the only<br />
stylistic influence. Brush-and-ink painting, or chosunhua, is still considered the most important<br />
art form in Korea due to its established place in East Asian art; this is also the case with oil<br />
painting, which has its roots in Europe and was most recently taught to Korean artists by the<br />
Japanese during the occupation from 1910 to 1945.<br />
Such a trajectory is in sharp contrast to the art history that octogenarian Iranian artist Monir<br />
Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian draws on in her dazzling mirror mosaic sculptures. The rich traditions<br />
that distinguish Islamic architecture are key influences. The geometric structures and the ordered<br />
repetition of patterns that were developed as an intrinsic aspect of Islamic shrine and temple<br />
26 27
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian<br />
Iran b.1924<br />
Lightning for Neda (detail) 2009<br />
Mirror mosaic, reverse glass painting, plaster on wood /<br />
6 panels: 300 x 200cm (each) / Commissioned for APT6<br />
and the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Collection. The artist<br />
dedicates this work to the loving memory of her late<br />
husband Dr Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Opposite<br />
Pasifika Divas<br />
Shigeyuki Kihara in performance 2002<br />
Produced by Lisa Taouma and the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> for APT 2002 / Photograph: Lukas Davidson<br />
architecture, dating from the seventh century to the present, have been inspirational to her work.<br />
But so too was the artist’s training in New York during the late 1940s, when she studied at the<br />
Parsons School of Design. She then spent 12 years living and working as a freelance designer for<br />
American Vogue magazine, and as a commercial artist and fashion designer for the department<br />
store Bonwit Teller. Her exposure to artist colleagues, gallerists and other art world luminaries<br />
at the time meant she observed the postwar flowering of the New York Avant-garde before<br />
returning to Iran in 1957. Working mostly instinctively, her shimmering works are testaments to<br />
modernist abstract principles as well as the purity of Islamic geometry.<br />
The one constant of the APT is dissonance. There is a certain impenetrability that such ‘noise’<br />
engenders. An ordered consonance is not possible when the framework demands such broad<br />
scope. The voice of the Pacific — and for APT6, it can literally be heard in the drop beat of Pacific<br />
reggae — adds yet another pitch. Looking back at past APTs, it has been the Pacific artists who<br />
have challenged the structure of ‘seeing’. Perhaps this is due to the nature of contemporary<br />
practice on the many hundreds of islands, which also includes indigenous art-making forms.<br />
The inclusion in APT6 of powerful customary objects by North Ambrymese sculptors<br />
from Vanuatu encourages us to focus on the historical process of artistic creation and the<br />
engagement with tradition. In these circumstances, the act of separating oral, performative<br />
and visual art practices is both unproductive and uncreative. Why persist when such canonical<br />
definitions are of no concern in the local contemporary context? The work of these artists<br />
readily challenges assumptions about the stability of definitions within contemporary art<br />
discourses in the museum.<br />
For artists to alter the museum space is not a new phenomenon. It has a longer history growing<br />
from the restless dissent of the 1960s and 1970s, when artists in the West focused their energies<br />
on testing the conventional relationships between artist, audience, museum and market. Museum<br />
director and writer Sandy Nairne describes the burgeoning history of these phenomena:<br />
28 29
publication. The discrete projects — such as The Mekong, Pacific Reggae: Roots Beyond the<br />
Reef, the works from North Korea (DPRK), and the thematic film programs — each concentrate<br />
on particular regions to present more in-depth perspectives on art history and contemporary<br />
ideas. For example, The Mekong uses the river as metaphor for the movement and exchange<br />
of knowledge. As Rich Streitmatter-Tran, co-curator of The Mekong states:<br />
The Mekong region is often referred to through a variety of organisational frameworks including<br />
historic–cultural areas, sociolinguistic zones, and by the borders of the nations themselves. It has<br />
always been a shifting territory — an ebb and flow of conflict and cooperation, modernisation<br />
and preservation, exploitation and conservation. Each struggle can be found documented in<br />
the arts, whether in historical artefact or in the contemporary work featured in APT6. 6<br />
There is always more to be said about contemporary art and art-making in Asia and the<br />
Pacific and, as we approach the second decade of this century, the economic, social, political<br />
and cultural dynamics of the region — and its relationships with the rest of the world — are<br />
more intense than ever. Every three years, the APT revisits this territory. Within Brisbane and<br />
internationally, this exhibition marks a point of concentration and deliberation valued by many.<br />
To return to Storr’s apt observation, ‘a good exhibition is never the last word on its subject’.<br />
The general term ‘space’ replaced the word gallery (alternate spaces followed after<br />
experimental galleries and laboratories) and was used precisely because it was supposed to<br />
avoid the connotations of an institutional or commercial environment, where a hierarchical,<br />
formal arrangement might determine audience behaviour in pre-set ways. ‘Space’ usefully<br />
removed the immediate connotations of commodity.<br />
If artists already had any ‘space’ it was because they had studios. And the connotations of<br />
studio activity had long passed from associations of the model and the arranged tableau to<br />
a less structured, process-oriented concept of the creative site. The new spaces in the early<br />
seventies were thus much less the laboratories of technological or participatory experiment<br />
than a self-consciously chaotic milieu (of which Warhol’s space of the Factory is a precursor),<br />
where gesture and incident could be prominent and pre-eminent. 5<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 I would like to acknowledge Runa Islam for her wonderful work The Restless Subject 2008, which effortlessly<br />
captures the complexities involved in the act of ‘seeing’.<br />
2 Robert Storr, ‘Show and tell’, in Paula Marincola (ed.), What Makes a Great Exhibition?, Philadelphia Exhibitions<br />
Initiative, Philadelphia, 2006, p.14.<br />
3 Hou Hanru, interviewed by Robert Leonard, ‘The biennale makers’, <strong>Art</strong> & Australia [APT6 special issue], December<br />
2009 [forthcoming].<br />
4 Sharmini Pereira, ‘The Asia Pacific Triennial: A forum’, in ‘21st century art history’, The Australian & New Zealand<br />
Journal of <strong>Art</strong>, vol.9, no.1/2, 2008–09, p.210.<br />
5 Sandy Nairne, ‘The institutionalization of dissent’, in Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W Ferguson and Sandy Nairne,<br />
Thinking about Exhibitions, Routledge, London, 1996, p.396.<br />
6 Rich Streitmatter-Tran, ‘Mapping the Mekong’, The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> [exhibition<br />
catalogue], <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Brisbane, 2009, p.128.<br />
I include this quote by way of arguing that, indirectly, the APT has had a similar influence on<br />
the art museum in which it takes place. The nature of art-making across the region is incredibly<br />
diverse and includes places with highly developed art infrastructures, as well as others with very<br />
limited foundations.<br />
Over the last two decades, the APT has shown the work of over 300 artists. In this context, it<br />
has introduced the work of little-known artists to Australia while also profiling artists with major<br />
international reputations, whose work is generally known through art publications rather than<br />
exhibitions staged in Brisbane. While APT6 presents work from places not previously included,<br />
the exhibition is built around artists from East Asia, South Asia, South-East Asia, Australia,<br />
the Pacific, as well as the diaspora, as it has from its inception. Thematic ideas — such as the<br />
significance of collaborative practice and the perspectives offered in the inclusion of the two<br />
major film programs, Promised Lands and The Cypress and the Crow: 50 Years of Iranian<br />
Animation — are integral to the APT, and are discussed in the other overview essays in this<br />
Simeon Simix<br />
Vanuatu b.1981<br />
Paw paw/coconut (from ‘Bebellic’ portfolio) 2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani paper ed. 1/45 / 76 x 56cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Vandy Rattana<br />
Cambodia b.1980<br />
Fire of the year 5 2008<br />
Digital print / 105.5 x 63.5cm / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
30 31
Rites and rights: Contemporary Pacific<br />
Maud Page<br />
Leba Toki recently planted taro in the lush, terraced gardens of the Shrine of the Bab in Haifa,<br />
Israel, a place of worship dedicated to Bahá’ulláh, the Persian founder of the Bahá’Í faith that<br />
she follows. The experience of adding something from her own Fijian soil to a place already<br />
imbued with so many symbols of unity and understanding provided the genesis for the work<br />
Teitei vou (A new garden) 2009, produced in collaboration with New Zealand artist Robin White<br />
and renowned masi (Fijian barkcloth) artist Bale Jione. But this is a mistranslation of Leba’s<br />
account — formulating only a literal reading of the trio’s complex and poetic artistic process.<br />
Rather, every time the three artists added another motif to their four-metre barkcloth they<br />
saw it as planting — pushing the ink through the fibrous layers of masi with their fingertips, the<br />
remnants of the ink remaining, like earth underneath fingernails. Taro was one of the first things<br />
they ‘planted’ in their garden, followed by sugarcane, pineapples and orange trees. 1<br />
Exhibiting art works that are still functional objects or that are derived from customary<br />
practices, such as Teitei vou (A new garden), opens a number of dialogues that the Asia Pacific<br />
Triennials have been exploring for some time. These conversations are both rewarding, in<br />
that they broaden interpretive possibilities, and fraught, as they highlight the disjunctures<br />
and mistranslations of our comfort zone. Curator Okwui Enwezor, however, warns against the<br />
romantic idea that there will always be a ‘misunderstanding when you take on the work of other<br />
cultures. These do happen, but those misunderstandings can never be addressed unless you<br />
make an attempt’. 2 The APT is the only series of exhibitions to systematically engage with the art<br />
of the Pacific region and interject it within that of a very prolific Asia. This is a discursive act.<br />
This APT presents eight artists/collectives from the Pacific, including New Zealand. It has a<br />
particular interest in the cultural expressions of Vanuatu, showing customary sculptures from<br />
North Ambrym alongside prints made by a group of young Port Vila-based artists, as well as the<br />
music of the region in Pacific Reggae: Roots Beyond the Reef. These three examples provide an<br />
insight into ni-Vanuatuans’ engagement with modernity and history. In varying degrees, all draw<br />
on customary practices, with artists continuing to use selected customary elements or altering<br />
them to suit present needs and ideas.<br />
Teitei vou (A new garden) also addresses these concerns by using barkcloth and the traditional<br />
rites of Fijian marriage as a starting point. This installation explores the narratives relating to the<br />
artists’ shared Bahá’Í faith, Toki and Jione’s Fijian material culture, and the difficulties of living<br />
in a politically turbulent Fiji. The large Lautoka sugar mill dominating this town’s landscape is<br />
repeated as a pattern on the taunamu (masi screen), for example, recalling over 100 years of<br />
indentured Indian labour. Alongside these depictions, which include the symbols of major<br />
world religions together with jackals and crows, are also patterns specific to the Moce area from<br />
where Toki and Jione originate. In Teitei vou (A new garden), the artists have assembled and<br />
Robin White<br />
New Zealand b.1946<br />
Leba Toki<br />
Fiji b.1951<br />
Bale Jione<br />
Fiji b.1952<br />
Taunamu from Teitei vou (A new garden) (detail) 2009<br />
Natural dyes on barkcloth / 390 x 240cm / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation Grant /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
32 33
added to a number of customary practices. Taunamu are traditionally used as screens during<br />
wedding ceremonies. Although in recent times they have begun to feature family names, the<br />
patterns and formation of the masi have remained relatively constant over centuries. Similarly,<br />
the ibe vakabati (wool-fringed mat), that features a lotus flower surrounded by the Fijian<br />
sandalwood vine, in the past would likely have displayed colourful geometric designs. 3 To these<br />
transformed works, Toki, White and Jione have added two fabric mats to be placed on the masi<br />
where the couple would stand. These mats, featuring remnants of wedding saris sewn with strips<br />
of masi, were inspired by the work of Toki’s Indo–Fijian neighbours. The artists have chosen an<br />
installation rich in hope and cultural symbolism and, through their Bahá’Í faith, they call for the<br />
peaceful transformation of their society, which is imaged in exquisite detail in this work.<br />
Teitei vou (A new garden) is an example of how customary works convey artists’ alternative ideas<br />
about their locale, or how they allow them to interact differently with their own rites. The desire<br />
to communicate, and ensuing artistic change, facilitates the dialogue between customary-based<br />
and contemporary works. Customary-inspired works have been included in past APTs, most<br />
notably the ornate clay relief structures of the Indian artist Sonabai in APT3 (1999). The Rajwar<br />
community, to which Sonabai belongs, transform their homes with elaborate decorations and<br />
painted clay figures for the post-harvest festival of chherta. Sonabai came to international<br />
attention when she developed a style inimitable to the women in her village, by creating figures<br />
exploring different sculptural possibilities. Her inclusion in APT3 was a strong statement based<br />
on the questioning of definitions of contemporary art, revealing the porosity of art historical<br />
classifications and binding her practice to those that recognise different art histories.<br />
The fifth APT in 2006 featured the Pacific Textiles Project, which demonstrated the use of textiles<br />
across the South Pacific as a way of conveying narratives of religion and nationhood; in the past,<br />
they were largely devoid of imagery and text. These textiles are still being used in the same<br />
life-changing ceremonies as their forebears, but now use alternative materials, such as wool and<br />
cotton, to weave new ideas. The embroideries, which include the words ‘happy birthday’, the<br />
names of family members or bright depictions of biblical stories, circulate only within their own<br />
communities, travelling far only when accompanying members of the diaspora to their other<br />
homes. Consequently, they have not often found their way into exhibitions or the art market.<br />
The artist Sonabai creating her work Untitled in Brisbane<br />
for ‘The Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>’,<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, 1999 / Photograph: Ray Fulton<br />
The Pacific Textiles Project installed at ‘The 5th Asia<br />
Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>’, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, 2006 / Photograph: Natasha Harth<br />
Robin White<br />
Leba Toki<br />
Bale Jione<br />
Teitei vou (A new garden) (work in progress) 2009<br />
Taunamu from Teitei vou (A new garden) (detail) 2009<br />
Natural dyes on barkcloth / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation Grant /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
This type of work raises a number of issues — the altering of customary practice is sometimes<br />
perceived as merely derivative of the original; the authenticity of tradition somehow maintains a<br />
cultural purity which is stronger and more valued, particularly by the tribal art market. Similarly,<br />
customary work, whether used as a departure point for new work or not, is often not considered<br />
to be contemporary art, and is therefore excluded from international platforms. 4 This important<br />
and ongoing discussion also concerns contemporary Australian Aboriginal art.<br />
34 35
The visibility and success of Aboriginal art has transformed the way Australians understand<br />
modern and contemporary art. Its diversity of practice, strong formalist sensibility and inclusion<br />
of customary objects as part of its ambit have created productive dialogues, some of which also<br />
inform contemporary Pacific art. Awkward divisions between art and craft, secular and ritual,<br />
and urban and remote have slowly become less rigid, allowing for a far richer appreciation of<br />
what constitutes Aboriginal creativity. The fact that audiences are able to see such a diversity<br />
of practice allows non-traditional media, such as fibre art, for example, to be critically explored,<br />
while the accompanying debate continues. 5 Most recently, the academic Ian McLean has<br />
sought to historicise Central Australian Aboriginal art practice, arguing for a more critically<br />
engaged view, and allowing for alternative modernisms within the art historical canon:<br />
The fear that applying theories of the modern to remote Aboriginal art will assimilate its<br />
differences into Eurocentric concerns is paternalistic and ignores the ways in which Aboriginals<br />
have, since the time of first contact, readily sought to translate and assimilate and use the<br />
cultural products of modernity. 6<br />
Sometimes, as is the case for the sculptures from Vanuatu shown here in APT6, novelty and<br />
artistic autonomy are not readily apparent. Consisting of a number of mague (ranking black<br />
palm figures), temar ne ari (ancestor spirit figures), atingting (slit drums) and guardian of tabou<br />
house figures, the grouping invites comparison. Yet, what is more rewarding, and as Ruth<br />
McDougall explains, is a historical account of how these practices have adapted and changed<br />
to suit the needs and artistic impetuses of the community who makes them. 7 Ambrymese<br />
carvers’ translations of a number of stylistic, as well as actual, rites from the neighbouring island<br />
of Malakula occurred over a long period of time, and were the result of complex inter-island<br />
canoe trading and intermarriage.<br />
Although house paints have mostly replaced natural pigments and ochres (except in the case<br />
of the guardian of tabou house figures), according to anthropologist Kirk Huffman: ‘influences<br />
from the white man’s world have had very little stylistic effect on the art styles on Ambrym’. 8<br />
Covering the torso of a temar figure we see a fluorescent green; previously derived from a<br />
particular moss it is now conveniently available in acrylic. This vivid hue, combined with the<br />
ancestors’ red markings on a white face, forms a striking representation. 9<br />
As part of the group of black palm figures is a selection of mague that feature a more<br />
experimental use of paint. Many have bright blue and lime fish forms which appear to emerge<br />
from the figures’ mouths, their noses and crescent-shaped eyes often contoured in bright pink.<br />
One of the figures is said to feature the receding hairline of the man who commissioned it. 10<br />
This design (if it does not already belong to somebody else) is now governed by copyright,<br />
and other makers will have to negotiate its future use. Such a system — infinitely more complex<br />
than that conveyed — can be seen as an impetus for constant invention, yet the practice of<br />
all four types of carving has not dramatically altered over time, suggesting that Ambrymese<br />
artistic interests and priorities lie elsewhere. These probably do not conform to Western ideas<br />
of artistic production or evolution; however, we can surmise that the visibility of these art forms<br />
outside Ambrym — whether on the streets of the capital of Port Vila, which are lined with black<br />
palm ranking figures, or in Australia and Europe — will lead to further developments. Indeed,<br />
there may be a commercialisation of these objects, which, as Ian McLean so cogently argues in<br />
terms of Australian Aboriginal art, does not necessarily mean it will be to the detriment of the<br />
works and the rites accompanying them.<br />
Mansak Family<br />
Vanuatu b.unknown<br />
Temar ne ari (ancestor spirit) c.1995<br />
Natural fibres, clay, synthetic polymer paint, ochres,<br />
coconut shells, bamboo and sticks / 145 x 50 x 25cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Government</strong>’s<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Michel Rangie<br />
Vanuatu b.c.1981<br />
Mague ne sagran (ranking black palm) grade 4 painted<br />
c.2005<br />
Carved black palm with synthetic polymer paint /<br />
195 x 38 x 48cm / Gift of David Baker through the<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation 2008 /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
36 37
Kava street sign, Mataso-Ohlen, Port Vila, Vanuatu 2007<br />
Photograph: Newell Harry<br />
Opposite<br />
Herveline Lité<br />
Vanuatu b.1980<br />
Le pigeon de Mataso (from ‘Bebellic’ portfolio) 2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani paper ed. 1/45 / 76 x 56cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
The archipelago of Vanuatu has been contested by Western countries and markets for over a<br />
century. It was governed by a British–French condominium from 1906 until its independence<br />
in 1980, and has therefore been far from isolated, having to variously adapt and resist. Under<br />
international pressure, Vanuatu began to redress its tax haven status in 2008. The influx of<br />
foreign money has brought with it many changes, primarily in Port Vila and the island of Efate,<br />
with the selling of land for beef farming and tourism. These industries demand a certain level of<br />
labour to sustain them and, when combined with a lack of opportunity outside of subsistence<br />
practices, have caused an influx of people from the outer islands to Port Vila. For example,<br />
most of the population of the small island of Mataso, which lies off the northern tip of Efate,<br />
has relocated to Ohlen, a shantytown on the outskirts of Port Vila. It is from here, with only a<br />
few fluorescent lights overhead, that a number of young men and women have created a bold,<br />
simple and effective series of drawings (subsequently transformed into prints in Australia) as<br />
a response to their changing daily environment; their primary inspiration derived from their<br />
encounters with advertising signage promoting food, beverages and commercial products in<br />
the capital. David Kolin’s drawing of a lion, with the speech bubble text ‘Mi laekem kae kaeman’,<br />
which translates as ‘I like to eat man’, is a humorous response to the viewing of National<br />
Geographic magazines showing African fauna.<br />
Some of the artists also draw on their cultural heritage, like Herveline Lité who comes from<br />
the island of Malakula, where sand-drawing is prevalent. 11 Her vibrant blue work features<br />
a compartmentalised design comprised of rectilinear and circular motifs. In this work, Lité<br />
references a large natural rock lying four kilometres off the coast of Mataso, which is a<br />
favourite fishing location for villagers. It was also used for target practice by United States Navy<br />
personnel during World War Two and, over time, the holes in the monolithic rock face have<br />
served as nesting spots for pigeons which are hunted every spring. The soldiers’ presence on<br />
the islands is still very visible through the abandoned machinery and army barracks, and the<br />
glass Coke bottles peppering Efate’s north coast shoreline.<br />
In contrast, a more sombre, and ultimately violent, act which occurred on the Vanuatu coast<br />
in the late nineteenth century was the practice of ‘blackbirding’. Between the 1860s and early<br />
1900s, ni-Vanuatuans (amongst other Melanesians and some Polynesians) were kidnapped to<br />
work on sugar plantations in <strong>Queensland</strong> and Fiji. 12 This ‘recruitment’ preceded that of Indian<br />
indentured labour and is addressed in Teitei vou (A new garden).<br />
Marcel (Mars Melto) Meltherorong, a prominent ni-Vanuatuan singer–songwriter, recently<br />
composed a reggae song with Georgia Corowa called ‘Slavaland’, lamenting the taking of<br />
their forefathers. The song ends with the lyric: ‘Melanesians, Polynesians and Micronesians are<br />
coming, you better be ready!’. No music seems more suited to melding storytelling with a call<br />
38 39
tok pisin (Papuan pidgin) to a Tahitian (Polynesian) audience who then sing the chorus to him —<br />
but perhaps this is simply due to this pan-Pacific star’s charisma and catchy tunes. Whatever the<br />
reason, Pacific reggae is traversing this ‘one saltwater’, creating a multitude of narratives about<br />
a region and a people who ‘stand up for their rights’ and who confront social, political and<br />
environmental issues when needed, but which also promotes the things that strengthen in the<br />
face of adversity — community, family and, of course, romance.<br />
Together, projects such as these continue to build on a conversation with the people of the<br />
Pacific that began in 1993 with the first APT, but which is now also maintained through this<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>’s collecting practices and exhibition programming. 16 This dialogue is liberating for its<br />
open-endedness.<br />
for social consciousness than reggae. Across one third of the world’s surface, Pacific people<br />
come together to make reggae, continuing an oral history, regardless of what is happening<br />
outside the ‘one saltwater’. 13 Today, Pacific reggae is flourishing; musicians travel throughout<br />
the region to perform in concerts and festivals, such as the annual Fest’Napuan festival, which<br />
began in 1996, and where, on a large outdoor stage on the lawns of the Vanuatu Cultural<br />
Centre, musicians play to crowds gathered in their thousands.<br />
Pacific Reggae: Roots Beyond the Reef, co-curated with Brent Clough, brings together reggae<br />
artists from Hawai’i, New Zealand, Australia and Melanesia. It presents their unique approaches<br />
to this music genre which originated in Jamaica. Through video clips, playlists, interviews,<br />
documentaries and live performances, the project shows how reggae is one of the Pacific’s<br />
most valued means of communication. As Clough argues, reggae is used by many in these<br />
island nations to highlight the political and social problems that are often ignored due to the<br />
promotion of tourism-related language and images. 14<br />
For reggae, the language of choice is principally a local form of pidgin. Melanesian pidgin<br />
(Hawai’i has its own) arose in the nineteenth century, when Europeans were harvesting and<br />
trading sandalwood and sea cucumbers (known as bêche-de-mer in French), and had to<br />
develop a common form of communication. It was primarily during the ‘blackbirding’ period,<br />
however, that Melanesian men developed pidgin as a communicative tool of survival used<br />
between themselves and the overseers. Those men who returned to their own countries<br />
continued using pidgin when working with foreigners, and the language proliferated. The form<br />
of pidgin in Vanuatu is Bislama (derived from the phonetic bêche-de-mer), and is now one<br />
of the archipelago’s official languages, with ni-Vanuatuans also speaking English and French,<br />
as well as a number of their own vernacular languages. 15 Although pidgin languages across<br />
Melanesia have developed their own lexicons, for the most part they are widely understood.<br />
This doesn’t explain how the blond-dreadlocked, Papuan-raised O-shen can sing ‘Meri Lewa’ in<br />
26 Roots at home in Espíritu Santo, Vanuatu<br />
Photograph: Dan Cole<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Robin White: ‘For us — especially for Leba and Bale — it was a way of signalling our presence in that place, as well<br />
as representing the idea of growth . . . and the process of growth . . . it’s really about people and about growing<br />
communities’. Email to the author, 14 October 2009.<br />
2 Okwui Enwezor, ‘Curating beyond the canon’, in Paul O’Neill (ed.), Curating Subjects, Open Editions, London,<br />
2007, p.119.<br />
3 See the Pacific Textiles Project featured in APT5, which displayed ibe vakabati as well as cloth textiles.<br />
4 See Nicholas Thomas, ‘Our history is written in our mats’, in The 5th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong><br />
[exhibition catalogue], <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Brisbane, 2006, pp.24–31.<br />
5 Refer to the work of, but not exclusively, Marcia Langton, Ian McLean and Nicholas Thomas.<br />
6 Ian McLean, ‘Aboriginal Modernism in Central Australia’, in Kobena Mercer (ed.), Exiles, Diasporas and Strangers,<br />
Iniva and MIT Press, London, 2008, p.75.<br />
7 Ruth McDougall, ‘Vanuatu sculptors: Innovation and tradition’, in The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary<br />
<strong>Art</strong> [exhibition catalogue], <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Brisbane, 2009, pp.188–91.<br />
8 Kirk Huffman, ‘Sacred pigs to Picasso. Vanuatu art in the traditional and “modern” worlds’, <strong>Art</strong> and Australia,<br />
vol.46, no.3, 2009, p.476.<br />
9 Huffman also recounts that, as far back as the nineteenth century, the Ambrymese had discovered that the<br />
laundry bleaching solution Reckitt’s Blue when left to dry, then mixed, formed a brilliant ultramarine colour, which<br />
is echoed in much of the mague figures’ colouration. See Huffman, p.476.<br />
10 As relayed to the author by David Baker, the donor of this group of works.<br />
11 Called ‘sandroing’ locally; a key feature of this visual form of communication is that motifs are drawn directly<br />
onto the sand in one single movement.<br />
12 South Sea Islanders are the Australian descendants of these ‘blackbirded’ men and women.<br />
13 Marcel ‘Mars Melto’ Meltherorong video interview with the author, 6 July 2009, as featured in Pacific Reggae:<br />
Roots Beyond the Reef for APT6.<br />
14 Brent Clough, ‘Pacific Reggae: Roots Beyond the Reef’, in The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong><br />
[exhibition catalogue], <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Brisbane, 2009, pp.160–3.<br />
15 For example, the national anthem is in Bislama, and there are over 100 vernacular languages in Vanuatu.<br />
16 Most recently, and running concurrently with APT6, is the exhibition ‘Paperskin: Barkcloth across the Pacific’,<br />
a collaboration involving the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the <strong>Queensland</strong> Museum and the<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>.<br />
40 41
Promised lands<br />
Jose Da Silva and Kathryn Weir<br />
Yael Bartana’s video A Declaration 2006 opens with a man rowing in the Mediterranean Sea.<br />
He anchors alongside Andromeda’s Rock in Jaffa Harbor, where he substitutes the Israeli flag<br />
planted on the rock with an olive tree. Seen within the context of Israeli–Palestinian relations,<br />
the man’s actions are a bold intervention into the territory staked by the flag. The olive tree’s<br />
symbolic resonance also imbues the gesture with sacred significance, representing not only<br />
a peace offering and a call for an end to conflict, but also a celebration of strength and the<br />
capacity for renewal. Promised Lands, a major cinema project for APT6, features artists and<br />
filmmakers who similarly find opportunities to rethink the past and imagine the future. As in<br />
Bartana’s poetic statement, their work draws on the historical roots of contemporary experience,<br />
bringing the past to life in the present to transform our understanding of then and now.<br />
Promised Lands profiles cinematic and geopolitical relationships throughout the Indian<br />
subcontinent (Bangladesh, India, Kashmir, Pakistan, Sri Lanka) and across to West Asia and the<br />
Middle East (including Afghanistan, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Palestine<br />
and Turkey). In the context of the APT, which seeks to question the cultural and geographical<br />
frameworks of the Asia Pacific region, Promised Lands offers an opportunity to open up a<br />
deeper conversation with West Asia and the Middle East. This discussion underlines the need<br />
for a more specific awareness of distinct histories and genealogies within these regions, while<br />
also acknowledging interactions and shared influences across borders. Through the process<br />
of bringing political geographies and histories into question, the opportunity arises to reflect<br />
on how the region’s complex and diverse cultures and artistic practices contribute to new and<br />
more nuanced understandings of ‘Asia’.<br />
Promised Lands includes five programs of film and video that consider local politics and<br />
individual lives within a larger context. Each program has an autonomous curatorial framework:<br />
responses to civil war in Sri Lanka (The Road to Jaffna); the legacies of partition across the<br />
Indian subcontinent (Cinema of Partition); dissent and the affirmation of cultural identity<br />
in a climate of political intervention in West Asia, as well as the fraught nexus of religious<br />
fundamentalism and national politics (The Tree of Life); the traumatic histories linking Armenia<br />
and Turkey (Return of the Poet); and fault lines throughout the Middle East in response to<br />
conflict and territorial incursions in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon (Eating My Heart). Several<br />
broad themes appear across these strands, in particular the intersection of daily life with<br />
relationships to land, religious affiliations and cultural histories.<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ists and filmmakers across the Indian subcontinent have given expression to the<br />
consequences of partitioning British India into the states of India and Pakistan following<br />
the country’s independence from colonial rule in 1947. This imposed geographic division<br />
along religious lines caused profound physical, social and emotional scars for Muslim, Hindu,<br />
Mahmoud al Massad<br />
Jordan b.1969<br />
Production still from Ea’ Adat Khalk (Recycle) 2007 /<br />
HD video, colour, Dolby SR, 78 minutes, Netherlands/<br />
Jordan, Arabic (English subtitles) / Image courtesy:<br />
Wide Management, Paris<br />
42
Vimukthi Jayasundara<br />
Sri Lanka b.1977<br />
Production still from Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken<br />
Land) 2005 / 35mm, colour, Dolby SR, 108 minutes,<br />
Sri Lanka/France, Sinhala (English subtitles) / Image<br />
courtesy: Unlimited Films, Paris<br />
Sarah Singh<br />
India b.1971<br />
Production still from The Sky Below 2007 / Digital video,<br />
black and white and colour, stereo, 76 minutes, India/<br />
Pakistan, Urdu/Hindi/English/Punjab/Sindhi/Kashmiri<br />
(English subtitles) / Image courtesy: The artist<br />
Christian and Sikh communities that are still carried in the region today. Large-scale border<br />
crossings and emigration occurred in attempts to flee conflict, intolerance and economic<br />
hardship, and individual and collective identities were subject to media and political<br />
manipulation. East Pakistan, which would become Bangladesh after the Liberation War of 1971,<br />
also suffered economically and culturally when it was separated from the rest of Bengal, and the<br />
exodus to the wealthy emirates of the Persian Gulf that began at this time continues today.<br />
Filmmakers working in India after partition have attempted to address what had been repressed<br />
through fear of further conflict. Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star) 1960<br />
is considered one of the most important cinematic statements of its time. Set amongst a refugee<br />
community in post-partition Bengal, it is a compassionate study of dislocation and poverty<br />
experienced by a family uprooted from their ancestral home. Sanjay Kak and Sarah Singh belong<br />
to a younger generation of documentary filmmakers who offer insights into the continuing effects<br />
of partition and the possibility of transcending the divisions created. In Jashn-e-Azadi (How We<br />
Celebrate Freedom) 2007, Kak examines two decades of conflict in the disputed territories of<br />
Jammu and Kashmir and the differing interpretations of azadi (freedom) throughout the Kashmir<br />
valley. By reflecting on first-person testimonies, Singh’s The Sky Below 2007 asks whether the<br />
shared cultural roots of India and Pakistan may bring lasting peace between them in the future.<br />
Similarly, in the predominantly Buddhist country of Sri Lanka, filmmakers have examined the 26<br />
years of civil war between the Sinhala majority and Tamil minority, and the continuing struggle for<br />
an independent Tamil state. 1 In Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land) 2005 and Ahasin Wetei<br />
(Between Two Worlds) 2009, Vimukthi Jayasundara expresses a pervasive ambivalence felt in<br />
Sri Lanka. The films respectively investigate a period of ceasefire in 2001, and the defeat of the<br />
Tamil Tigers by the Sri Lankan military in May 2009, both signalling the end, if only temporarily,<br />
of fighting throughout the country. 2 Jayasundara shows a nation suspended in a state of being<br />
without war and without peace and, like his contemporaries Asoka Handagama, Dharmasena<br />
Pathiraja and Prasanna Vithanage, attempts to reconcile the history, religious myth and political<br />
rhetoric which have brought both Tamil and Sinhalese nationalist discourse into being.<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ists and filmmakers in Lebanon, Israel and Palestine underline the imbrication of faith,<br />
nationalism and memory, as well as the relationship between political instability and resistance<br />
across the Middle East. Cinematic approaches to its social and political situation often<br />
combine personal observations with performative devices designed to question the situations<br />
presented and their inscription in collective memory. First shot as a documentary before<br />
being reconstructed as an animated film, Ari Folman’s Vals Im Bashir (Waltz with Bashir) 2008<br />
explores the trauma — and its legacy of unresolved guilt — that he experienced as a young<br />
Israeli conscript during the 1982 Israel–Lebanon war. 3 The soldier’s haunting dreams awaken a<br />
powerful examination of personal memory and responsibility independent of media versions of<br />
the events. In contrast, Avi Mograbi’s Z32 2008 uses musical numbers and a Greek chorus-like<br />
ensemble to reflect the director’s ambivalence at reducing to artistic representation a soldier’s<br />
confession of complicity in the death of two innocent Palestinian policemen.<br />
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s Baddi Chouf (I Want to See) 2008 underlines the<br />
importance of bearing witness to historical events. The directors stage a road trip for French actress<br />
Catherine Deneuve and celebrated Lebanese artist–actor Rabih Mroué to survey the devastated<br />
regions of southern Lebanon after the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War. Explaining their motivation<br />
for the experiment and its significance for international audiences, the directors have written:<br />
There are many things to be seen, but what do we see? . . . Catherine never pretends she<br />
knows, she is not affirming anything . . . Catherine herself says: ‘I don’t know if I’ll understand<br />
anything, but I want to see’. In today’s world, it is important to be in a time of questioning.<br />
We are never finished with what there is to see, the important [thing] is the feeling. 4<br />
44 45
Ari Folman<br />
Israel b.1963<br />
Production stills from Vals Im Bashir (Waltz with Bashir)<br />
2008 / 35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 90 minutes, Israel/<br />
France/USA/Finland/Switzerland/Belgium/Australia,<br />
Hebrew/German/English/Arabic (English subtitles) /<br />
Image courtesy: Sharmill Films, Melbourne<br />
While Palestinian cinema finds its roots in the traumatic experience of dispossession — the nakba<br />
or ‘catastrophe’, 5 which followed the exodus of Palestinians from their homeland and the creation<br />
of the State of Israel in 1948 — many contemporary artists and filmmakers working in the Gaza<br />
Strip have produced works that stand out against the gravity we might expect. Elia Suleiman’s<br />
Al Zaman Al Baqi (The Time That Remains) 2009 uses irreverent humour and absurdist situations<br />
to chart his father’s move from resistance fighter during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence to<br />
postwar compliance, alongside the filmmaker’s own path from young conformist to rebellious<br />
activist then, ultimately, to mute observer. Larissa Sansour’s Happy Days 2006 employs the theme<br />
music from the 1970s American sitcom of the same name to convey the resilience of individuals<br />
in the occupied territories and their ability to transcend expectations of their experiences.<br />
A refusal to be defined by historical trauma or political circumstances is characteristic of works<br />
by artists and filmmakers from Armenia and the diaspora. At the juncture of West Asia and<br />
Eastern Europe, Armenians live with the legacies of the 1915 Armenian Genocide in which over<br />
a million Armenians were killed. 6 Economic hardships resulting from Armenia’s independence<br />
from the Soviet Union in 1991, as well as the Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict that followed it,<br />
are reflected in Harutyun Khachatryan’s Sahman (Border) 2009, where a buffalo becomes<br />
the symbol of trauma and redemption on a farm occupied by refugees. <strong>Art</strong>avazd Pelechian’s<br />
cinematic poems Tarva Yeghanakneve aka Vremena Goda (The Seasons) 1972 and Obibateli<br />
(The Inhabitants) 1970 celebrate resilient humanity, raw animal life, landscape and community<br />
in an allegorical register that creates new cinematic languages.<br />
The region from Afghanistan to Iraq and Iran has experienced parallel trajectories of political<br />
manipulation, war and invasion, with outside political interference in Iran’s internal politics from<br />
the 1950s, three decades of conflict in Afghanistan, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Iran–<br />
Iraq War (1980–88), the United States’ military aggression in Iraq in the 1990s and 2000s, and<br />
the ongoing plight of Kurdish people living across the geographic lines of Iran, Iraq and Turkey.<br />
Shahram Alidi’s Sirta la Gal ba (Whisper with the Wind) 2009 is a poetic exploration of Kurdish<br />
survival in a landscape marked by this turbulent history. A postman performs the role of a<br />
messenger of hope and reconciliation, playing recordings of combatants and isolated survivors<br />
trying to reconnect with family. Other artists and filmmakers have explored possibilities for selfaffirmation<br />
and dissidence in younger generations, as well as the position of women. Working<br />
against the grain of media images of war, terrorism and religious extremism, they have sought to<br />
articulate complex local knowledges, and emerge from a vibrant social and artistic context that<br />
draws on a rich heritage of art, architecture and literature, and historical networks of exchange.<br />
The last decade has seen the rise of affordable digital filmmaking and the regional mobility<br />
of artists and filmmakers, allowing local stories to be recorded in isolated regions and shared<br />
internationally. Hana Makhmalbaf’s Ruzhaye Sabz (Green Days) 2009 is a testament to these<br />
freedoms, documenting the violent government crackdown on mass demonstrations following<br />
the disputed Iranian presidential election in 2009. Makhmalbaf shoots directly amid the<br />
protests in Tehran and tells the story of a young Iranian woman’s creative crisis amid these<br />
events. Makhmalbaf has reflected on her role in mediating representations of these events:<br />
I am not a sociologist but my film is sociological. My camera works like a mirror to show<br />
you the Iranian society undergoing a revolution with all its hopes and doubts. 7<br />
A fragile mood of hope is also revealed in Mahmoud al Massad’s Ea’ Adat Khalk (Recycle)<br />
2007, where Abu Amar, a former Mujaheddin reflects on the economic and political conditions<br />
46 47
that breed jihadist sentiment in the contemporary Arab world. Living in the poor Jordanian<br />
neighbourhood once shared by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda leader killed in 2006<br />
by US forces in Iraq, Amar discusses faith and hope in Islam in the face of poverty and radical<br />
religious doctrine.<br />
While political and colonial legacies have divided land and communities, Promised Lands points<br />
to the aspirations of artists and filmmakers to reframe these struggles and find a path forward.<br />
The program brings together works that project possibilities for change and explore the hopes<br />
of exiled and dispossessed communities to return to, or create, a homeland. The artists and<br />
filmmakers featured in Promised Lands provide extraordinary insights into complex contemporary<br />
situations, and work in myriad ways to counter the insidious effects of cultural homogenisation.<br />
Their individual narratives offer a depth of understanding rarely available in official histories and<br />
suggest new possibilities for relationships and understanding. The past and present in the first<br />
person take discussions of the future out of the realm of rhetoric and into a shared framework of<br />
responsibility. When Larissa Sansour raises a Palestinian flag on the moon in her video A Space<br />
Exodus 2008, she employs a fantastical mode which carries with it the understanding that a torn<br />
social fabric can be reshaped through a sense of community and possibility.<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 The origins of the Sri Lankan civil war extend to the period after British colonial rule ended in 1948, and in the<br />
drafting of the country’s first post-independence constitution. Sinhalese nationalists moved to replace English<br />
as the official language and in the process disavowed the Tamil language and all vernacular dialects. Charges<br />
of discrimination led to riots and a growing demand for an autonomous Tamil state in the north and east of the<br />
country. Increasing political confrontations followed, leading to military and terrorist hostilities that plunged<br />
the country into civil war.<br />
2 The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is commonly referred to as the LTTE or Tamil Tigers.<br />
3 The title of the film refers to the Lebanese Christian president and Israel ally Bashir Gemayel, whose assassination<br />
in September 1982 triggered a violent anti-Muslim backlash and the massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese<br />
civilians in Sabra and Shatila by Lebanese Phalangist militia units.<br />
4 Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, interview with Claire Vassé, Film Boutique press kit, , viewed 19 October 2009.<br />
5 The term nakba was popularised after the publishing of Syrian historian Constantine Zurayk’s Ma’na al-Nakba<br />
(The Meaning of the Disaster) in 1948.<br />
6 The Armenian Genocide during the Ottoman Empire is the first and arguably least addressed genocide of<br />
the twentieth century. The Turkey–Armenia genocide dispute remains primary to Turkey’s exclusion from the<br />
European Union and fulfilment of the Copenhagen Criteria.<br />
7 Hana Makhmalbaf, Makhmalbaf Film House, ,<br />
viewed 19 October 2009.<br />
Yael Bartana<br />
Israel b.1970<br />
Production still from A Declaration 2006 / Digital video,<br />
colour, stereo, 7:30 minutes, Israel / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and Annet Gelink <strong>Gallery</strong>, Amsterdam<br />
Larissa Sansour<br />
Israel b.1973<br />
Production still from A Space Exodus 2008 /<br />
HD video, colour, Dolby SR, 5:24 minutes, Denmark,<br />
English / Image courtesy: The artist and Le Galerie<br />
La B.A.N.K, Paris<br />
Hana Makhmalbaf<br />
Iran b.1988<br />
Production still from Ruzhaye sabz (Green Days) 2009 /<br />
HD Video, colour, stereo, 87 minutes, Iran, Farsi (English<br />
subtitles) / Image courtesy: Wild Bunch, Paris<br />
48 49
The hungry goat: Iranian animation, media<br />
archaeology and located visual worlds<br />
Kathryn Weir<br />
In 2005, an Iranian archaeologist revealed an extraordinary insight into the sequence of images<br />
painted on an earthenware pot excavated in the 1970s from the 5000-year-old city of Shahr-e<br />
Sukhte. 1 The excavation of the ‘burnt city’, so-called as it was repeatedly destroyed by fire, is<br />
situated in the Sistan-Baluchistan province in the south-east of Iran. Apart from making pottery<br />
and growing crops, the ancient inhabitants of the city wove and knitted dyed threads, and<br />
created complex games. The pot features five sequential images of a goat jumping up to eat<br />
leaves from a tree; its goblet shape — a bowl on a stem — could function to spin the pot as an<br />
optical device, allowing a viewer to perceive movement and duration and constituting a form<br />
of animation. Whether or not the motifs were actually viewed in this way, the pot remains an<br />
important expression of the desire to represent time and movement. The art of animation in Iran<br />
today draws on rich visual languages and techniques which incorporate the artistic heritage of<br />
textile design, Persian folk tales and literature, calligraphy, and miniature painting, as well as the<br />
motifs of interior design, ceramics and architecture. The APT6 cinema project The Cypress and<br />
the Crow: 50 Years of Iranian Animation profiles influential senior figures, including Esfandiar<br />
Ahmadieh, Abdollah Alimorad, Vadjiollah Fard Moghadam, Ali Akbar Sadeghi and Noureddin<br />
Zarrinkelk, through to the current generation of talented emerging artists. Animation is<br />
recognised in Iran as a medium which is closely related to drawing, painting and the graphic arts.<br />
A direct reference to the Shahr-e Sukhte pot’s sequential hungry goat motifs is found in<br />
Moin Samadi’s Boz Bazi (Boz Game) 2007, a short animation which shows the goat jumping<br />
off the pot and cavorting across Persian history, occasionally leaping up to score points, in a<br />
pastiche of the Super Mario Brothers video games. The work riffs on race-to-the-finish-line,<br />
teleological accounts of culture, art and animation, in which present glorious achievements<br />
are predetermined by past discoveries and successes, with the points accumulating until it’s<br />
‘game over’. In his influential essay of 2004 ‘The new film history as media archaeology’, film<br />
and media theorist Thomas Elsaesser discusses how the histories of the relationships between<br />
art forms and their technologies have been told in evolutionary terms, identifying origins and<br />
tracing lines of descent. 2 Elsaesser proposes an approach to constellations of related or parallel<br />
phenomena, histories in which the irrecoverable past ‘can be seized only by a hermeneutics<br />
of the fragment, a discourse of metonymies, and an “allegorical” view of (always already lost)<br />
totalities’. 3 The past is ultimately inaccessible, but the fragments and forms which remain can<br />
be reinterpreted by historians, and also by artists. The hungry goat pot would accordingly be<br />
understood not as part of a linear sequence of aesthetic or optical discoveries, but rather as an<br />
instance of visual language representing movement and duration, not necessarily less or more<br />
complex than other languages developed at other times. In Bache ha dar moozeh (Children<br />
at the Museum) 1987, Abdollah Alimorad combines live action and animation to represent<br />
children’s imaginations animating objects and bringing their motifs to life. He points to how<br />
the objects — or remaining traces of another era, in this case conserved in a museum — which<br />
Moin Samadi<br />
Iran b.1979<br />
Boz Bazi (Boz Game) (stills) 2007 / DVD, black and<br />
white, stereo, 2:30 minutes, Iran / Image courtesy:<br />
Raiavin, Tehran<br />
50 51
vehicle the narrative and aesthetic preoccupations of their time and place of origin, may be<br />
interpreted, their motifs extrapolated and reconfigured.<br />
Maryam Bayani’s Dastane Sofal (The Pottery Tale) 2008 uses what she identifies as the ‘motion<br />
potential’ in patterns drawn from about 165 different pieces of prehistoric pottery from different<br />
regions of the Iranian Plateau, animating these to music. 4 Movement is suggested in different<br />
ways; for example, two positions of the motif of a group dancing helped the filmmaker to<br />
extrapolate a type of ancient dance. In other cases, the motion elaborates on a single image<br />
and its references to a story or symbol:<br />
A good example here is the story of the growth of plants from ox’s blood and the symbolic<br />
concept of the antler, representing a plant, which made a relationship between the hunter,<br />
ox, deer and plant to create a scene manifesting life coming out of the death. 5<br />
When a contemporary animator brings to life a dance form or constellation of symbols recorded<br />
in another medium in another era, the circulation of motifs modifies the context of production<br />
and viewing, creating new possibilities — what Elsaesser calls ‘new diegetic worlds or new media<br />
ontologies’; 6 he gives the example of the rediscovery by artists of early and classical cinema<br />
practices in what has been called ‘the cinema effect’. 7 This finds expression also in the reworking<br />
of other forms of art and literature through animation. Seyyed Morteza Ahadi’s Gonjeshk va<br />
Panbeh Daneh (The Sparrow and the Boll) 2007 is a textile animation which shows the stages<br />
of fabrication of its own medium. Using cut-out elements of felt, jute cloth, wood and threads,<br />
Ahadi tells an old Persian tale that exists in different regional variants, recounting the adventures<br />
of a sparrow and the farmer who is determined to catch it. A young girl helps the sparrow to<br />
escape from a trap; the bird holds a cotton boll in its beak which is first spun, then dyed, then<br />
woven before being offered to the girl to fix her skirt.<br />
Seyyed Morteza Ahadi<br />
Iran b.1963<br />
Production still from Gonjeshk va Panbeh Daneh<br />
(The Sparrow and the Boll) 2007 / 35mm, colour, stereo,<br />
12 minutes, Iran / Image courtesy: Kanoon, Tehran<br />
Farhad Moshiri<br />
Iran<br />
Converted Heirloom 2007<br />
Carpet cut out / 600 x 400cm / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and The Third Line, Dubai<br />
Vadjiollah Fard Moghadam<br />
Iran b.1945<br />
Production still from Lili Lili Hosak (Lily Lily Little Pool)<br />
1992 / 35mm, colour, stereo, 16 minutes, Iran / Image<br />
courtesy: Kanoon, Tehran<br />
Abdollah Alimorad<br />
Iran b.1947<br />
Production still from Bache ha dar Moozeh (Children at<br />
the Museum) 1987 / 35mm, colour, stereo, 10 minutes,<br />
Iran / Image courtesy: Kanoon, Tehran<br />
Particular art forms or technologies are valorised in particular histories, and function to normalise<br />
and promote the world view of a particular place. In his monograph of 2006, The Theft of History,<br />
cultural historian Jack Goody points, for example, to the high value that celebrated French<br />
historiographer Fernand Braudel gives the use of a table as an indicator of culture and progress,<br />
when he records that the Arabs did not have the use of them; Goody suggests that ‘it might<br />
equally be claimed that Europeans did not have the carpet or the divan until they arrived from<br />
the east’. 8 The carpet is a social and aesthetic, even spiritual, form which circulates in an economy<br />
of identity and value in Iranian literature, art and animation. It links the domestic space to these<br />
other realms. Farhad Moshiri, an Iranian artist who is showing a series of paintings in APT6, has<br />
previously fabricated both prosaic and political manifestations of the Persian carpet: Flying<br />
Carpet 2007 consists of a pile of carpets from which cut-outs of stealth bomber planes have been<br />
52 53
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian<br />
Iran b.1924<br />
Shazde Garden – Kerman (detail) 2009<br />
Mirror mosaic, reverse glass painting and plaster on<br />
wood / 180 x 110cm / Courtesy: The artist and The<br />
Third Line, Dubai<br />
removed and placed in proximity; Converted Heirloom 2007 is a single carpet cut into the floor<br />
plan of an apartment — the domestic as reduced, constrained by walls and not alive with social<br />
or aesthetic possibility. In Lili Lili Hosak (Lily Lily Little Pool) 1992, Vadjiollah Fard Moghadam<br />
tells the story of a chick falling in a pool and its parents trying to get help from the community of<br />
other animals to save it; the stylised geometrical forms of the animals, trees and pool are cited<br />
from carpet designs. The narrative of carpets functions in every direction, offering a model of a<br />
non-linear experience of time and place, and carpet designs literally link different geographies<br />
through natural motifs. In Noureddin Zarrinkelk’s Pood (Persian Carpet) 1998, a father takes the<br />
family’s herd north in search of water during a drought; on his return, he invents the carpet in<br />
order to bring the sea and the forest that he has seen back to his children in the desert. Nazanin<br />
Sarbandi’s Ghali (Carpet) 1980 similarly plays on carpet design that resembles an undulating<br />
landscape running to a great ocean of blue with island swirls, made real in a child’s imagination.<br />
a full-grown tree, a refuge for birds and insects. The celebrated Sufi text Mantiq at-Tayr (The<br />
Conference of the Birds), by mystic and poet Farid Ud-Din Attar, is adapted in animated form by<br />
Mohammad ali Soleymanzadeh in Kalaghi keh Mikhast Ghavita rin Bashed (A Crow Who Wanted<br />
to be the Strongest) 1998, and by Ahadi in Safar-e Bidari (The Path of Love) 2004. The story<br />
recounts a pilgrimage of the birds in search of the Simorgh, the mystical sun bird who lives on<br />
the cosmic mountain Qaf. Only 30 birds survive to attain the realisation that the nature of the<br />
Simorgh, what they have been seeking, is within them as their own profound essence. Many of<br />
the animation works in The Cypress and the Crow: 50 Years of Iranian Animation feature animal<br />
figures — birds, mice, the fox, the goat and many more — which have literary and symbolic<br />
associations, and are also alter egos for humanity. The crow exhibits the baser human traits —<br />
selfishness, suspicion, greed, opportunism — but is also crafty and intelligent; there are many<br />
stories about crows.<br />
The garden and the tree of life are important Persian carpet motifs, defining a locus of art and<br />
the sacred in the domestic realm; gardens figure in the Persian mystical literature of Hafez,<br />
Rumi and Omar Khayyám as places of spiritual refuge and transcendence. Caribbean novelist,<br />
poet and essayist Édouard Glissant, whose writings have been influential in the field of postcolonial<br />
criticism, contends that every work of art carries in it a totalité-monde (or world-totality),<br />
which links the particular place where the work is emitted to a world view from there. 9 Monir<br />
Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, who has created a large-scale installation for APT6, Lightning for<br />
Neda 2009, also completed this year a smaller work entitled Shazde Garden – Kerman, in the<br />
same materials of reverse-glass painting: plaster and mirrors. Here, Farmanfarmaian represents<br />
the cypress, sacred in Iran, and links it to the tree of life. In the Islamic tradition, the tree of life<br />
is in heaven and harbours brightly coloured birds which sing melodiously, representing the<br />
souls of the faithful; the tree may also represent the human body and aspirations to the divine. 10<br />
Farkhondeh Torabi’s Risheh dar Asseman (The Sprout) 2006, a pebble and sand animation,<br />
shows a young shoot surviving harsh conditions until one day it surges and blossoms into<br />
Maryam Bayani<br />
Iran b.1982<br />
Dastane Sofal (The Pottery Tale) (stills) 2008 / Digital<br />
video, black and white and colour, stereo, 8:34 minutes,<br />
Iran / Images courtesy: The artist<br />
Kurdish–Iranian painter Mashaallah Mohammadi began making animations five years ago<br />
on the basis of scanned drawings. In his short work Other Being 2006, a man is shot and<br />
falls into a pool, where his lifeblood transforms into red fishes. Laleh Khorramian’s I Without<br />
End 2008 concentrates life and love into two figures formed in orange peel and placed in<br />
a miniature domestic interior. They sit together, curl around each other, and convey intense<br />
fragility and emotion. Many contemporary animation works by artists function in this way, as<br />
visual poems in which crystallising images vehicle metaphoric associations. In an international<br />
context, animators are often not recognised as artists, nor their works as art objects; animation<br />
frequently falls between the gaps of art and film. When exhibited in an art context, the<br />
extraordinarily diverse aesthetic qualities of these works, which combine all of the plastic arts,<br />
film, video and computer-based media, disrupt and bring into dialogue otherwise hermetic<br />
spheres of production and exhibition. <strong>Art</strong> historian and cultural critic Susan Buck-Morss<br />
points to the unique vitality of art practices for which there is no formal institutional context of<br />
exhibition. She refers to the ‘gesture of disappearance’, where ‘aesthetic experience manages<br />
54 55
to escape not only the artworld, but all “worlds” as disciplinary regimes’. 11 In his writings on<br />
what he calls ‘polyculturalism’ (as opposed to multiculturalism), cultural theorist Vijay Prashad<br />
posits, like Elsaesser, that ‘the task of the historian is not to carve out the lineages but to make<br />
sense of how people live culturally dynamic lives’ which partake of a ‘host of lineages’. Cultural<br />
phenomena and individual lives are both coherent and extremely complex and open: ‘Social<br />
interaction and struggle produces cultural works, and these are in constant, fraught formation’. 12<br />
As an infinitely varied visual field which reworks cultural forms, Iranian animation expresses<br />
many historical lineages and geographical relationships; working against tendencies to cultural<br />
homogenisation, these works offer ways of seeing that displace and expand visual experience,<br />
and make new, located, and always provisional, visual worlds.<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 The pot is held in the National Museum of Iran in Tehran.<br />
2 Thomas Elsaesser, ‘The new film history as media archaeology’, Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol.14, no.2–3,<br />
Spring 2004, pp.75–117.<br />
3 Elsaesser, paragraph 32.<br />
4 The music, inspired by the folk music of Baluchistan, was composed and adapted by Shir-mohammad Espandar.<br />
5 Maryam Bayani, email to the author, 10 September 2009.<br />
6 Elsaesser, paragraph 54.<br />
7 Elsaesser, paragraph 1. See also The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image [exhibition catalogue],<br />
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 2008; Cinéma Cinéma: Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> and the Cinematic Experience<br />
[exhibition catalogue], Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, 1999; <strong>Art</strong> and<br />
Film since 1945: The Hall of Mirrors [exhibition catalogue], Museum of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>, Los Angeles, and The<br />
Monacelli Press, New York, 1996; Spellbound: <strong>Art</strong> and Film [exhibition catalogue], Hayward <strong>Gallery</strong> and British<br />
Film Institute, London, 1996; Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel (eds), Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after<br />
Film, MIT Press, Boston, 2003.<br />
8 Jack Goody, The Theft of History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006, p.185.<br />
9 Édouard Glissant, Introduction à une poétique du divers, Gallimard, Paris, 1996, p.34.<br />
10 Jasleen Dhamija, Living Traditions of Iran’s Crafts, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, and Farabi University,<br />
Tehran, 1979, p.63–4.<br />
11 Susan Buck-Morss, Thinking past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left, Verso, London and New York,<br />
2003, p.73.<br />
12 Vijay Prashad, Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity,<br />
Beacon Press, Boston, 2001, p.148.<br />
Laleh Khorramian<br />
Iran b.1974<br />
I Without End (single channel) (still) (detail) 2008 /<br />
Digital betacam, colour, stereo, 6:20 minutes, Iran /<br />
Image courtesy: The artist and Salon 94, New York<br />
56
The world and the studio<br />
Russell Storer<br />
To make their ‘Blurring the Boundaries’ series, Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu transposed a set of<br />
exhibitions into their studio, and then sent them out into an exhibition again. In other words,<br />
they carefully constructed tiny exhibition models to house their paintings, video works and<br />
installations, photographed them, and now present them in the Asia Pacific Triennial as a<br />
sequence of digital prints. A complex network of objects and images is formed in which the<br />
original, the copy, the real and the fictive have become utterly entangled. Further complicating<br />
matters, some of the models contain little versions of Wah Nu’s works, others feature Tun Win<br />
Aung’s — yet the creative process is a collaborative one, and the work is attributed accordingly.<br />
On close viewing, what might appear to be a hermetic, relatively modest project begins to<br />
speak volumes about the nature of making and exhibiting art. Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu<br />
live and work in Yangon (Rangoon) in Myanmar, which, as the artist and curator Chu Chu Yuan<br />
has written, is:<br />
. . . a country where if one is not interested to produce the kind of art that is saleable in the<br />
galleries in Myanmar, then there is little other possibilities except to make art for oneself, or for<br />
one’s partner; rare as it is to find alternative support structures for art or to be able to express<br />
the sense of connections between art and society. 1<br />
In an environment in which access to information, audiences and other artists can be seriously<br />
limited, the dialogue the artists have with each other is essential. Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu’s<br />
immaculate models can be read as proposals for the kind of public discourse for art that a<br />
gallery exhibition offers. These exhibitions may never be realised in real space, but are made<br />
available to those visiting the artists’ studio, and now to audiences in Brisbane via photographs.<br />
In most societies, art-making has traditionally been a group undertaking, from artisanal<br />
communities to guilds and formal studios. <strong>Art</strong>ists all over the world often band together<br />
when a need is felt, to create support structures and opportunities for themselves and<br />
for others. These can be thought of as spaces, both physical and conceptual, for making,<br />
discussing and exhibiting art. Some early forms of critical collaboration were avant-garde<br />
collectives and societies in Europe, established in opposition to existing forms of artistic<br />
production and circulation. The conservative salons of late nineteenth-century Paris and Vienna<br />
gave rise to Gustave Courbet’s Fédération des artistes and Gustav Klimt’s Vienna Secession,<br />
which organised their own exhibitions to advance the cause of artistic innovation. The early<br />
twentieth century Avant-garde is synonymous with artist groups formed to challenge art and<br />
society — the dadaists, constructivists, futurists, surrealists, and De Stijl, for example. Collective<br />
practice responds to specific conditions, and has often been evoked at times of great political<br />
upheaval, with groups able to achieve more than individuals in mobilising change. From the<br />
Charwei Tsai<br />
Taiwan b.1980<br />
Earth mantra 2009<br />
Performance, Taipei, Taiwan 2009 / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
58
Grupo de <strong>Art</strong>istas de Vanguardia under the Ongania dictatorship in Argentina, to the Stars in<br />
post-Cultural Revolution China, to the Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru Indonesia (New Indonesian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Movement) during the Suharto era, artist groups have pushed for broader possibilities for art,<br />
which, in many cases, are closely allied with alternative political models. 2<br />
<strong>Art</strong>istic collaboration can, however, take in a wide range of structures: artist duos, collectives,<br />
artist groups, art societies and artist-run initiatives, any of which may be temporary or ongoing.<br />
It can also extend to include the teamwork of art-making itself; that is, working with technicians,<br />
assistants, fabricators and/or artisans in the production process. Each collaboration has its own<br />
reason for forming, and its own particular dynamics in terms of authorship and attribution, process<br />
and final outcome. What they share is the acknowledgment of art as a fundamentally social<br />
activity, rather than a rarefied, autonomous production of objects by an individual ‘genius’, which<br />
has long been a basis for artistic value. In his study on collaboration, Charles Green observes:<br />
. . . teamwork in post-1960s art challenged not only the terms in which artistic identity was<br />
conventionally conceived but also the ‘frame’ — the discursive boundary between the ‘inside’<br />
and the ‘outside’ of a work of art’. 3<br />
When these social relationships are made explicit in the work, it not only shifts the nature<br />
of an art work’s authorship, but also its context — not least the transition out of the studio and<br />
into the world.<br />
YNG<br />
Yoshitomo Nara<br />
Japan b.1959<br />
graf<br />
Japan est. 1993<br />
Torre di Malaga (Tower of Malaga) (detail) 2007<br />
Installation view, CAC, Malaga / Image courtesy:<br />
The artists and Tomio Koyama <strong>Gallery</strong>, Tokyo /<br />
Photograph: Hako Hosokawa<br />
Left<br />
Tun Win Aung<br />
Myanmar b.1975<br />
Wah Nu<br />
Myanmar b.1977<br />
Blurring the Boundaries #1 2007–09<br />
Digital print / 42 x 59cm / Image courtesy: The artists<br />
Right<br />
Runa Islam<br />
Bangladesh/United Kingdom b.1970<br />
The Restless Subject 2008<br />
16mm film and CD wild tracks, colour, sound,<br />
6:42 minutes<br />
and<br />
Tobias Putrih<br />
Slovenia b.1972<br />
For The Restless Subject 2008<br />
Plywood / 343 x 350 x 460cm / Installation view /<br />
Image courtesy: The artists and White Cube, London /<br />
Photograph: Todd-White <strong>Art</strong> Photography<br />
A key aspect of APT6 is the large number of artists who work in collaboration with others, be<br />
they other artists, practitioners from different disciplines, or gallery audiences. The motivations<br />
and configurations vary, but, in each case, the relationships between collaborators are intrinsic<br />
to the process of making, and are in some way constituted in the final form of the work. This<br />
includes the ‘exquisite corpse’ sequence of drawings that comprises The One Year Drawing<br />
Project 2005–07, passed from one artist to another across Sri Lanka — a political gesture at a<br />
time of civil war. There is the combination of skills and traditions employed in the Fijian masi<br />
(barkcloth) work Teitei vou (A new garden) 2009 by Leba Toki, Bale Jione and Robin White,<br />
and Shirana Shahbazi’s commissioning of Iranian billboard painters to translate her still-life<br />
photographs into vast canvases. There is the freestanding ‘cinema’ designed by Tobias Putrih<br />
to screen Runa Islam’s film The Restless Subject 2008, as well as the ‘hut’ constructed by the<br />
design firm graf to contain a room of art works by Yoshitomo Nara, recreating the atmosphere<br />
of the artist’s workspace as a hub of interconnected ideas. The Australian group DAMP has<br />
created a ‘cubby-house’ inside a huge plinth for visitors to spend time in, featuring items from<br />
their shared studio in Melbourne, while Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan’s In-flight (Project: Another<br />
Country) 2009 comprises hundreds of tiny aeroplanes made by children in the <strong>Gallery</strong> and from<br />
all over <strong>Queensland</strong>. Charwei Tsai works with local Buddhist monks to inscribe the Heart Sutra<br />
onto mushrooms for the duration of the exhibition, while her video projections are made to be<br />
viewed on the hands, physically involving <strong>Gallery</strong> visitors in the activation of her images.<br />
Whatever their rationale, collaborations such as these bring, in a sense, the ‘private’ activities<br />
of the studio into the public eye. <strong>Art</strong>istic collaboration, as critic John Roberts has argued:<br />
. . . directly involves shaping the ways in which art finds its sensuous and intellectual place<br />
in the world. In this it draws into view the very nature of how, and under what conditions, art<br />
might appear in the world. 4<br />
60 61
Collaborative works register art’s grounding in interactions between people, with all the<br />
negotiations and decisions that this entails. They might make us aware of artistic divisions<br />
of labour, in which particular skills or activities are delegated amongst individuals; or of the<br />
constructed nature of a form or style that is, by definition, not the outcome of a single ‘hand’.<br />
In the case of temporary projects, such as Tsai’s and the Aquilizans’, the primary focus is not<br />
the final art work, but rather the act of making, with the <strong>Gallery</strong> itself becoming the studio.<br />
This latter form of practice — often loosely described as relational or participatory art — has<br />
become increasingly prevalent since the 1990s, and has been a strong presence in past APTs.<br />
These include works such as Surasi Kusolwong’s Ruen pae (During the moments of the day)<br />
1999–2000, featuring a structure based on a Thai floating house in which the audience was<br />
invited to rest and contemplate, and Lee Mingwei’s Writing the unspoken 1999, a series of three<br />
sculptural booths in which visitors could write personal letters.<br />
The number of collaborative works in APT6 is a reflection of its importance to contemporary<br />
art-making, not only in the Asia Pacific region, but internationally. Collaboration did not begin as<br />
a prescribed theme for the exhibition, but is rather an element that appeared again and again<br />
when looking at how artists are working today. Wit Pimkanchanapong, for example, often works<br />
across the disciplines of art, design and architecture, and regularly collaborates with Jiro Endo,<br />
Pitupong Chaowakul, and others as Soi Project. The work Fruits 2007–09, featured in APT6, is an<br />
interactive project that invites the audience to construct paper fruit out of preprinted templates.<br />
The task of folding the paper and joining the tabs is likened by Pimkanchanapong to the<br />
process of communication, with the paper models contributing to a fruit stall-style installation<br />
or kept for the contribution of a donation equalling the real fruit’s market price. Soi Project<br />
enables Pimkanchanapong to develop the kinds of experimental, cross-disciplinary works that<br />
he would not be able to realise alone; the word soi (‘small street’ in Thai) evokes connections<br />
made between people in an urban environment.<br />
For Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra, the decision to work collaboratively came out of shared<br />
interests and backgrounds, and developed organically as their process of emailing concepts<br />
back and forth during art school began to coalesce as concrete projects. 5 Under the moniker<br />
Thukral and Tagra, as well as the label Bosedk Designs, they have been working across the<br />
areas of art and design since 2000. Their works are developed digitally before being realised as<br />
paintings, sculptures and installations, enabling a fluid and responsive circulation of images and<br />
ideas. Their approach reflects a more recent form of collective work, which, rather than rejecting<br />
the promotion of artistic identity, heartily embraces it, creating their own ‘brand’. The power of the<br />
market to absorb even some of the most resistant activities, and the shifts in identity formation<br />
that technology has brought, has led to collaborative strategies that work with, rather than<br />
against, consumer and media culture. Recent artist groups, according to critic Pamela M Lee:<br />
. . . are as likely to shadow the logic of the corporation as that of the co-op, as predisposed<br />
to emulate the thinktank as the factory floor . . . the appearance of these new collectives . . .<br />
announces a marked shift from the ways collectives have been historically imagined relative<br />
to their ideological filiations. 6<br />
Yoshitomo Nara and graf’s collaborations are also presented under a ‘brand’ name, YNG, and<br />
have been produced in gallery spaces all over the world. Sometimes working with local people<br />
to construct them, each installation features Nara’s works within a structure, or ‘hut’, created by<br />
graf, which reflects the architecture of its location, be it Yogyakarta, Seoul, Malaga or Brisbane.<br />
The ‘huts’ erect a kind of barrier between the works and the museum’s white walls, enabling Nara<br />
Wit Pimkanchanapong<br />
Thailand b.1976<br />
Fruits 2007<br />
Installation view, Sharjah Biennale 2007 / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Thukral and Tagra<br />
Jiten Thukral<br />
India b.1976<br />
Sumir Tagra<br />
India b.1979<br />
Effugio (escape) 2008<br />
Installation view, Mori <strong>Art</strong> Museum, Tokyo / Image<br />
courtesy: The artists and <strong>Gallery</strong> Nature Morte, New Delhi<br />
62 63
APT6 features the works of many artists born in the 1970s and 1980s, many of whom have<br />
studied overseas, and may still live there; their points of reference are fluid and multifarious.<br />
Collaboration’s complication of the singular artistic identity and ‘signature’ provides an<br />
important critical current running through APT6, which, with its focus on the contemporary art<br />
of a specific region, takes on the contestations that such a geographical framework brings.<br />
This understanding cuts across the regional bounds of the Asia Pacific Triennial, and offers up<br />
a range of possible readings of art works. These are subject to the equally diverse experiences<br />
and histories that we, as audiences, bring to them; and by opening their studio doors to the<br />
world, artists are inviting us in.<br />
to control the environment in which they are shown, while subtly shifting the dynamics of the<br />
gallery space. DAMP’s enormous plinth functions in a similar way, creating a structure that turns<br />
inward, its cubby/studio being a room within a room. On top of the plinth is a circle of chairs,<br />
which the artists have allocated for meetings by local groups at specified times, transferring<br />
social activities traditionally external to the <strong>Gallery</strong> into the space as a performance. While many<br />
collaborations in the past have resisted museums and proposed alternative structures, many<br />
recent projects, such as those by YNG and DAMP, are intended to work within this context.<br />
Museums, in turn, have been transformed by this process; opening out to more interactive<br />
approaches, and bringing broader forms of artistic endeavour into their ambit. The growth of<br />
relational practices over the past two decades has indeed been primarily within the circuit of art<br />
institutions and biennales; likewise for ‘site-specific’ works, which effectively relocate the studio<br />
to each site of display. 7<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Chu Chu Yuan, ‘Wah Nu’s and Tun Win Aung’s art’, <strong>Art</strong>stream Myanmar, , viewed 15 October 2009.<br />
2 See Angelika Nollert, ‘<strong>Art</strong> is life, and life is art’, in Collective Creativity [exhibition catalogue], Kunsthalle<br />
Fridericianum, Kassel, and Revolver Books, Frankfurt, 2005, pp.25–9. For a historical overview of conceptualism<br />
across the world, including numerous collaborations, see Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s–1980s<br />
[exhibition catalogue], Queens Museum of <strong>Art</strong>, New York, 1999.<br />
3 Charles Green, The Third Hand: Collaboration in <strong>Art</strong> from Conceptualism to Post-Modernism, University of NSW<br />
Press, Sydney, 2001, p.x.<br />
4 John Roberts, ‘Collaboration as a problem of art’s cultural form’, Third Text, vol.18, no.6, 2004, p.557.<br />
5 Russell Storer, interview with the artists, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, 3 June 2009, QAG Research Library artist file.<br />
6 Pamela M Lee, ‘How to be a collective in the age of the consumer sovereign’, <strong>Art</strong>forum, vol.XLVIII, no.2, October<br />
2009, p.185.<br />
7 Claire Bishop, ‘The social turn: Collaboration and its discontents’, <strong>Art</strong>forum, vol.XLIV, no.6, February 2006, pp.178–9.<br />
8 Daniel Birnbaum, ‘We are many’, in Making Worlds [exhibition catalogue], 53rd Biennale of Venice, Marsilio,<br />
Venice, p.191.<br />
The translation from the studio to the gallery is a process with which contemporary artists across<br />
the region are increasingly familiar, and are embracing as a means of communicating ideas<br />
and exchanging information. <strong>Art</strong>ists throughout the world are living and working in a highly<br />
interconnected environment, socially and technologically, and their work is circulating more<br />
widely in exhibitions around the globe. This requires a continual rethinking, for artists as well as<br />
audiences, of context and identity, which is not, and has never been, singular and fixed. This is<br />
an obvious but often overlooked point in the case of large international exhibitions, as curator<br />
Daniel Birnbaum acknowledged in his essay for the 2009 Venice Biennale:<br />
Instead of viewing ourselves and others in terms of a singular identity, we should remember<br />
that each and every one of us carries a multitude within . . . If one maintains that a cultural event<br />
with participants from many cultures is to be more than a stage where one culture is put on<br />
display to another, then it may be important to insist on the complexity of individuals, not to<br />
mention the communities that they form. 8<br />
Surasi Kusolwong<br />
Thailand b.1965<br />
Ruen pae (During the moments of the day) 1999–2000<br />
Installation at ‘The Third Asia Pacific Triennial of<br />
Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>’, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, 1999 /<br />
Photograph: Ray Fulton<br />
64 65
Minam Apang<br />
Tales from the deep<br />
Minam Apang’s ‘War with the stars’ series of drawings is inspired by<br />
a folktale recorded in Verrier Elwin’s 1958 book Myths of the North-<br />
East Frontier of India. It visually retells a creation myth similar to those<br />
that Apang heard as a child in her grandmother’s house, and through<br />
participating in rituals led by her shaman aunt. 1 The story describes<br />
how fish and amphibians were created: the water dwellers are at war<br />
with the stars, and during their unending battle climb upwards onto<br />
rocks, but are set upon by the stars’ arrows. Those who can’t escape<br />
are gashed and grazed by the arrows, which explains the fish’s gills.<br />
In Apang’s work The sleeping army may stir 2008, delicately drawn<br />
fish swarm in inky waters, ready to rise against the stars.<br />
The Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh is a region of mountains and<br />
valleys bordered to the north, west and east by Tibet, Bhutan and<br />
Myanmar, respectively. It was isolated from direct external influence<br />
until the mid 1900s, when it became the North-East Frontier of British<br />
India. 2 Elwin, an ex-Anglican missionary and anthropologist, served<br />
as an adviser on tribal affairs in the north-east to India’s Prime Minister<br />
Nehru, after the country attained independence in 1947. Advocating<br />
a policy of isolationism to preserve the traditions of the area’s many<br />
tribal groups, Elwin devoted much of his career to recording their<br />
animist beliefs, expressed in myth and song. Without such recording,<br />
many of these tales would have disappeared, as most Arunachal tribes<br />
have no indigenous form of written language. 3<br />
Until relatively recently, foreigners were forbidden from entering<br />
Arunachal and tribal life continued unchanged. However, the influence<br />
of missionary activity, as well as the inevitable infiltration of tourists<br />
and technology, has meant that Apang’s generation is not defined by<br />
cultural and social isolation. Educated at a Christian boarding school<br />
in Uttarakhand, Apang was distanced from her family’s tribal traditions<br />
from a young age. Her description of her childhood sounds not unlike<br />
those of children the world over:<br />
I grew up watching lots of films . . . I enjoyed everything from the regional<br />
matinees on [public TV broadcaster] Doordarshan, Bollywood, Hollywood,<br />
to tacky action/horror films . . . We grew up reading lots of comics. 4<br />
Further education in Chicago, Leeds and Mumbai gave Apang a sense<br />
of being ‘at home’ and viewing the concept of national or even tribal<br />
identity askance:<br />
Although I live in India there is nothing in my work that may be seen<br />
as being distinctly Indian or Adi (the tribe which my family belongs to<br />
in AP), nor do I feel like I’m part of any one identity but maybe a part<br />
of the many spaces/identities that I have come to occupy. 5<br />
In north-east Indian folktales, the role of the storyteller is often<br />
assumed by a bat, an ambiguous trickster figure. The bat is the<br />
central form in He wore them like talismans all over his body 2008,<br />
and appears again lying at the bottom of a deep lake surrounded by<br />
craggy mountains in Apang’s most recent work, Nothing of him doth<br />
fade 2009. The lake also contains a shipwreck swarming with divers,<br />
sharks, ghostly figures and sea creatures — echoing characters in both<br />
folktales and contemporary comic books. Apang has worked the paper<br />
into three-dimensional peaks and troughs, held in tension by a web of<br />
threads, creating a hybrid sculptural drawing. Repeated layering of ink<br />
and acrylic has rendered the paper’s surface almost burnished, tanned<br />
like an animal’s hide.<br />
He wore them like talismans all over his body is not based on a story<br />
from Arunachal, but from Ecuador (‘The lake at the end of the world’),<br />
demonstrating Apang’s access to a universal repertoire of folktales.<br />
Describing the dark figure of the bat, Apang says:<br />
This bat is ambiguous: I don’t know if it is dead or if it’s just asleep; if it’s<br />
a real bat, a shadow or just an illusion. I don’t know if it’s a friend or an<br />
enemy. I don’t quite know if the scene signifies a beginning or an end. 6<br />
Minam Apang’s distance from the traditions of her birthplace, and<br />
her ability to draw from a vast archive of global folktales, means that<br />
she occupies the role of storyteller with some hesitation. Like the<br />
lake at the end of the world, her drawings are ultimately opaque,<br />
suggesting uncharted depths.<br />
Miranda Wallace<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Verrier Elwin, Myths of the North-East Frontier of India, North East Frontier Agency,<br />
Shillong, 1958, p.313.<br />
2 The area of present-day Arunachal Pradesh formed part of the North-East<br />
Frontier Tracts of Assam during the colonial period; in 1954, it became part of<br />
the North-East Frontier Agency, in 1972 a union territory, and in 1987 a state. See<br />
<strong>Government</strong> of Arunachal Pradesh, ,<br />
viewed 11 October 2009.<br />
3 In this essay, the use of the term ‘tribe’, considered by many as ethnographically<br />
imprecise and historically constructed, is used in the manner in which it is found<br />
in much of the writing on and by people of the region. As the British academic<br />
Stuart Blackburn has noted: ‘although in most of India the term is politicised<br />
and controversial . . . in Arunachal Pradesh, where tribes predominate, the term<br />
may be politicised but it is not controversial and is often used with pride’. Stuart<br />
Blackburn, ‘Colonial contact in the “hidden land”: Oral history among the Apatanis<br />
of Arunachal Pradesh’, 2003, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of<br />
London, ,<br />
viewed 11 October 2009.<br />
4 Amrita Gupta Singh, ‘Living to tell a tale: Interview with Minam Apang’, <strong>Art</strong><br />
Concerns, , viewed 8 October 2009.<br />
5 Minam Apang, email to the author, 9 October 2009.<br />
6 Apang, email to the author.<br />
Minam Apang<br />
India b.1980<br />
He wore them like talismans all over his body 2008<br />
Ink, synthetic polymer paint and tea on fabriano<br />
cold-pressed paper / 138.5 x 184cm / The Lekha<br />
and Anupam Poddar Collection / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai<br />
The sleeping army may stir 2008<br />
Ink and synthetic polymer paint on fabriano coldpressed<br />
paper / 70 x 240cm / Collection: Isabelle Levy<br />
and Geraldine Galateau, Paris / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai<br />
Previous page<br />
The sleeping army may stir (detail) 2008<br />
Ink and synthetic polymer paint on fabriano coldpressed<br />
paper / 70 x 240cm / Collection: Isabelle Levy<br />
and Geraldine Galateau, Paris / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai<br />
68 69
Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan<br />
In flight<br />
Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan<br />
Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan<br />
Philippines/Australia b.1965<br />
Alfredo Juan Aquilizan<br />
Philippines/Australia b.1962<br />
In-flight (Project: Another Country) (details) 2009<br />
Mixed media / Site-specific work for APT6 /<br />
Images courtesy: The artists<br />
Husband-and-wife team Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan live their art.<br />
They use everyday domestic objects to make art works which are<br />
powerful metaphors for contemporary experience and identity<br />
formation. Highlighting the fluidity of these personal and communal<br />
identities, and caught between destinations — never fully arriving but<br />
always in flux 1 — their works explore ideas of consumerism, home and<br />
dislocation. Making associations between individuals and communities,<br />
the Aquilizans create a framework for the exchange of ideas, creating<br />
new relationships and dialogues, and fostering new understandings.<br />
The Aquilizans participated in APT3 (1999) with Project be-longing #2<br />
1999, a work exploring ideas of kinship and the place of memory in<br />
evoking the sense of lives and experiences shared. The installation<br />
comprised household items and mementos from members of Brisbane’s<br />
Filipino community. In inviting the Aquilizans to exhibit in APT6, after<br />
ten years, with In-flight (Project: Another Country) 2009, we have an<br />
opportunity to see how their work and lives have progressed. In Project<br />
be-longing #2, the ‘community’ was based on a group organised around<br />
a shared heritage, living in a particular location. The title acknowledges<br />
the creative potential of difference in people, groups, contexts and places.<br />
It also undermines geography as a perimeter for communities, which<br />
are globally dispersed. As demonstrated by this work, and their work for<br />
APT6, collaboration is central to the Aquilizans’ practice: working both in<br />
and outside the studio, with individuals and amongst communities, they<br />
foster the exchange of ideas, new relationships and dialogues.<br />
The Aquilizans migrated to Australia from the Philippines in 2006, and<br />
now share in the experience of global diaspora with their children. Their<br />
current work continues to engage social and educational elements, while<br />
it also unearths what artists do, by making art and its processes visible.<br />
Engaging hands, minds and relationships, In-flight (Project: Another<br />
Country) comprises hand-sized and handcrafted aeroplanes, assembled<br />
en masse from donated recycled materials. The gallery space becomes<br />
activated by people adding to a large pile of aeroplanes, from which a<br />
suspended spiral of planes takes flight toward the Gibson entrance of<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>.<br />
To construct this work, individuals fashion their own unique aeroplanes<br />
using discarded and personal objects: the intricacy of their construction<br />
and the prodigious variety of material used is impressive. The<br />
rudimentary cruciform of the aeroplane is suggestive of Catholicism,<br />
the prevalent religion in the artists’ homeland, and the cross is a point<br />
of intersection encouraging interaction. It too invokes the points of the<br />
compass and the four corners of the earth — associations reinforcing<br />
the artists’ interest in global diversity and interaction.<br />
An earlier installation, Project be-longing: Presences and absences<br />
(Erasure and remembrance) 1998, shown at the 6th Havana Biennial,<br />
revealed the beginning of the Aquilizans’ interest in ideas of<br />
collaboration and exchange. Here, the artists organised a collection<br />
of some 10 000 used toothbrushes from a town in the Philippines,<br />
getting to know the inhabitants through the process. Even such<br />
mundane objects reflect their owner, who, if wealthy enough, could<br />
discard them before they became worn. Collated as an enormous mass,<br />
however, they lose their specificity; as Alfredo Aquilizan comments, in<br />
mixing the toothbrushes together the work ‘becomes a metaphor for<br />
obscured identity’. 2<br />
A more recent work, Address 2007–08, 3 reconfigures personal objects<br />
in cardboard balikbayan boxes, used by many Philippine migrants<br />
to transport their belongings. A Tagalog word, balikbayan literally<br />
means to take back to the nation or country. The Aquilizans used<br />
these boxes as moulds to ‘cast’ blocks of their own possessions, which<br />
were transported from the Philippines, becoming the foundation for<br />
a future projection of their home in Australia. Here, the home is no<br />
longer a stable site, but a patchwork of desires and impermanent<br />
arrangements; home is a place where the continuing story of a family’s<br />
life is constantly being lived. 4<br />
Building on these earlier works, In-flight (Project: Another Country)<br />
expands on connections generated through the construction process.<br />
The recycled materials used to construct the aeroplanes for In-flight have<br />
been gathered and assembled through a series of workshops involving<br />
both children and adults in Brisbane. The plane shape becomes the<br />
embodiment of people drawn together via a common purpose and<br />
place, and their suspended formation is evocative of a wheeling flock<br />
of birds gathering and breaking up into bigger and smaller groups on a<br />
migratory flight. As if preparing for a journey, this installation promises a<br />
new understanding of home, identity and belonging.<br />
Michael Hawker<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Flaudette Datuin, ‘Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan: Home, family, journey’, The Third<br />
Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> [exhibition catalogue], <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, Brisbane, 1999, p.120.<br />
2 Gina Fairley, ‘Project. Memory. Migration’, Eyeline, no.62, summer 2006–07, p.46.<br />
3 Address 2007–08 was exhibited in the <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> of South Australia in the ‘Handle<br />
with Care’ exhibition, and was installed at the Central Promontory for the Singapore<br />
Biennale in 2008.<br />
4 Claire Doherty, Claustrophobia [exhibition catalogue], Ikon <strong>Gallery</strong>, Birmingham,<br />
1998, p.12.<br />
70 71
Chen Chieh-jen<br />
On going<br />
Chen Chieh-jen’s guerilla-style performance art in 1980s Taipei<br />
demonstrated early the artist’s sense of urgency to highlight subjects<br />
often hidden or off-limits in Taiwan’s mainstream culture — from<br />
the inequity of power to its history of colonisation. Chen’s acts of<br />
resistance during Taiwan’s martial law period, which had been in place<br />
since 1949, conflated his role as artist, culture jammer and activist.<br />
By taking performance art into the streets, Chen critiqued social<br />
and political abuses, but also served to openly testify to the belief in<br />
personal and artistic freedom of expression. He enacted this through<br />
the body, facing a serious risk of personal danger in doing so. When<br />
martial law was finally overturned in 1987, however, Chen retreated<br />
from making art. It was not until 1996 that he resumed work, this<br />
time on a project that stridently questioned the nature of selfhood in<br />
contemporary Taiwan, an inquiry inextricably linked to its colonial past.<br />
In the digitally manipulated photographs Chen produced from the late<br />
1990s, his body takes the place of Taiwan, becoming a site of depravity<br />
and the grotesque within scenes of horror — simultaneously victim,<br />
perpetrator and historical accomplice.<br />
On Going 2006 can be seen as the culmination of several films by Chen<br />
which reveal Taiwan’s once-thriving structures of industry as ruins. In<br />
the works Factory 2003 and Bade Area 2005, he reveals the complex<br />
implications this has had for people left unemployed and displaced by<br />
the loss of industries, which have moved out of the country in search of<br />
higher profits. 1 Chen recognises the indifference of mainstream media in<br />
respect to these issues; these people have no voice, and Chen describes<br />
their situation, like others in Taiwan, as ‘being shrouded’. 2 The coping<br />
mechanism of the amnesiac, which compartmentalises the past, becomes<br />
a feature of On Going, where silence heightens the presence of a cloaked<br />
consciousness, in insistent, surfacing images that refuse the shroud.<br />
A black car emerges from an invisible entrance. It is adorned with<br />
stickers calling for Taiwan to become the 51st state of the United<br />
States. No contact is made between the anti-imperialist and the<br />
driver of the car, both of whom seem distanced from reality as if<br />
their coexistence in this stage is a coincidental crossing of parallel<br />
dimensions. The driver makes no attempt to get out, and in a moment<br />
we see that the interior has filled with smoke, and he can no longer<br />
be seen sitting upright in the driver’s seat.<br />
Excerpts from a black-and-white documentary about the US military<br />
stationed in Taiwan during the Cold War take over the screen. In<br />
government parlour rooms, deals are toasted, while bombs detonate<br />
and machine guns strafe the night. Returning to Chen’s film, large<br />
pieces of ash float in from the dark. The location in the factory has<br />
changed to a similar grey room now populated by defunct machines.<br />
The back of the truck has been burnt, but from behind a red curtain the<br />
man produces a suitcase housing a small screenprinting set, and begins<br />
printing manifestos on unused dot-matrix printer paper left under the<br />
factory’s machines. Televised media returns to screen in which news<br />
clips talk about arms procurement in Taiwan. The man gets into the<br />
driver’s seat, and backs the truck out of the factory room, leaving it lit<br />
but deserted, stage open, and in a state of suspension.<br />
About On Going, Chen writes:<br />
I understand that the abstractive expressing form and the political<br />
problems in interior Taiwan are not easily understood . . . If we leave<br />
aside the political situation in Taiwan, I do hope the viewers just see<br />
the film as ‘image poetry’ and experience the state in the film. 4<br />
The new edit of On Going, shown for the first time in APT6, considers<br />
the role of political ideologies in Taiwan, hinging past and present.<br />
On Going opens with a slow gliding camera shot, circling the interior<br />
windows of a high-rise office block; the central atrium and its vacant<br />
floors establish a palpable sense of void which permeates the film.<br />
Next, an abandoned factory becomes a dark theatre which shelters<br />
a solitary anti-imperialist and his beaten-up truck. 3 Fluorescent<br />
lighting describes the edge of this stage, over which numerous fire<br />
extinguishers and bundles of flyers are littered. The man slowly shifts<br />
some fire extinguishers onto a pile and loads bundles of papers into<br />
the back of the truck. Chen’s 35mm film absorbs the nuanced gloom of<br />
the factory, suffused with detail and deep colours — red, blue, greenish<br />
grey — as it tracks through the scene, graceful and seemingly luxurious<br />
in contrast to the content on stage.<br />
In the rear of the truck the man is surrounded by framed portraits<br />
of leftists who have been executed in Taiwan. Ageing pamphlets lie<br />
strewn on the floor, along with a copy of The Communist Manifesto.<br />
Naomi Evans<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Chen Chieh-jen describes his work ‘as an act of connection, linking together the<br />
history of people who have been excluded from the dominant discourse, the reallife<br />
situations of areas that are being ignored, and “others” who are being isolated.<br />
In this way, I resist the state of amnesia in consumer society’. ‘Chen Chieh-jen’, <strong>Art</strong>es<br />
Mundi 4, ,<br />
viewed 29 October 2009.<br />
2 Chen Chieh-jen, email to the author, 21 October 2009.<br />
3 Chen, email to the author. Chen describes the actor in this film as a member of an<br />
anti-imperialism group: ‘The group only has two or three members and their claims<br />
have never been followed with interest’.<br />
4 Chen, email to the author<br />
Chen Chieh-jen<br />
Taiwan b.1960<br />
On Going (stills) 2006<br />
35mm film transferred to DVD, single channel,<br />
continuous loop, colour, silent, 20:22 minutes,<br />
ed. 4/5 / Images courtesy: The artist<br />
72 73
Chen Qiulin<br />
Salvaged from ruins<br />
Chen Qiulin<br />
China b.1975<br />
Garden No.1 2007<br />
Photograph / 127 x 152cm, ed. of 8 / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and Max Protech <strong>Gallery</strong>, New York<br />
Xinshengchang installed in the exhibition ‘Migration’ at<br />
the Long March Space, Beijing, 2006 / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and the Long March Space, Beijing<br />
Chinese artist Chen Qiulin established her artistic language to<br />
formulate juxtapositions of the new with the old. These tensions and<br />
polarities sustain her practice and, in keeping with this approach, for<br />
APT6 Chen exhibits both a reconstruction and a study of ruins.<br />
In 2006, Chen salvaged a traditional wooden home from the Xinsheng<br />
region of Zhongxian County in Sichuan Province, an area affected by<br />
the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. She employed labourers<br />
to precisely number and dismantle the simple and well-worn wooden<br />
pieces, to be reconstructed elsewhere. The house was initially shown<br />
at the Long March Space in Beijing, and has now been shipped<br />
to Australia, through all the arduous bureaucratic channels such<br />
undertakings require. Chen’s ambitious enterprise could be seen as a<br />
micro version of the Three Gorges Dam project, with Xinsheng Town<br />
275–277 2009 providing a physical embodiment of the intangible<br />
effects of displacement.<br />
Chen grew up in suburban Wanzhou in Sichuan Province, an area also<br />
destined to be submerged by the rising water of the Three Gorges<br />
Dam. Between 2002 and 2007, the subjective effects of the dam’s<br />
construction played out in Chen’s works, which charted attitudes<br />
ranging from despair to acceptance. 1 First proposed in 1919, the dam<br />
is the world’s largest hydro-electricity project. It has set unenviable<br />
records for the number of people displaced (more than 1.2 million),<br />
the number of cities and towns flooded (13 cities, 140 towns, 1350<br />
villages), and the length of the reservoir (more than 600 kilometres).<br />
The new dam will provide clean energy and mitigate the persistent<br />
flooding of the Yangtze River, but the project has not been without cost:<br />
reports of corruption, spiralling expenditure, technological problems<br />
and human rights violations, as well as resettlement difficulties, as<br />
residents are rehoused in new developments.<br />
Rescued from its now-submerged location, the houses presented<br />
in APT6 have become similarly de-territorialised, a nomad without<br />
a specific site. Within the imposing spaces of the <strong>Gallery</strong>, this home<br />
appears out of place, of a different architectural language, its footings<br />
from far away. Yet, in making this move, Chen has liberated a new<br />
space and forged a fluid future for this traditional structure. The<br />
houses now function as indexical signs of the site they once occupied,<br />
and also recall some of the issues surrounding contemporary sitespecific<br />
art raised by art historian Miwon Kwon. Though the ‘site’ itself<br />
no longer exists in an accessible form, it is mobilised in a discursive<br />
manner as the key element of the work through the physical object<br />
of the house. Chen’s project also encapsulates Kwon’s contemporary<br />
phenomenon of the ‘itinerant’ artist, where today we see the ‘intensive<br />
physical mobilization of the artist to create works in various cities<br />
throughout the cosmopolitan art world’, highlighting the changing<br />
conditions of artistic production and reception. 2<br />
The looming physical presence of the house contrasts with the whimsy<br />
of Chen’s video projection Garden 2007, also featured in APT6. To<br />
make Garden, she filmed a group of migrant workers whom she had<br />
employed to deliver huge bouquets of fake peonies in ceramic vases<br />
to the artist’s hometown of Wanzhou. 3 The video begins in darkness<br />
before dawn and, as it becomes light, these floral messengers stride<br />
past people washing in the river, the flowers bobbing slowly in time<br />
with their steps along narrow paths, through a hazy and polluted<br />
landscape of concrete rubble. They move through dreamlike<br />
sequences featuring traditional Chinese opera performers to deliver<br />
bright packages to shiny new apartment buildings.<br />
Within the grand narrative of China’s social and economic<br />
transformation, Chen’s work considers concepts of place, memory and<br />
individual experience. She excels in the tensions created by startling<br />
contrasts — the brilliant colours and textures of fake peonies against<br />
grey rubble, the worn and ‘lived in’ wooden houses amid the <strong>Gallery</strong>’s<br />
pristine architecture, the old and the new. Chen Qiulin’s work evokes<br />
some of the complexities that arise when the lives of individuals are<br />
considered in relation to great leaps of industrial progress — like<br />
phantom attachments that persist beneath the waters of the Yangtze.<br />
Angela Goddard<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Wu Hung (ed.), Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese<br />
<strong>Art</strong> [exhibition catalogue], Smart Museum of <strong>Art</strong> and The University of Chicago<br />
Press, Chicago, 2008, p.18.<br />
2 Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific <strong>Art</strong> and Locational Identity,<br />
MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2000, p.46.<br />
3 The peony is a traditional floral symbol of China. It is known as the ‘flower of riches<br />
and honour’, and is used symbolically in Chinese art to signify the fragility of life<br />
and its potential for renewal.<br />
74 75
Cheo Chai-Hiang<br />
Cash converter<br />
Cheo Chai-Hiang is interested in the processes and practices of<br />
making art. His exploration of the tradition of Conceptualism stems<br />
from a personal commitment to independent critical thinking. Cheo<br />
belongs to a generation of Singaporeans who could choose between<br />
the English and Chinese education systems; he says he is ‘fortunate to<br />
have been educated in the Chinese system’, one which encouraged a<br />
world view informed by traditional Chinese ethical and philosophical<br />
values. 1 A prolific writer in both Chinese and English, Cheo uses<br />
linguistic cues, textual associations and idiomatic wordplay as the basis<br />
for his work, which at first glance often appears deceptively simple.<br />
Working with everyday objects as raw materials for his sculptures and<br />
installations, Cheo defines his art by his own terms — terms he is also<br />
not afraid to challenge. When he first left for the United Kingdom to<br />
study at the Brighton Polytechnic in 1972, it was precisely to rethink<br />
preconceived ideas of art. His early work 5’x5’ (Singapore River) 1972,<br />
for example, consisted of a set of instructions for the exhibitors to<br />
draw a square measuring five feet by five feet, partially on a wall and<br />
partially on a floor. Its rejection by the Modern <strong>Art</strong> Society revealed<br />
the conservative views of the local art world at the time. <strong>Art</strong> historian<br />
TK Sabapathy has described Cheo as:<br />
. . . among the first in Singapore’s art history to advocate cultivating<br />
critical, questioning attitudes in the practice of art [and] advanced<br />
these attributes as necessary, requisite conditions for developing<br />
that practice. 2<br />
of juxtaposing the two seemingly unrelated words ‘conned’ and<br />
‘contemporary’ — who was conned, and by whom?<br />
In Fei Chang Ku 2007, another element of Cash Converter, the artist<br />
makes a pun on the pronunciation of the Chinese word ‘ 哭 ’ (ku,<br />
which translates as ‘cry’) and the English word ‘cool’. ‘HuaYu Cool!’<br />
(Mandarin Cool!) was the theme for the 2004 Speak Mandarin<br />
Campaign to encourage English-speaking Chinese Singaporeans<br />
to improve their Mandarin language skills. Initially launched in 1979<br />
to encourage dialect-speaking Chinese Singaporeans to speak<br />
Mandarin, the campaign has in recent years shifted its focus to Chinese<br />
Singaporeans who grew up speaking English. Anxious to keep up with<br />
the opportunities a global city presents, Singaporeans have embraced<br />
the English language, which has become the default lingua franca for<br />
many, widening the gap between the current and previous generations.<br />
After living and working in Europe and Australia for almost two<br />
decades, Cheo returned to Singapore to find a more anglicised<br />
audience who did not always understand the Chinese expressions<br />
used in his work. The ambivalent role of the Chinese language in<br />
Singapore raises the question: are Singaporeans encouraged to speak<br />
better Mandarin now in order to reconnect with their elders or to<br />
simply improve the facilitation of business transactions? Cheo’s works<br />
are rooted in contemporaneity (dang dai), but pay homage to the<br />
previous generation (shang dai).<br />
Cash Converter 2009, Cheo’s work for APT6, is comprised of six<br />
sculptures from a series that Cheo has been developing for the past<br />
five years. In this work, he evokes the sort of street scene which can still<br />
be found in parts of Singapore, boxing it up neatly for the foyer of the<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong>. The individual sculptures are pieced together<br />
using seductive neon lights, found objects and polished steel fixtures,<br />
suggesting shophouse signage, 3 reminiscent of an all-too-familiar way<br />
of life — the raw hustle and bustle, glowing heat, shiny trinkets.<br />
There is humour and play in Cash Converter, but underlying it is quiet<br />
reflection and pathos. Perhaps Cheo is subtly alluding to the economic<br />
agenda behind cultural policy, urging us to think about its real cost, or<br />
maybe he is merely trying to entice us with his bright neon sculptures,<br />
as any shop owner would a customer.<br />
Yvonne Low<br />
Cash Converter shows the layering of various disparate elements,<br />
which, on the one hand, makes perfect material sense when placed<br />
side by side, but on the other accentuates a competitive spirit as<br />
each fights for space and attention. One component, Dang Dang<br />
(Mirror Effect) 2009, is a commanding piece with its two iconic ‘ 當 ’<br />
(dang) signs written in traditional Chinese, characters still commonly<br />
used as signage by pawnshops in Singapore. Cheo draws attention<br />
to the subtle relationships formed between individual characters<br />
by strategically adding words before and after the sign — it now<br />
reads shang dang (‘conned’) and dang dai (‘contemporary’). The<br />
visual juxtaposition of the traditional script ‘ 當 ’ (dang) with the<br />
simplified scripts ‘ 上 代 ’ (shang dai) is striking. Cheo grew up learning<br />
traditional Chinese in school, and belongs to the shang dai (‘previous<br />
generation’). 4 He encourages us to contemplate the significance<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Cecily Briggs, ‘The thirty-six strategies: Thinking in the midst of things’, in Cheo<br />
Chai-Hiang: The Thirty Six Strategies [exhibition catalogue], Casula Powerhouse<br />
<strong>Art</strong>s Centre, Sydney, 2000, p.21.<br />
2 TK Sabapathy, ‘Cheo Chai-Hiang: Agent of change’ in Cheo Chai-Hiang:<br />
The Thirty-Six Strategies, p.15.<br />
3 A shophouse is a terraced two-storey building with a shop or eating house on<br />
the ground floor and living quarters above.<br />
4 By combining the added characters shang ( 上 ) and dai ( 代 ), the phrase now<br />
reads shang dai ( 上 代 ) (‘previous generation’).<br />
Cheo Chai-Hiang<br />
Singapore b.1946<br />
Fei Chang Ku 2007<br />
Stainless steel, perspex, neon / 3 parts: 53 x 55 x 13cm<br />
(each) / Image courtesy: The artist and NAFA, Singapore<br />
76 77
DAMP<br />
Untitled and indefinite<br />
DAMP must be one of Australia’s most successful artist collaborations,<br />
even if measured only by its longevity. Established by graduates of<br />
Melbourne’s Victorian College of the <strong>Art</strong>s in 1995, it has involved 74<br />
members since its inception. Although some inaugural members<br />
remain, it has resisted being tied to a specific identity or agenda. If it<br />
may be characterised at all, DAMP is known for its playfully provocative<br />
actions, and projects that revel in the expansion of art’s parameters,<br />
particularly where the division between artist and audience is blurred.<br />
DAMP describes its works as ‘social sculptures’.<br />
With Untitled 2009, for APT6, DAMP revisits an earlier work into<br />
which new elements have been introduced, reflecting the group’s<br />
own changing form. Untitled 2007, an oversized plinth crowned with<br />
a circle of ill-matched chairs, was presented at Uplands <strong>Gallery</strong> in<br />
Melbourne. Conventionally, what sits atop a plinth is understood to be<br />
art, but DAMP’s weekly meetings took place on top of the structure,<br />
implying that the collaboration was its own art form. This gesture was<br />
deliberately compromised, however, as the space between the plinth<br />
and the ceiling was too cramped for anyone to stand upright.<br />
where they can sit and relax, and a visitors’ book in which to leave<br />
responses and comments.<br />
A self-negating monument, Untitled 2009 gives form to the idea that<br />
art is not necessarily found in galleries or on plinths, nor is it located<br />
in unique objects. Pointing to a conventional eschewal of references<br />
outside of art, its classic modernist title, ‘Untitled’, instead opens a<br />
portal onto endless possibilities.<br />
Francis E Parker<br />
Endnote<br />
1 See Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza<br />
Woods, Les presses du réel, Dijon, 2002, p.18.<br />
While Untitled 2007 took the form of the very thing that isolates an<br />
art object from the rest of the world, DAMP imagined this plinth<br />
as a conduit rather than a demarcation. When visitors climbed the<br />
structure’s internal steps to peer out of the manhole at the top,<br />
they found themselves in the middle of the group. This work, and<br />
DAMP’s practice in general, exemplifies theorist Nicolas Bourriaud’s<br />
proposition that art is a state of encounter. 1 DAMP often invites the<br />
audience to participate, either by contributing text or ideas, or by<br />
taking up weapons to destroy its works. Authorship dissipates among<br />
the members and beyond to its viewers in a boundless exchange<br />
between individuals.<br />
DAMP<br />
est. 1995, Melbourne<br />
Dan Cass b.1970 / Rob Creedon b.1969 / Narelle Desmond<br />
b.1970 / Sam George b.1987 / Sharon Goodwin b.1973 /<br />
Ry Haskings b.1977 / Deb Kunda b.1972 / James Lynch<br />
b.1974 / Dan Moynihan b.1974 / Lisa Radford b.1976 /<br />
Nat Thomas b.1967 / Kylie Wilkinson b.1971<br />
Untitled 2007<br />
Synthetic polymer paint, chairs, mdf, timber, cornices /<br />
Installed dimensions variable / Installation view Uplands<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, Melbourne / Image courtesy: The artists and<br />
Uplands <strong>Gallery</strong>, Melbourne / Photograph: John Brash<br />
To reconfigure Untitled for the <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong> requires an<br />
impressive amplification of scale. Just as plinths are sized to fit the art<br />
they support, this one must be raised to over five metres in height in<br />
order to occupy the vast space in which it sits. For the duration of the<br />
exhibition, DAMP makes the space above the plinth available for local<br />
groups of various kinds to hold their own meetings. The context of<br />
APT6 also puts DAMP in dialogue with collaborations from the Asia<br />
Pacific region, one of the threads running through this year’s exhibition.<br />
The interior of the original work proved a popular hideaway for<br />
children at the exhibition opening in 2007, which has prompted DAMP<br />
to extend the new version to include a ‘rec room’ or cubbyhouse inside.<br />
Cubbies exist in collective memory or imagination as autonomous<br />
sites away from adults. DAMP secretes its cubby inside a plinth inside a<br />
gallery — right under the paternal nose of art — and invites the audience<br />
into this space, into the zone between art and everything else. Here,<br />
visitors encounter paraphernalia from the DAMP studio, an old couch<br />
78 79
Solomon Enos<br />
Polyfantastica<br />
At a time when many indigenous traditions are being both regenerated<br />
and lost, Hawaiian artist Solomon Enos is passionately committed<br />
to reinstating his culture’s rich and vibrant traditions of storytelling.<br />
Enos’s graphic novel Polyfantastica imagines 40 millennia of voyage<br />
and evolution in pursuit of peace and harmony. 1 The tale is framed in<br />
a globalised and ultimately virtual world where solutions and salvation<br />
are proffered for a humanity wracked by war, disease and ecological<br />
devastation. It is of its time, aiming to reach a generation raised on<br />
multiple media: Western comic strips and super heroes; Japanese<br />
manga and animation; science fiction and fantasy books; online gaming<br />
and war play; and, increasingly, the extended form of the graphic novel.<br />
Polyfantastica plays out through four epic 10 000-year periods known<br />
as Kuu, Lono, Kanaloa and Kaane, names which also denote Hawaiian<br />
gods. It is, in large part, Aquarian in its scope — oceanic environments<br />
are both battleground and healing sanctuary. Water, in particular fresh<br />
water, appears to be the ultimate sacred grail in the quest, as it brings<br />
life to universes and galaxies far beyond earth.<br />
Enos’s graphic style is lively and draws on many sources. He cites<br />
fantasy and science fiction writers Robert E Howard, JRR Tolkien,<br />
<strong>Art</strong>hur C Clarke and Frank Herbert as models for his visionary hybrid<br />
bestiary, fused with manga and indigenous Polynesian oral traditions.<br />
Equally, however, there are echoes of gladiatorial warriors, Doctor<br />
Who’s repertoire of aliens and mutants, and the ethereal spectres of<br />
William Blake’s illustrated poems. Such mythic narratives, of course,<br />
have been told and re-told, in many forms and in many cultures, for<br />
thousands of years. Some have been inscribed in epic sagas, while<br />
others remain as a residue in various indigenous traditions — like an<br />
echo or a whisper that only the initiated would recognise. In many<br />
cultural traditions, origin myths anthropomorphise the immense<br />
energies and mysteries of the earth and the universe into gods and<br />
beings of superhuman and divine powers. In the Western tradition,<br />
certain aspects of ancient pagan and classical myths of origin — albeit<br />
modified — found their way into Judeo–Christian beliefs. Other great,<br />
mythopoeic narratives of heroism or of voyages of conquest, and tales<br />
of lust, betrayal, love, transformation and redemption, have continued<br />
to be relevant today. When the extremes and vulnerabilities of human<br />
behaviour remain tragic, treacherous or heroic, the tales of Ovid and<br />
Aeschylus still sustain repeated interpretation and adaption to stage,<br />
screen, song and story.<br />
crustacean warrior god; Lono, the god of peace and agriculture of<br />
Amazonian proportions; Kanaloa, the armoured oceanic voyager; and<br />
Kaane, a futuristic fugitive and illusory being, adorned in what appear<br />
to be shards of glass or crystal.<br />
Environmental destruction wrought by warring tribes is at the heart of<br />
the story. Compared to the apocalyptic threat of nuclear annihilation,<br />
which preoccupied both science fiction and real-life narratives of<br />
the 1980s, global ecological catastrophe now appears to be a real<br />
and present danger. In recent decades alone, events with disastrous<br />
consequences — such as the gas leak at the Union Carbide-operated<br />
pesticide plant in the Indian city of Bhopal (1984), the nuclear reactor<br />
accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine (1986), and the devastating toxic<br />
spill from the oil tanker Exxon Valdez off the coast of Alaska (1989) —<br />
punctuate a history of cumulative, permanent and often unreported<br />
environmental damage. According to Enos:<br />
Polyfantastica is many things, it is largely driven by a desire to shift<br />
our current critically unsustainable and horribly violent state of<br />
co-existence on earth by diverting mainstream media away from the<br />
crippling societal icons of fear, greed, inadequacy and insecurity<br />
. . . Wasn’t there something that we were working on before we got<br />
distracted by organised religion and war and plastic? 2<br />
Solomon Enos’s Polyfantastica is motivated by hope and faith in the<br />
power of regeneration. His culture and traditions tell of a time when<br />
‘There is no conflict here, not anymore. No warfare. No pestilence or<br />
starvation. Yet, each adult intimately knows them all — through a drop<br />
of water. Through memory’. 3<br />
David Burnett<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Enos’s serial comic was published weekly in the ‘Island Life’ section of The<br />
Honolulu Advertiser, Hawaii’s largest daily newspaper, between November 2006<br />
and October 2007.<br />
2 Excerpt from ‘Overview’, in correspondence to Maud Page, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
2 December 2008.<br />
3 Excerpt from narrative text to accompany images, in correspondence to Maud Page.<br />
Solomon Enos’s storyboards, painted in gouache and washes of<br />
watercolour, are rich with detail. Their development manifests in<br />
graphite smudges, underdrawing and marginal annotations. Fantastic<br />
ships, vessels and weapons are itemised and named. His cast of<br />
characters and villains is established at the outset, like the genealogy<br />
of a nineteenth-century Russian novel, but with the appearance<br />
of spectacular ‘transformers’ and shape-shifters: there is Kuu, the<br />
Solomon Enos<br />
Hawai’i, United States b.1976<br />
Kuu era: Polyfantastica the beginning (detail) 2006<br />
Gouache and synthetic polymer paint on paper /<br />
53 sheets: 38 x 29cm (each) / Image courtesy: Solomon<br />
Enos and Meredith Desha Enos, Polyfantastica<br />
80 81
Solomon Enos<br />
Kuu era: Polyfantastica the beginning (details) 2006<br />
Gouache and synthetic polymer paint on paper /<br />
53 sheets: 38 x 29cm (each) / Images courtesy: Solomon<br />
Enos and Meredith Desha Enos, Polyfantastica<br />
82 83
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian<br />
Lightning for Neda<br />
Over a career spanning decades, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian has<br />
created an art imbued with the aesthetics of her Iranian culture. Inspired<br />
by its architecture and the traditions of Islamic geometry and pattern,<br />
and using media such as reverse-glass painting, mirror mosaic and relief<br />
sculpture, Farmanfarmaian has revived and adapted these forms to<br />
make original, compelling works. Clearly motivated to be an artist from<br />
her teens, she enrolled in Tehran University’s Fine <strong>Art</strong>s College in the<br />
early 1940s and then, at the age of 22, ventured to New York to study<br />
fashion illustration at Parsons School of Design. Following graduation,<br />
she pursued a career as a successful graphic and fashion designer and,<br />
during her 12 years in New York (1945–57), Farmanfarmaian became<br />
familiar with the city’s art scene — she met abstract expressionist Jackson<br />
Pollock and his wife Lee Krasner, and a young Andy Warhol. In 1957, she<br />
returned to Iran to develop her artistic career.<br />
In Tehran, Farmanfarmaian also directed her prodigious energy<br />
towards collecting. Assembled throughout the 1960s and 1970s, her<br />
collection reflected both her unconventional interests and informed<br />
and consolidated her aesthetic concerns. To this end, she gathered a<br />
group of highly coloured images prevalent in Tehran’s coffee houses 1<br />
and a significant group of tribal and antique reverse-glass paintings, as<br />
well as Turkoman tribal textiles and silver jewellery. 2 She also collected<br />
architectural fragments, such as doors, windows and wall panels. These<br />
latter pieces were salvaged from historic buildings (domestic as well<br />
as public) that were being demolished in her hometown of Qazvin,<br />
and in other cities in Iran, as part of the process of modernisation.<br />
Much of this was done to recover material culture that was rapidly<br />
disappearing, with the aim of gifting to Iranian state art collections.<br />
Immersing herself in this material and developing her own artistic<br />
language became interdependent activities for Farmanfarmaian,<br />
maturing into a unique practice.<br />
The characteristic mirror mosaic of Farmanfarmaian’s work is an<br />
Iranian decorative technique known as aineh-kari. As curator Rose<br />
Issa has explained:<br />
to structure and develop complex architectural ornamentation. Arab<br />
mathematicians of the ninth century added considerably to Greek and<br />
Indian scholarship, and Muslim craftspeople have long relied on this<br />
knowledge to produce the myriad patterns embellishing the facades<br />
and walls of buildings. In this work, the six sides of the hexagon<br />
provide an underlying structure, and are expanded and elaborated on<br />
as a repeated motif.<br />
The mystical and symbolic connotations assigned to numbers in<br />
Islamic culture are based on the profound symmetry that the grammar<br />
of mathematics offers, a great inspiration for Islamic scholars. In this<br />
way the point of origin is the dot; it also signifies the primordial, the<br />
one, the permanent, the eternal. The line connecting two dots is<br />
understood as a symbol of the polarity of existence, the first move<br />
or direction, and therefore the intellect. From here, the plethora of<br />
geometric shapes expands to include the circle, the triangle (the<br />
isosceles and the equilateral each offering different possibilities),<br />
and so on. The hexagon represents the six directions of motion (up,<br />
down, forwards, backwards, right, left), and the six virtues: generosity,<br />
self-discipline, patience, determination, insight and compassion. In<br />
each of the six panels constituting Lightning for Neda, Farmanfarmaian<br />
uses over 4000 mirror shards to activate a myriad of patterns across a<br />
glittering and sublime surface.<br />
Neda means ‘voice’ in Farsi and, in this work, the compelling voice of<br />
an octogenarian Iranian artist acknowledges the turmoil facing her<br />
country. Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian has herself experienced<br />
the trauma of exile, leaving Tehran in the wake of the 1979 Iranian<br />
Revolution, and returning in 2003 to rebuild her life there. Although all<br />
her works and collections were confiscated in 1979, her strength as an<br />
artist could not be curbed. Thus, in the splendour of Farmanfarmaian’s<br />
vision, the majestic spirit of affirmation also lives.<br />
Suhanya Raffel<br />
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian<br />
Iran b.1924<br />
Lightning for Neda (detail) 2009<br />
Mirror mosaic, reverse glass painting, plaster on wood /<br />
6 panels: 300 x 200cm (each) / Commissioned for APT6<br />
and the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Collection. The artist<br />
dedicates this work to the loving memory of her late<br />
husband Dr Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
The technique dates back to the 16th century, when mirrors were<br />
imported from Venice and Bohemia to Iran and arrived broken.<br />
The new owners had to find imaginative ways of recycling these<br />
shards of glass, and would set the pieces in stucco to create<br />
decorative panels with attractive multiple reflections. As well as Sufi<br />
symbolism of reflecting the self, mirror has since been associated<br />
with purity, brightness, symmetry, veracity and fortune. 3<br />
In Lightning for Neda 2009, Farmanfarmaian has constructed her most<br />
ambitious work to date. Commissioned for the <strong>Gallery</strong>’s Collection and<br />
premiering in APT6, its six panels of intricate mirror mosaic explore<br />
the geometric possibilities afforded by the hexagon. Essentially<br />
abstract, Lightning for Neda draws on the Islamic use of geometry<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Coffee houses in Tehran are traditionally male-only establishments. Their walls are<br />
generally hung with stylised, highly coloured paintings of religious and national<br />
heroes. These works are identified as being made at the cusp of the Constitutional<br />
Revolution (1906–11).<br />
2 The Turkoman are a formerly nomadic tribal people from the region encompassing<br />
Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, northern Iraq and north-eastern Iran.<br />
3 Rose Issa, Mosaics of Mirrors: Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Nazar Research<br />
and Cultural Institute, Tehran, 2006, pp.14–15.<br />
84 85
Subodh Gupta<br />
Cold war kitchen<br />
New York’s World Trade Center — billowing smoke and flames and in<br />
various stages of terrifying and devastating collapse — on September 11<br />
2001 is a defining image of this decade. Up to and during the twin<br />
towers’ construction, between 1970 and 1977, a similarly defining<br />
image of the twentieth century — the ‘mushroom cloud’ — was circulated,<br />
reproduced and repeated so many times it became commonplace, even<br />
clichéd. Associated with atomic explosions and, specifically, the bombs<br />
detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the mushroomshaped<br />
cloud was instantly recognisable and largely symbolic. In 1991,<br />
American literary critic Peggy Rosenthal defined the power of this image:<br />
. . . a quarter century after the nuclear mushroom cloud has been<br />
seen in real life, it remains the unchallenged symbol of the nuclear<br />
age because its name, shape and size carry all the meanings we<br />
need for it to bear’. 1<br />
Today, the cloud’s dissociation from history is complete. Available<br />
in thousands of permutations as ‘stock’ imagery on various websites<br />
and image banks, it has been, to a large extent, neutralised. It will<br />
be some time before the imagery of the Twin Towers gains such<br />
mainstream currency.<br />
Gallerist Peter Nagy has said of Subodh Gupta that he is ‘very good at<br />
selecting icons and symbols’. 2 Gupta’s five-metre-high Line of Control (1)<br />
2008 adopts the image of the nuclear cloud as a potent vehicle for<br />
investigating the geopolitics specific to his region. The disputed<br />
Kashmir border region between Pakistan and India (a border known<br />
in military parlance as the Line of Control) is a focus for the renewed<br />
fear of nuclear conflict. In 1998, India detonated three nuclear devices,<br />
emphatically declaring its status as a nuclear weapons state, followed<br />
weeks later by similar tests in Pakistan.<br />
of his Indian home state of Bihar, but also project a compendium of<br />
ideas with a global reach. His quirky and often anecdotal takes on<br />
the cultural, social and political influences of global economies and<br />
technologies on the Indian subcontinent find expression through<br />
painting, video, performance and sculpture.<br />
Gupta’s work Bullet 2006–07 also reinvests a familiar, and considerably<br />
less menacing, image with a residue of cultural meaning and memory.<br />
The 350cc Royal Enfield ‘Bullet’ motorcycle was selected by the Indian<br />
government in 1955 as the vehicle of choice to patrol its national<br />
borders. Hundreds were purchased from British engineering firm the<br />
Enfield Cycle Company (founded in 1893), which also manufactured<br />
armaments for the Royal Small Arms Factory. The brand name ‘Royal<br />
Enfield’ emerged with the motto ‘made like a gun’. Enfield India was<br />
established in 1955 to assemble the bikes with British components in<br />
Madras (now Chennai), and by the early 1960s both the manufacture<br />
and assembly of components was completed in India. Enfield India<br />
purchased the rights to the brand Royal Enfield in 1995, and the Bullet<br />
continues to be produced there, making it the oldest motorcycle<br />
company and the longest running production model in India. Gupta’s<br />
Bullet is cast in brass with a cargo of beaten metal milk cans lashed to<br />
a pannier frame adapted for carrying them. Royal Enfield motorcycles<br />
played significant military roles in both World War One and Two, but<br />
here the Bullet is rendered bovine in its capacity as a carrier.<br />
The end of the first decade of the twenty-first century is on the horizon,<br />
providing an occasion to review, reminisce and look forward. At such<br />
times, amid a fathomless ocean of media, certain images rise to the<br />
surface, fixing particular events and moments indelibly in our minds.<br />
The power of such images may reside in the inimitability of the events<br />
they represent.<br />
Line of Control (1) is constructed from brass and copper vessels, pots,<br />
pans, candle holders, decorative details, urns, trays and goblets —<br />
patinated with use and time. Dented, bent, crushed and corroded,<br />
they form an oddly ‘historic’ armature for such a loaded image. While<br />
the work is predominantly a sculptural form, the mushroom cloud also<br />
exists essentially as image: Gupta reinvests this familiar symbol with a<br />
quotient of contemporary tension and gravity. The use of pots, pans<br />
and vessels as the essential units in Line of Control (1) compresses<br />
history, tradition and change, forming an intimate dimension of<br />
domestic religious and cultural practice, one which is played out in<br />
millions of Indian kitchens on a daily basis. While these domestic wares<br />
add a vein of cultural meaning to the image, they are also analogous<br />
to the essential atomic units that make up both the cloud and the<br />
diabolical energy of nuclear fission.<br />
In recent years, Subodh Gupta has gained international attention<br />
for works that have their genesis in the local traditions and materials<br />
David Burnett<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Peggy Rosenthal, ‘The nuclear mushroom cloud as cultural image’, American<br />
Literary History, vol.3, Spring 1991, p.88.<br />
2 Peter Nagy, quoted in Christopher Mooney, ‘Subodh Gupta: The idol thief’,<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Review, no.17, December 2007, p.54.<br />
Subodh Gupta<br />
India b.1964<br />
Line of Control (1) 2008<br />
Stainless steel and steel structure, brass and copper<br />
utensils / 500 x 500 x 500cm / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and Arario <strong>Gallery</strong>, Beijing<br />
86 87
Gonkar Gyatso<br />
Trouble in paradise<br />
Gonkar Gyatso<br />
Tibet/United Kingdom b.1961<br />
Angel 2007<br />
Stickers and pencil on treated paper / 152.5 x 122cm /<br />
The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Collection of Contemporary<br />
Asian <strong>Art</strong>. Purchased 2008 with funds from Michael Simcha<br />
Baevski through the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
In 2009, Tibetan artist Gonkar Gyatso has made two related large-scale<br />
works. The first, Reclining Buddha – Beijing Tibet relationship index,<br />
commissioned for the 53rd Venice Biennale, runs to six metres in<br />
length, while the second, Reclining Buddha – Shanghai to Lhasa Express,<br />
measures nine metres, and has its first showing at APT6. Both works<br />
feature the reclining Buddha as their primary subject — the Buddha in<br />
parinirvana, or the state of ultimate bliss, released from the cycles of<br />
reincarnation and no longer attached to the temporal world.<br />
The elongated structure of these works references the traditional<br />
Tibetan book, usually a continuous sheet of paper folded in<br />
concertina style; and the Chinese hand scroll, which is rolled at either<br />
end and viewed only in sections. The two works mark a substantial<br />
development in Gyatso’s art, bringing together in more ambitious<br />
forms a number of his signature motifs, including the Buddha figure,<br />
various scripts, traditional Tibetan thangka iconography, commercial<br />
logos, newspaper clippings, and images taken directly from popular<br />
culture. These are drawn from sources as diverse as children’s stickers;<br />
the lyrics from European and American pop songs; cartoon characters,<br />
such as Pokémon and Spiderman; and the ubiquitous panda. While<br />
these works are driven by Gyatso’s analytical interest in Buddhism’s<br />
conspicuous rise in global popularity, the volatile relations between<br />
China and Tibet also underscore his practice.<br />
In Reclining Buddha – Shanghai to Lhasa Express, the surface of the<br />
figure is collaged intensively with layers of stickers, fragments of<br />
newspaper clippings, magazine advertisements, product labels and<br />
promotional logos. This resting Buddha appears encrusted by a<br />
great wave of commercial accumulation. If this work metaphorically<br />
traces the long railway track from Shanghai to Lhasa, and we read the<br />
reclining figure as embodying the extent of this territory, then we can<br />
imagine that it is through the feet in Shanghai that this colourful deluge<br />
swells to fill the sleeping form. As critic Elaine W Ng has explained:<br />
The Qinghai-Tibet Railway was first proposed by Mao Zedong<br />
when China established the Tibetan Autonomous Region in 1951.<br />
The dream of connecting the once-secluded Buddhist capital<br />
of Lhasa with the political capital of China was finally realised in<br />
2006. Stretching over 1140 kilometres (710 miles) of land, much<br />
of it unstable permafrost, and rising up to 5072 metres above sea<br />
level, the rail line . . . promises to bring more opportunity to an<br />
economically-challenged region as well as exert greater control<br />
over a much disputed territory. 1<br />
Access, opportunity, proximity, progress, change, exchange, loss,<br />
conflict and flux — these are some of the words that describe the<br />
condition of contemporary life, which apply equally to those living<br />
in Lhasa or London, both being home for Gyatso. Having received<br />
his formal art training in China, India and the United Kingdom, this<br />
mobility has deeply informed his views on the histories of China<br />
and Tibet, ensuring an opinion that is far from dogmatic. 2 According<br />
to Ng again: ‘He is sympathetic to both the Chinese and Tibetans<br />
living in Tibet, but circumspect of the exoticised vision of Tibet being<br />
a spiritual Shangri-la’. 3<br />
Although its political content is unquestionable, the structure of<br />
Gonkar’s work juxtaposes humorous kitsch and social elements,<br />
forcing uncomfortable contradictions. For example, in Angel 2007, the<br />
outlined figure is of a Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara (the Bodhisattva of<br />
compassion) while clearly also echoing the unsettling image of an Iraqi<br />
prisoner tortured by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib. 4 Similarly, the seven<br />
graceful standing Buddhas in Spring 2008 2009, finely drawn in pencil<br />
on a background of gridded script, all sport horned heads like the<br />
popular image of the devil. This later work is a response to the violent<br />
confrontations between Tibetan and Han Chinese in Lhasa during<br />
demonstrations in the spring of 2008.<br />
Observing paradox, and acknowledging its place as intrinsic to human<br />
character, Gonkar Gyatso’s images are imbued with a sensibility that<br />
amalgamates the darkly beautiful, the kitsch, the sombre and the playful.<br />
Suhanya Raffel<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Elaine W Ng, ‘Gonkar Gyatso – Reclining Buddha’, Rossi & Rossi Ltd, , viewed 5 October 2009. Although Ng refers to<br />
Beijing in this article, the reference should be to Shanghai.<br />
2 Gyatso grew up in Lhasa and studied at the Central Institute of Nationalities in Beijing<br />
before spending time in Dharamsala in north India, where many Tibetans reside,<br />
including the exiled Dalai Lama. Here, he leaned about Tibetan art and culture,<br />
including the technique of thangka painting. He moved to London in 1996 and<br />
completed a Masters in Fine <strong>Art</strong> at the Chelsea College of <strong>Art</strong> and Design in 2000.<br />
3 Ng, ‘Gonkar Gyatso – Reclining Buddha’.<br />
4 Abu Ghraib was the chief prison in Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s regime, and<br />
became notorious as the site of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American military<br />
personnel after its takeover by US forces in 2003. First reported in 2004, these now<br />
infamous acts of physical and psychological torture were committed by members<br />
of the 372nd Military Police Company, with photographs taken by the perpetrators<br />
and subsequently circulated by the media.<br />
88 89
Kyungah Ham<br />
Communication beyond the unreachable place<br />
The work of Kyungah Ham reflects on the way images structure our<br />
understandings of cultural politics, militarised conflict and social activism.<br />
Employing imagery from past and present-day exemplars found on the<br />
internet — and using traditional artisanal techniques for their reproduction<br />
— Ham’s work foregrounds the way these images are circulated and<br />
interpreted within popular culture and online communication. Inspired<br />
by the use of the propaganda poster bill for disseminating dissident<br />
views, Ham’s work explores the significance of past atrocities for<br />
contemporary audiences and asks: how can an individual’s actions<br />
have agency within the context of international politics?<br />
In her 2008 solo exhibition ‘Such Game’, 1 Ham presented her first<br />
series of textile works produced in North Korea (DPRK). Collecting<br />
images sourced through the online search engine Google, Ham<br />
covertly sent composite imagery and photomontages to female<br />
artisans in the DPRK (via China) to be hand-embroidered using<br />
traditional techniques and materials. The project began as a means of<br />
opening up communication with North Koreans about local anxieties<br />
and foreign politics that influence everyday lives on both sides of the<br />
Korean border. In undertaking this charged exchange, Ham sought<br />
to enact a dialogue across the barriers of ideology and physical<br />
distance. Owing to the political sensitivities of the works, many of<br />
the embroideries have been confiscated by DPRK officials; in some<br />
instances, the textiles are sent back to Ham by the artisans in pieces,<br />
to be reconfigured on their receipt in South Korea.<br />
In the diptych Nagasaki Mushroom Cloud, Hiroshima Mushroom Cloud<br />
2008, Ham reproduces two of the most recognisable images of modern<br />
warfare: the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the<br />
United States. These aerial views depict the nuclear mushroom clouds<br />
in stark black and white, devoid of flaming colour; concealed beneath<br />
is the destruction, devastation and unseen effects of radiation. As<br />
images of the world’s only wartime nuclear attacks, the photographs<br />
continue to conjure anxieties over nuclear proliferation in a post-Cold<br />
War era. For Korean audiences, their reception is further complicated<br />
by the shaping of these events in mainstream Korean history. While<br />
large numbers of Koreans interned in Hiroshima and Nagasaki labour<br />
camps were casualties of the bombings, acknowledgment of their<br />
experiences is shadowed by Korea’s liberation and independence<br />
from the prewar Japanese empire.<br />
mimics military strategy and imagery. On the surface, the burning<br />
skyline of New York on September 11 2001 is relocated to the<br />
jungles of Vietnam. Below, a labyrinth, connected by staircases and<br />
passageways, reveals fragmented images and signifiers — piles of<br />
skulls are a stark reminder of massacres carried out in Cambodia by<br />
the Khmer Rouge regime; the back of an anonymous man recalls the<br />
‘Tank Man’ of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing; and, in<br />
a more abstract illustration, Wandjina figures painted by Aboriginal<br />
people from the Kimberley region of Western Australia evoke the<br />
trauma of colonisation. 3 These diverse images were selected by the<br />
artist as enduring symbols of conflict and resistance that the North<br />
Korean artisans would need to consider while transforming the source<br />
images into embroideries.<br />
Ham’s embroideries offer a strange and compelling mixture of<br />
propaganda, personal memory and social agency. Given the labourintensive<br />
process of hand embroidery, Ham’s project might be<br />
interpreted as utilising the participatory process of labour as a form of<br />
political enactment and transformation. For Kyungah Ham, the contrast<br />
between her ability to spontaneously access information online and<br />
the limited access her collaborative artisans have prompts a desire<br />
to ultimately, as she puts it, attempt ‘communication beyond the<br />
unreachable place’. 4<br />
Jose Da Silva<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 ‘Such Game’ was held at SSamzie Space in Seoul in 2008. In addition to the textile<br />
works, the exhibition included a series of white porcelain sculptures of Kalashnikov<br />
rifles and related weaponry, which were decorated with traditional landscape<br />
paintings and the pattern of a Persian carpet traced with the oil residue of Iraqi<br />
military supplies.<br />
2 Kyungah Ham, email to the author, 10 August 2009.<br />
3 Wandjina is the Aboriginal name for ancestral spirits who control the seasons and<br />
rain patterns. The painting of Wandjina figures forms part of important ceremonial<br />
practices at sacred sites for the people of the West Kimberley region. The<br />
appropriation of these figures, by those not permitted to paint or reproduce<br />
these images, is the subject of continued debate.<br />
4 Ham, email to the author.<br />
In Some Diorama 2008, Ham interweaves representations of war,<br />
colonialism and trauma — what she terms images ‘representing hidden<br />
terrorism, a hidden political brutality’ 2 — into a network resembling a<br />
platform video game. Based on a miniature diorama of the Vietnam–<br />
US War (1959–75) — illustrating key events within a complex of secret<br />
caves and tunnels used by the North Vietnamese — Some Diorama<br />
explores the way these particular images register with a media-literate<br />
public, as well as their influence on video game culture, which often<br />
Kyungah Ham<br />
South Korea b.1966<br />
Nagasaki Mushroom Cloud, Hiroshima Mushroom Cloud<br />
2008<br />
Hand embroidery on silk / Diptych: (a) 120 x 150cm;<br />
(b) 120 x 150cm / Sigg Collection, Switzerland / Image<br />
courtesy: The artist and Kukje <strong>Gallery</strong>, Seoul<br />
90 91
Ho Tzu Nyen<br />
Of the way of the creator<br />
Friedrich Nietzsche’s best known work, Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein<br />
Buch für Alle und Keine (Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone<br />
and No One) (1883–85), is a stirring metaphorical treatise on many of<br />
the German philosopher’s key ideas. These include the potential of<br />
humanity to transcend its circumstances, embodied in the figure of the<br />
übermensch, or overman; and a rejection of the metaphysical world,<br />
summarised in the famous phrase ‘God is dead’. Written in a neo-Biblical<br />
style (paradoxical given Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity), the book<br />
features as its central character the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra,<br />
who descends from a mountain to teach his ideas of the overman to a<br />
modern world without God, its people lost in a nihilistic wasteland. 1<br />
Ho Tzu Nyen’s Zarathustra: A Film for Everyone and No One 2009 is<br />
a condensed representation of Nietzsche’s narrative, presented as<br />
a starkly staged video and sound piece. Produced in collaboration<br />
with students from the film, fine arts, music, acting and musical<br />
theatre departments at Singapore’s LASALLE College of the <strong>Art</strong>s, the<br />
work weaves the pedagogical impulse of Nietzsche’s text — in which<br />
Zarathustra brings his knowledge to the masses, and then leaves<br />
them to find their own way — into its method of production. With his<br />
philosophy of overcoming the self and building the new, Nietzsche<br />
foregrounds creativity and, by making the film within an art school, Ho’s<br />
work reflects on the creative act and the process of becoming an artist.<br />
As with many of Ho’s previous works — such as the painting and video<br />
installation Utama: Every Name in History is I 2003, the video work<br />
The Bohemian Rhapsody Project 2006 and the theatre production The<br />
King Lear Project 2008 — Zarathustra reworks existing cultural icons.<br />
The soundtrack for Zarathustra features another work inspired by<br />
Nietzsche’s book, Richard Strauss’s 1896 tone poem of the same name,<br />
which has one of most famous opening sequences in music — in part<br />
due to its use in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2<br />
In his ambitious adaptations of historical works, Ho also pulls apart<br />
the medium he is using, be it painting, film, video or theatre. Drawing<br />
attention to constituent elements such as sound, image, editing and<br />
staging, he lays bare conventions and processes, as well as making<br />
connections to other histories and art forms.<br />
the mechanics of the video’s production in full view. The narrative of<br />
Nietzsche’s book may be unfamiliar to some, but Strauss’s music is<br />
immediately recognisable, most likely associated with Kubrick’s aligning<br />
planets. In a sense, Ho’s work returns it to its original inspiration — the<br />
rising of the sun, and the descent of Zarathustra from the mountain.<br />
Complex and self-reflexive, Ho Tzu Nyen’s works are driven by a<br />
palpable passion for his material and a strong sense of humour. While<br />
iconic, many of his source texts are somewhat flawed: unfinished,<br />
overreaching, or incomprehensible. Nietzsche’s book is all three —<br />
Harold Bloom refers to it as a ‘gorgeous disaster’ 4 — and its excesses<br />
reflect the philosopher’s fragile constitution and intensity of feeling.<br />
As translator RJ Hollingdale wrote:<br />
. . . unlike most people, even most philosophers, Nietzsche lived<br />
with his intellectual problems as with realities, he experienced a<br />
similar emotional commitment to them as other men experience<br />
to their wife and children. 5<br />
Ideas, after all, are what make us human, and creativity propels us<br />
forward — but no-one said it was going to be easy.<br />
Russell Storer<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Zarathustra (or Zoroaster) was a Persian prophet and poet living around 1200–1500<br />
BCE. Following a divine vision, he rejected the polytheistic religion of his people<br />
and preached belief in one creator God, founding Zoroastrianism, one of the<br />
world’s earliest monotheistic faiths. Its followers today are largely in India (known<br />
as Parsis) and Iran.<br />
2 Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, Harper Perennial,<br />
London, 2009, p.7.<br />
3 See Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, Oxford University<br />
Press, New York, 1973.<br />
4 Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, Macmillan,<br />
London, 1995, p.210.<br />
5 RJ Hollingdale, ‘Introduction’, in Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A<br />
Book for Everyone and No One, trans. RJ Hollingdale, Penguin Classics, London,<br />
2003, p.11.<br />
Ho Tzu Nyen<br />
Singapore b.1976<br />
Zarathustra: A Film for Everyone and No One<br />
(production stills) 2009<br />
High-definition digital video, single channel, colour,<br />
sound, 24:30 minutes, ed. of 3 / Commissioned for APT6 /<br />
Supported by Osage <strong>Gallery</strong>, The Puttnam School of<br />
Film and the Institute of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>s Singapore,<br />
LASALLE College of the <strong>Art</strong>s. An initiative of the National<br />
<strong>Art</strong>s Council’s <strong>Art</strong>s Creation Fund. / Images courtesy:<br />
The artist and Tzulogical Films / Photographs: Olivia Kwok<br />
An ongoing interest of Ho’s, influenced by the literary critic Harold<br />
Bloom, is the idea of ‘misprision’, in which young artists find their<br />
voice by creatively misreading the works of past masters, which in<br />
turn are re-read in the light of the new. 3 His use of well-known sources<br />
also draws on the audience’s existing images of them, who inevitably<br />
bring these to bear on their viewing of his works. He calls this process<br />
‘mental karaoke’, and as his deconstructed projects unfold, they move<br />
between familiarity, which assumes coherence and understanding,<br />
and a more destabilising fragmentation. Ho’s version of ‘Bohemian<br />
Rhapsody’, for example, uses the lyrics of the British rock band Queen’s<br />
song to construct a courtroom drama, with alternating lead actors and<br />
92 93
Emre Hüner<br />
Panoptikon<br />
The disjointed narrative of Emre Hüner’s Panoptikon 2005 is inspired by<br />
the visual structure of the falname, an Ottoman literary genre which first<br />
appeared in thirteenth-century Turkey. Falname were specially produced<br />
and illustrated publications based on the sacred text of Islam, the Qur’an,<br />
and were used for divinations and soothsaying by opening the book at<br />
any page and ascribing meaning to what lay open. Like an encounter<br />
with a random page, Panoptikon’s jewel-like video animations are<br />
constructed from a personal archive of images that Hüner has built from<br />
disparate sources. With its representations of humans, animals and plants<br />
juxtaposed with tools, weaponry and machines, and set in amalgams of<br />
scenes resembling Turkish miniatures bridging the ancient and modern,<br />
the work allows us to observe hidden, forgotten and imagined histories.<br />
Hüner’s title alludes to the eighteenth-century panopticon, or ‘all-seeing’<br />
prison structure, designed by the social reformer Jeremy Bentham,<br />
and later made infamous by philosopher Michel Foucault, who saw this<br />
architectural model as a metaphor for broader ‘mechanisms of power’. 1<br />
Bentham’s intention was to provide visual access to all prison cells from<br />
a central observation tower. The possibility that the inmates might be<br />
watched at any time, without knowing when, was meant to encourage<br />
self-policing, a principle that Foucault argued could apply to any<br />
disciplinary system, such as hospitals, factories and schools.<br />
To inhabit this metaphor, the verticality of our bodies might be viewed<br />
as the central observation tower of Bentham’s prison. Our perceptions<br />
make us, at least to a certain extent, the centre of our own universe.<br />
In Foucault’s writing on the panopticon, the individual prison cells<br />
all facing the surveillance tower were ‘like so many cages, so many<br />
theatres, in which the actor is alone, perfectly individualized and<br />
constantly visible’. 2 In Hüner’s Panoptikon, the video animation also<br />
becomes a window into an otherworldly realm, which we can observe<br />
without being seen. By extension, we are invited to consider our world<br />
as characterised by systems of surveillance and discipline.<br />
Panoptikon’s sequences are like theatrically staged fables that<br />
combine markers of extraordinary histories, as if an illustrated<br />
manuscript of arcane knowledge had come to life. Mining the visual<br />
language of Ottoman and Persian miniatures, as well as Chinese<br />
and northern European painting, Panoptikon refigures events of<br />
migration, trade, conquest, intellectual exchange, scientific discovery,<br />
violence, philosophy, religion, political change, and art and culture.<br />
While it might be appealing to interpret this work with reference to<br />
contemporary Istanbul, which retains visible layers of these histories,<br />
the work takes place in an unmoored speculative zone. Hüner’s<br />
hand-drawn, digitised construction is faceted with traces, figments<br />
and passings of the power of an empire — an approach to art that<br />
seems logical when urban streets are proof that parallel histories<br />
exist simultaneously. Chronometers tick through a liquid soundtrack,<br />
keeping score of time.<br />
Hüner’s interest in the psychical effects of contemporary life, steeped<br />
in technology, is filtered through aesthetic, literary and philosophical<br />
approaches. This work adopts the distinctive perspective of classical<br />
Ottoman composition, in which mythologies, past narratives and future<br />
speculations are contained within a single frame. He also mines the<br />
illusionism of Western perspective, layering components from his<br />
detailed tempera drawings on paper, some of which are reproduced<br />
in his artist book Bent 003 2007. In Panoptikon, elements of this<br />
idiosyncratic encyclopedia are combined and animated.<br />
The thirteenth-century Arabic encyclopedia Acaib’ül Mahlukat (The<br />
Wonders of Creation) by Zakariyya al-Kazvini is a key reference for Hüner.<br />
Translated into Turkish by the fourteenth century and widely distributed,<br />
it contained cosmology, zoology and botany, along with rich illustrations<br />
of fantastical creatures. Hüner’s drawings of fecund flora — where the<br />
squirting nectar of tulips fertilises the growth of strange organic forms<br />
— reclaim architectural expanses decorated with Iznik tile, while chuffing<br />
machines appear anachronistic, abandoned and functionless.<br />
In another sequence, mysterious instruments or weapons lie scattered<br />
on the ground as if cut from a vanitas painting. The tools of science,<br />
medicine and alchemy are combined with the possibility of past<br />
torture, the violence now dumb, a missed event. Masked and cloaked<br />
figures tinker. Human bodies are shown in states of dissection, their<br />
musculature, circulatory system and organs detailed in rich and<br />
saturated colour. Elsewhere, the two coastal promontories of Pieter<br />
Breughel’s Landscape with the fall of Icarus c.1558 is appropriated and<br />
transformed into the site of a violent and extravagant battle. And in<br />
the background of these dreamlike scenes, which are always enclosed<br />
by a cage or a room, groups of figures look on, their understanding<br />
limited to their own particular view.<br />
Naomi Evans<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Michel Foucault, originally published in Surveiller et Punir, 1975; Discipline and<br />
Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, Pantheon, New York, 1977.<br />
2 Michel Foucault, ‘Panopticism’, in David M Kaplan, Readings in the Philosophy of<br />
Technology, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, Maryland, 2004, p.359.<br />
Emre Hüner<br />
Turkey b.1977<br />
Panoptikon (stills) 2005<br />
Digital hand-drawn animation, single channel,<br />
continuous loop, colour, sound, 11:18 minutes, ed. of 5 /<br />
Images courtesy: The artist and Rodeo, Istanbul<br />
94 95
Raafat Ishak<br />
Pathways in paint<br />
Raafat Ishak’s works are subtle, contemplative and alive with ideas.<br />
His paintings often carry echoes of the arbitrary relationships that exist<br />
between sign and meaning and, using a visual language both formal<br />
and understated, he roams freely among art historical antecedents,<br />
across centuries, and within his own locality for inspiration.<br />
For APT6, Ishak has created a series of 20 paintings that plays with<br />
the evocative potential of form. Within each work he simultaneously<br />
combines and deconstructs elements from the expansive, and at times<br />
contradictory, archive of imagery he has amassed over time. This<br />
cornucopia of references ranges from logos, symbols and flags to<br />
biographical details and Arabic text, architecture and art historical<br />
motifs. He pushes and pulls at each source, re-imagining their<br />
constituent elements in a series of painterly lines, abstracting them to<br />
a point almost beyond description. By consciously shaping aspects<br />
of his symbology into alternative configurations, Ishak creates ‘hybrid<br />
identities that blur distances, time and symbolic currencies’. 1<br />
Ishak lays his catholic array of references across paintings, relocating<br />
them to trace a trajectory from Australia to South-East Asia, across<br />
the Indian subcontinent to the Middle East and onward to Turkey, the<br />
gateway to Europe. Ishak’s work questions ‘the relevance of that path<br />
towards, as an example, the birthplace of Cubism and the Utopic vision<br />
of the early 20th century’. 2 In a broader sense, he seeks to create an<br />
inclusive point of view that ‘concerns itself with common human values<br />
and aspirations as well as complexities, unrealised dreams and desires,<br />
madness, peculiarities, but most of all, the need to move’. 3 This work is<br />
about transit, in a literal as well as an imaginary sense.<br />
The paintings themselves are deceptively simple: graphic lines<br />
enclose curved or geometric shapes and figurative elements. Each is<br />
painstakingly built up in muted, tonally related shades on unprimed<br />
MDF, with swathes of raw surface left visible. Ishak’s attitude to scale<br />
and materials is unpretentious, yet this pared-back aesthetic enables<br />
him to traverse enormous physical and psychological territories.<br />
The paintings present an oxymoron of sorts: as ordered explosions<br />
they somehow manage to unite disparate visual elements. Ishak<br />
flattens these onto the same plane, transposing the real as a chaos<br />
of intertwining hard-edge cubist lines. Indeed, evidence of Cubism<br />
abounds — Marcel Duchamp’s Nude descending a staircase 1912 is a<br />
strong reference and, in his fractured treatment of form, Ishak recalls<br />
that painting’s jumble of interlocking planes and lines.<br />
counterpoint, sitting somewhere at the intersection between art and<br />
geometry and, as a symbol of mobility, it facilitates the movement<br />
of ideas across and between Ishak’s paintings. The visual grammar<br />
at play here is one in which there is no ‘proper’ exit or entry point.<br />
While it is possible to identify references harking back to actual<br />
places and events — a stadium in Hanoi, a British flag, or a newspaper<br />
image of an overturned ute at a border crossing — in its decidedly<br />
anti-literal rendering, this work is not meant to be read or interpreted<br />
semiotically. Instead, Ishak seeks to create ‘a space of hallucination, or<br />
not knowing where you are’. 4<br />
From within this non-specific space, Ishak is able to disrupt the<br />
chronology and order of given histories in works that extend beyond<br />
the purely visual: ‘Like a pilgrim he walks a path that has been trod<br />
many times before, his footsteps becoming yet other symbols, other<br />
sites, among those he encounters along the way’. 5 Indeed, the pilgrim<br />
tracing personal lines across impersonal space provides an apt<br />
analogy for Raafat Ishak’s nomadic wanderings — across the surface<br />
of places and cultures, systems of thought and modes of expression.<br />
These painterly pathways explore the circularity and dissemination of<br />
cultural artefacts, and play with ‘ideas that implode upon themselves,<br />
that seem to go backwards and forwards, circling the viewer and by<br />
implication the artist’. 6<br />
Bree Richards<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Sarah Tutton, ‘Raafat Ishak’s passage to safe harbour’, Eyeline, no.67, 2009, p.24.<br />
2 Raafat Ishak, email to the author, 11 June 2009.<br />
3 Ishak, email to the author, 5 August 2009.<br />
4 Ishak, conversation with the author, 22 June 2009.<br />
5 DJ Huppatz, ‘Personal archive’, <strong>Art</strong>/Text, no.67, November 1999 – January 2000, p.49.<br />
6 Tutton, p.27.<br />
Raafat Ishak<br />
Egypt/Australia b.1967<br />
Untitled (from ‘Emergencies, Accidents and<br />
Congratulations’ series) 2009<br />
Synthetic polymer paint on MDF / 60 x 42cm /<br />
Image courtesy: The artist and Sutton <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
Melbourne / Photograph: Nick Kreisler<br />
In marked contrast to the paintings on either side, a giant industrial<br />
castor — starkly rendered, and applied directly to the wall in vinyl — is<br />
an unexpected inclusion. It is underscored by the same Utopian,<br />
romantic tendency foreshadowed in Ishak’s painted works — a literal<br />
nod to ‘revolution’ and radical acts of change that gesture towards<br />
a desire to see the world as a different place. The wheel acts as a<br />
96 97
Runa Islam<br />
Things that are restless and things that are still<br />
When Runa Islam returned after 23 years to Dhaka, the place of her<br />
birth, she felt herself a tourist and began developing ideas for film<br />
vignettes that would work against the grain of immediate impressions<br />
of the city. On Bangladesh’s official first day of spring, she paid<br />
rickshaw drivers to sit in a city park, still for once rather than in motion,<br />
their faces visible and reflective rather than bent over with physical<br />
effort. Her camera sweeps across the dusty park, recording children<br />
squatting in a circle beneath the trees and the wind gusting leaves<br />
in silence. The slow reveal ends as it foregrounds an assembly of<br />
men sitting on rickshaws, harnessing the cinematographic means of<br />
mainstream entertainment to focus attention on an overlooked subject.<br />
catch a fly, eye bright and beak ajar, and, on the other, a wire cage;<br />
the whole is attached to a wheel and handle. 7 When the panel spins,<br />
the two images combine and the bird is caged. The thaumatrope<br />
is framed in a room lined with cases displaying scientific objects —<br />
scales, calipers, a pendulum — and framed also by Islam’s geometrical<br />
camera movements, rising vertically, then panning left to right, before<br />
ascending on the diagonal across the bird and fly. On a new camera<br />
angle, through the spinning bird and cage, a man’s hand can be seen<br />
working the toy’s mechanism. In a final shot, the thaumatrope comes to<br />
a halt side-on to the camera. Like a film frame line, it is almost invisible,<br />
an interstice — what is not registered, though it frames the image.<br />
Islam describes her aim as ‘a non-dramatic performance/event that<br />
would interfere with the usual daily routine of the workers and hence<br />
illustrate what could be akin to a wish-fulfillment’. 1 Where action staged<br />
for the documentary camera generally seeks repetition, Islam creates<br />
a situation unlike the constant movement of a working day. Slowly<br />
observing faces, she offers no interpretation, but underlines both the<br />
individual humanity and hermetic inaccessibility of her subjects. Her<br />
lens turns up into the trees, like a quiet mind observing the movement<br />
of the leaves. The silence makes the viewer aware of the act of viewing<br />
and recalls the constructed film experience.<br />
At the end of First Day of Spring 2005, the introduction of sound<br />
reinstates time and movement: traffic noises, birds gathering, a vendor<br />
crossing the park with a tower of pink bags, and a woman looking long<br />
at the camera as she walks by. The final shot, from ground level, finds<br />
the backs of the rickshaw drivers riding away from the park and its<br />
vanished still point. The frame goes black but the sounds continue.<br />
Islam’s works perpetually recall the construction of film and art. In<br />
First Day of Spring, a camera glides across the subjects, posed by the<br />
artist through a contractual agreement to be still. The viewer observes<br />
the unmoving rickshaw wallahs and the perfectly controlled camera.<br />
Film theorist Raymond Bellour suggests that relative stillness in films,<br />
especially the filming of photographs, allows the viewer to reflect on<br />
cinema. The unconscious viewer is transformed into what Bellour calls<br />
‘the pensive spectator’, uncoupled from the image through ‘effects<br />
of suspension, freezing, reflexivity, effects which enable the spectator<br />
to reflect on what he/she is seeing’. 8 Runa Islam is fundamentally<br />
interested in this process of uncoupling, and in underlining the<br />
material qualities of film. She demonstrates that film is an apparatus<br />
that frames, withholds and reveals — like a museum, or a thaumatrope<br />
which plays on the hidden mechanisms of sight.<br />
Kathryn Weir<br />
The Restless Subject 2008 also deploys a series of devices to literally<br />
bring viewers to their senses: the rhythmic whirr and clack of film<br />
passing through the gate of the 16mm projector, the small size of<br />
the projected image, and the sculptural nature of the projection<br />
space designed by Slovenian artist Tobias Putrih. Islam and Putrih<br />
first collaborated in 2007, 2 when Islam sought another artist to create<br />
film-viewing environments that would provide alternatives to the ‘black<br />
cube’. 3 Putrih compares these structures, made from materials including<br />
cardboard, ply and even film stock, to a ‘digestion tract’, 4 describing<br />
them as ‘display mechanisms, but without an ideological context’. 5<br />
While the installation elements make the viewer conscious of seeing,<br />
hearing and moving through the space, the film that they frame points<br />
to the mechanics of vision. It features a thaumatrope, an optical toy<br />
of the early nineteenth century, whose name can be translated as<br />
‘turning wonder’. 6 In its simplest form, it consists of a disc with images<br />
on either face, which spins on a string to create the effect of the two<br />
images combining. The thaumatrope in The Restless Subject consists<br />
of a panel with, on one side, a delicate painting of a bird poised to<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Runa Islam artist statement, in Subcontinent: The Indian Subcontinent in<br />
Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> [exhibition catalogue], Electa and Fondazione Sandretto<br />
Re Rebaudengo, Milan, 2006, p.88.<br />
2 For the ‘Lost Cinema Lost’ exhibition at Galleria Civica, Modena,<br />
27 January – 30 March 2008.<br />
3 Interview with Milovan Ferronato, ART iT, vol.5, no.3, summer–fall 2007, p.53.<br />
4 Lost Cinema Lost [exhibition catalogue], Galleria Civica, Modena, 2008, p.69.<br />
5 Lost Cinema Lost, p.70.<br />
6 The thaumatrope was first popularised around 1825 in London. See Jonathan<br />
Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth<br />
Century, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1992 [1990], p.105.<br />
7 The thaumatrope which appears in The Restless Subject 2008 is held in the<br />
collection of the Museo del Gabinetto di Fisica dell’Universita degli Studi di Urbino<br />
‘Carlo Bo’.<br />
8 Raymond Bellour ‘The pensive spectator’, Wide Angle, vol.9 (1), 1987, p.10. See<br />
also Laura Mulvey, ‘The pensive spectator’, in Laura Mulvey, Death 24x a Second:<br />
Stillness and the Moving Image, Reaktion Books, London, 2006, pp.181–96.<br />
Runa Islam<br />
Bangladesh/United Kingdom b.1970<br />
The Restless Subject (still) 2008<br />
16mm film and CD wild tracks, colour, sound,<br />
6:42 minutes / Image courtesy: The artist and<br />
White Cube, London / Photograph: Todd-White<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Photography<br />
First Day of Spring (still) 2005<br />
16mm film, colour, sound, 7:00 minutes / Image<br />
courtesy: The artist and White Cube, London /<br />
Photograph: Todd-White <strong>Art</strong> Photography<br />
98 99
Ayaz Jokhio<br />
Toward the within<br />
A thousand doors and windows too,<br />
The palace has . . . but still,<br />
Wherever I might go or be<br />
Master confronts me there<br />
Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai 1<br />
The soaring structure by Ayaz Jokhio in the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>’s<br />
Watermall takes its inspiration from this verse by Bhittai, the great<br />
Sindhi Sufi poet of the late Mughal era. Also from Sindh, and a poet<br />
himself, Jokhio considers the work a piece of ‘conceptual architecture’;<br />
a physical translation of Bhittai’s expression of the omnipresence of<br />
God. 2 As a simple geometric form, surrounded by gently flowing water,<br />
a thousand doors and windows too . . . 2009 evokes the refined beauty<br />
of Islamic architecture, with its emphasis on symmetry, repetition and<br />
spatial interplay as the means to invite contemplation.<br />
Jokhio’s work takes the shape of a roofless, octagonal room; one<br />
wall contains an arched doorway, and the other seven each feature a<br />
curved alcove. These elements suggest the mihrab, the niche built into<br />
the wall of a mosque to indicate the qibla — the direction facing Mecca,<br />
and therefore for prayer. Here, the niches face in seven directions,<br />
implying the multifariousness of God’s presence, while the identical,<br />
yet differently oriented, walls also elaborate Jokhio’s interest in what<br />
he calls ‘similarities and differences occurring at the same time and in<br />
the same thing’. 3 This interest also connects with Sufi thought, which,<br />
while maintaining Islam’s central tenet of the unity of God, also gives<br />
primacy to personal interactions with the divine.<br />
Jokhio claims to have no signature style, stating that each project is an<br />
opportunity to start at the beginning again. 4 His works have included<br />
an installation of a classroom, video documentaries, large paintings<br />
of museum wall texts and the reverse of photographs, and newsprint<br />
collages of celebrities. A recurrent medium is drawing; in a recent<br />
series, the artist employed an academic realist technique to render<br />
diptychs of ordinary objects of similar form but of vastly different<br />
function. A flat loaf of naan bread is paired with planet Earth, a ballpoint<br />
pen with a bullet, bracelets with a pair of handcuffs, and a sumo<br />
wrestler with the ‘Fat Man’ atomic bomb detonated over Nagasaki in<br />
1945. Here, Jokhio’s interest in similarity and difference takes on the<br />
guise of one-liners, yet with wry social and political significances.<br />
it is difficult to avoid an underlying political message, especially when<br />
viewed in the context of a contemporary world where there are great<br />
pressures to maintain a singular, fixed identity. The powerful forces<br />
of nationalism and religious fundamentalism, not only in Pakistan<br />
but across the globe, view fluid, multiple identities as suspicious,<br />
even dangerous. Indeed, if we return to Sufism, its tolerance of other<br />
faiths and individualised worship has for centuries been considered a<br />
potentially moderating force within Islam, in the face of more sectarian<br />
and authoritarian versions.<br />
However, Jokhio has said, ‘In the end I do realise that all subjects and<br />
materials are secondary. What comes first is the visual impact of the<br />
work itself as seen by the viewer’. 6 Within the context of an art exhibition,<br />
Ayaz Jokhio’s structure is, of course, primarily sculpture. From the<br />
outside, it is a monolithic white form — clearly, the detailed decoration<br />
of classical Islamic buildings is eschewed here — with its huge scale<br />
creating specific relationships with the viewer and the space around<br />
it. Yet, as in the Islamic tradition of ‘hidden architecture’, its focus is on<br />
an internal, enclosed space, in which the work truly exists ‘only when<br />
entered, penetrated and experienced from within’. 7 It is only when we<br />
walk inside the sculpture that we can see all its walls at once, with their<br />
niches fanning out in all directions, echoing Bhittai’s sublime words.<br />
Russell Storer<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (1689–1752) was a Sufi poet and scholar who lived in the<br />
province of Sindh, in the south-east of what is now Pakistan. Sufism is the esoteric<br />
or mystical dimension of Islam, greatly influential in the direction and spread of<br />
Islamic thought throughout the world. Sufi poets and thinkers include Rumi, Omar<br />
Khayyám and Al-Ghazali.<br />
2 Ayaz Jokhio, email to the author, 7 May 2009.<br />
3 Jokhio, email to the author.<br />
4 Ayaz Jokhio artist statement, ‘Hanging Fire: Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> from Pakistan’, Asia<br />
Society, New York, , viewed<br />
11 October 2009.<br />
5 The number 99 is highly significant in Islam, with the Qu’ran describing God as<br />
having 99 attributes, known as ‘The Most Beautiful Names’.<br />
6 Ayaz Jokhio artist statement.<br />
7 Ernst J Grube, ‘What is Islamic architecture?’, in George Michell (ed.), Architecture<br />
of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning, Thames & Hudson, London,<br />
1995, p.11.<br />
Ayaz Jokhio<br />
Pakistan b.1978<br />
Working designs for a thousand doors and<br />
windows too… 2009<br />
Site-specific work for APT6 / Images courtesy: The artist<br />
Another series, 99 Self portraits 2008, comprises a drawing of the<br />
artist’s face reproduced 99 times, with each version sent to a different<br />
person to add hair and other features. 5 These were then reassembled<br />
and exhibited as a group, offering dozens of permutations of the<br />
original face and, by association, of the artist himself. Again, there is<br />
directness, lightness and humour to the work — Jokhio deliberately<br />
absolves his authorial role and taps into Duchampian tactics of<br />
appropriation and self-parody. Nevertheless, as with the diptychs,<br />
100 101
Takeshi Kitano<br />
Fallen hero<br />
Actor and director Takeshi Kitano seeks to undermine the traditional<br />
notion of the virtuous and invulnerable protagonist as an instigator<br />
of a heroic narrative. He creates powerful filmic explorations of a<br />
contemporary notion of heroism. Employing a spare style of acting<br />
and a masterful use of silence, which is counterpointed by absurdist<br />
humour, Kitano captures the decline of the heroic character at the<br />
precise moment of his fall from grace.<br />
His directorial debut, Violent Cop 1989, demonstrates Kitano’s confident<br />
storytelling approach and signals his interest in problematising the<br />
notion of an irreproachable protagonist. He uses narrative pauses,<br />
sparse dialogue and empty frames to focus the audience’s attention<br />
on his complex characters and the subtleties of their interactions; his<br />
delicate, understated filmmaking techniques provide stark contrast<br />
to abrupt intrusions of violence. The opening scene of Violent Cop<br />
follows a group of high school students who viciously beat a homeless<br />
man for entertainment. Kitano plays the lead, a police detective who<br />
invades the home of one of the boys and beats a confession out of<br />
him, vividly capturing the moment when his character crosses the line<br />
of no return and begins a rapid descent from righteous heroism. He<br />
avenges the injustice but transforms the boy into a victim, taking his<br />
place as the aggressor. The transgressions in Violent Cop unleash a<br />
string of consequences leading to the character’s onscreen decay.<br />
His inevitable destruction is both tragic and glorious as he struggles<br />
to follow a path to redemption.<br />
In contrast to his movie roles, Kitano’s television persona is primarily<br />
comedic. Drawing from his performance beginnings as a standup<br />
comedian, Kitano’s TV persona is often the prankster, regularly<br />
making fun of celebrity guests he interviews, and hosting game<br />
shows which deliver slapstick humour in the form of extreme physical<br />
challenges and outlandish costumes for contestants. For mainstream<br />
Japanese audiences, Kitano’s television career largely overshadows<br />
his filmmaking; they are more accustomed to his work as a comic and<br />
struggle to engage with his more serious film content.<br />
International audiences know him best as a filmmaker. Violent Cop<br />
and Sonatine 1993 garnered critical acclaim, but it was Hana-bi 1997,<br />
with its delicate balance of tenderness and characteristic nihilism,<br />
which brought the actor–director to international prominence. Kitano’s<br />
most recent cinematic trilogy Takeshis’ 2005, Glory to the Filmmaker<br />
2007 and Achilles and the Tortoise 2008 expands his exploration of<br />
the flawed hero, from yakuza and police officer alter egos to the selfreferential<br />
realm of the filmmaker.<br />
Kitano’s bold yet serene storytelling evokes a mood of uncertainty.<br />
His questioning of masculine mythologies offers the viewer a glimpse<br />
of the taboo notion of the hero as a flawed mortal lacking mythic<br />
strength or resilience — an everyman breaking under the pressure of<br />
expectations, his own as much as others.<br />
The cinematic study of the consequences of violence is central to<br />
Kitano’s exploration of his failing heroes. Unlike traditional acts of<br />
heroism which equate violent force with restrained and unavoidable<br />
collateral damage, Kitano’s heroic violence is excessive and messy,<br />
not stylised into palatable and exhilarating action sequences. Kitano<br />
strips his violence of conventional film melodrama, presenting<br />
his central character’s actions and the resultant reprisals as gritty<br />
inversions of cinematic expectations of heroic fiction. Kitano is careful<br />
to connect the dead to their killer — often a protagonist will pause over<br />
a dead body to absorb the reality of what has transpired, the camera<br />
lingering on a trail of blood or a grimace of pain. The protagonists<br />
who carry out these acts are often yakuza (members of Japanese<br />
criminal organisations) or police officers. Rather than being physically<br />
and emotionally impervious, they are fragile and at the limit of their<br />
endurance from the outset. As the decay and destruction reach their<br />
climax, the only redemption possible for these characters is death —<br />
an onscreen liberation realised through self-sacrifice.<br />
Kitano’s presence in Japanese popular culture is ubiquitous: he is<br />
often referred to as the most famous person in Japan, and is a source<br />
of humorous social and political commentary. A prolific artist, he is also<br />
a writer of poetry and fiction and a regular contributor to newspapers.<br />
The majority of his creative output, however, is through television. 1<br />
Rosie Hays<br />
Endnote<br />
1 Tim Smedley, A Divine Comedy: The Films of Takeshi Kitano,, viewed September 2009.<br />
Takeshi Kitano<br />
Japan b.1947<br />
Production still from Kantoku: Banzai! (Glory to the<br />
Filmmaker) 2007 / 35mm, colour and black and white,<br />
Dolby Digital, 108 minutes, Japan, Japanese (English<br />
subtitles) / Image courtesy: Celluloid Dreams, Paris<br />
Left<br />
Production still from Sonachine (Sonatine) 1993 / 35mm,<br />
colour, Dolby, 94 minutes, Japan, Japanese (English<br />
subtitles) / Image courtesy: Shochiku, Tokyo<br />
Right<br />
Production still from Takeshis’ 2005 / 35mm, colour,<br />
Dolby Digital, 108 minutes, Japan, Japanese (English<br />
subtitles) / Image courtesy: Celluloid Dreams, Paris<br />
102 103
Ang Lee<br />
Quiet! The film is about to start<br />
Although Ang Lee’s oeuvre appears to be disparate and lacking a<br />
‘signature style’, there is something that unites his films: a quality of<br />
silence. According to Whitney Crothers Dilley in her discussion of<br />
The Ice Storm 1997: ‘Silence is an actual medium of the movie — the<br />
film is all about what is unsaid — and the unexpressed thoughts fill the<br />
movie like a picture highlighted in relief’. 1 Many of Lee’s films open<br />
with visually rich, dialogue-free scenes — from his first feature film,<br />
Tui Shou (Pushing Hands) 1992, which opens with an elderly Chinese<br />
man calmly practising Tai Chi, while a disgruntled American tears<br />
at her blond hair in front of a computer in the adjacent room; to his<br />
Academy Award-winning Brokeback Mountain 2005, where two young<br />
cowboys wait next to an office trailer, catching glimpses of each other<br />
only when gazes are averted.<br />
Disconcertingly, when these characters do eventually speak, they have<br />
great difficulty communicating their messages. English as a second<br />
language is a source of mis-communication in a number of Lee’s<br />
films. The disconnection created by the lack of a common language<br />
is most obvious when characters gather around the table during meal<br />
times. In both Tui Shou and Xi Yan (The Wedding Banquet) 1993, the<br />
dinner conversation is censored by the character translating. The<br />
censor’s intention is to avoid conflict, but, of course, their actions only<br />
contribute to an escalation of the dispute. Even when characters do<br />
share a common language, there are still considerable barriers to<br />
real communication. Socially imposed silence surrounding desire,<br />
homosexuality, interracial relationships and female ambitions hinder<br />
attempts at expression.<br />
Upon breaking their silence, Lee’s characters often place physical<br />
barriers between themselves and the people with whom they speak.<br />
They speak from behind closed doors, under bed sheets, with their<br />
backs to one another or from behind masks. 2 In Se, Jie (Lust, Caution)<br />
2007, Miss Wong Chia Chi is a university student posing as Mrs Mak Tai<br />
Tai as part of an espionage plot. Miss Wong contributes little dialogue<br />
to the film; she does, however, speak under the guise of Mrs Mak. It<br />
remains ambiguous whether these lies stem from the illusory web<br />
surrounding Mrs Mak, or if her expressions are the true desires of Miss<br />
Wong under the guise of a fictitious character.<br />
this, as he is on the verge of telling Yu Shu Lien the reason that he has<br />
come to Beijing has nothing to do with recovering his prized sword,<br />
but he is interrupted by a servant and does not finish his sentence.<br />
As conversations do little to further the storyline, Lee employs visual<br />
metaphors to carry his films. Creating mouth-watering banquets in<br />
Yin Shi Nan Nu (Eat Drink Man Woman) 1994 is the only way that<br />
characters in a traditional Taiwanese home are able to express their<br />
love for one another. 3 Lee’s visual metaphors extend to the landscape;<br />
in The Ice Storm, set in middle-class, suburban Connecticut, icicles<br />
cover every surface and the shattering of this ice is a metaphor for the<br />
disintegration of the nuclear family and the Nixon administration in the<br />
1970s; while mountains with rocky outcrops, as well as vast fields, are<br />
used to materialise the isolation felt by the two main characters living<br />
in intolerant middle America in Brokeback Mountain.<br />
In reference to Hulk 2003, Lee once said: ‘So far, repression has been<br />
my biggest source of creativity’. 4 Yet, the film is concerned with finding a<br />
way to resolve what Bruce Banner has previously subdued: the character<br />
of the Hulk provides a cathartic vehicle for his repressed desires.<br />
Perhaps, part of the reason why Hulk was critically less successful than<br />
Lee’s other films is because Banner is able to discuss his problems, like<br />
a therapy session. As the characters in the other films remain silent, a<br />
visual smorgasbord fills the screen. That is what is so compelling about<br />
Lee’s films — the story is told when the actors do not speak.<br />
Ellie Buttrose<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Whitney Crothers Dilley, The Cinema of Ang Lee: The Other Side of the Screen,<br />
Wallflower Press, London, 2007, p.102.<br />
2 Dilley, p.102.<br />
3 ‘Eating is about what you put on the table. Desire . . . is about what lies beneath<br />
it, which is never available for discussion’, Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Darrell William<br />
Davis sum up the dining etiquette in Yin Shi Nan Nu in Taiwan Film Directors: A<br />
Treasure Island, Columbia University Press, New York, 2005, p.202.<br />
4 Ang Lee, quoted in John Lahr, ‘Becoming the Hulk’, The New Yorker, vol.79, no.17,<br />
30 June 2003, p.72, ,<br />
viewed 5 August 2009.<br />
Ang Lee<br />
Taiwan b.1954<br />
Production still from Se, Jie (Lust, Caution) 2007 /<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 157 minutes, USA/China/<br />
Taiwan/Hong Kong, Mandarin/Japanese/English/Hindi/<br />
Shanghainese/Cantonese (English subtitles) / Image<br />
courtesy: Universal Pictures International, Sydney<br />
Just when real communication appears to be taking place, it is<br />
interrupted, severed and suppressed. In Sense and Sensibility 1995,<br />
when Margaret, the youngest of the Dashwood sisters, announces<br />
her delight with Mrs Jennings (who doesn’t limit the conversation to<br />
the weather), she is hushed by Mrs Dashwood. Similarly, when Alma<br />
confronts Ennis in Brokeback Mountain about what he and Jack did<br />
during their ‘fishing trips’, he abruptly silences her. In Wo Hu Cang<br />
Long (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) 2000, an old friend of Yu Shu<br />
Lien’s father laments the fact that Yu Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai have never<br />
expressed their feelings for one another. Li Mu Bai arrives soon after<br />
104 105
Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio and art in North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Driven, I suppose, by a spirit of curatorial curiosity, the <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> approached me in early 2005 to find out more about the<br />
art and culture of North Korea, or the Democratic People’s Republic<br />
of Korea (DPRK). On hearing of my long-term interest in the DPRK<br />
through my involvement in a number of film projects, this initial<br />
conversation ranged from peering at my collection of propaganda<br />
posters and brush-and-ink paintings to talking about the relationships<br />
built over 15 years with filmmaker and artist friends. After several<br />
meetings, I approached my artist colleagues in the DPRK to discuss the<br />
Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> (APT) project, and to explore<br />
the possibility of presenting work in Brisbane.<br />
Almost five years on, these discussions have resulted in an extensive<br />
exhibition of art from the DPRK for APT6. At the core of this selection<br />
are 13 ambitious new commissions made by eight artists from the<br />
Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio. These are augmented by a significant group of<br />
works from my personal collection to provide an added, important<br />
context. Few of these works have ever been on public display before,<br />
the exception being some of the prints, which are among the most<br />
well-known works from Korea to have circulated internationally.<br />
A brief history<br />
<strong>Art</strong> today in the DPRK occupies a distinct place within the texture of the<br />
culture and is powered by the principle that art contains knowledge —<br />
about revolution, for education, for socialism — and takes various forms,<br />
from propaganda to images that instruct children about respecting<br />
their parents and Korean custom. <strong>Art</strong> is also made simply to enrich life.<br />
After the three-year Korean War stalled in an armistice stalemate in<br />
1953, much art was influenced by the Soviet Union and China through<br />
socialist realist styles, until Korea developed its own national style after<br />
1966. Reflecting the state’s ethos of juche (self-reliance), Leader Kim IL<br />
Sung instructed the DPRK art world to develop juche art: ‘Let’s develop<br />
our national form, with socialist content’. 1<br />
With China and Russia immediately to the north and Japan, separated<br />
by the waters of the Korea Strait, to the east, Korea has substantial<br />
pressures to accommodate, and also extensive cultures to draw on.<br />
The peninsula was essentially ruled — by different dynasties, political<br />
powers and ethnicities — as one political entity for over 1000 years,<br />
until mid twentieth century conflicts separated it into two. This complex<br />
interchange of power and territory has contributed to a long and vital<br />
history of art and culture in the region.<br />
The Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945 led to many Korean artists<br />
undertaking training in Japan during this period before returning to<br />
Korea to practice and teach. Japan, meanwhile, had been exchanging<br />
influences with European and North American artists, which affected<br />
Japanese practice and teaching.<br />
<strong>Art</strong> education<br />
Today, art education is the only method of becoming an artist in the<br />
DPRK. The most prestigious art university is the Pyongyang University<br />
of Fine <strong>Art</strong>, which was established in 1947. The main areas of study<br />
are brush-and-ink painting or chosunhua — considered to be the most<br />
important art form, due to its traditional roots — calligraphy, oil painting,<br />
printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, mural painting and the industrial arts.<br />
There are other specialist universities, such as the Pyongyang College<br />
of Handicrafts, which is responsible for teaching embroidery and<br />
lacquer work; the Pyongyang University of Construction and Building<br />
Materials, specialising in architecture; and the Pyongyang University of<br />
Cinema, which teaches film and film production.<br />
Young artists are selected from around the country and, if judged to<br />
have sufficient skill, are invited to study at the Pyongyang University<br />
of Fine <strong>Art</strong>. In Pyongyang and the hinterland, there are a number of<br />
local colleges for artists who do not reach the grades necessary for<br />
admittance to the university. These institutions are not strictly fine<br />
art academies as they include other art forms such as dance and<br />
design. The Pyongyang University of Fine <strong>Art</strong> requires a minimum of<br />
six to eight years of study. Three years of undergraduate study are<br />
followed by postgraduate courses. The usual age to enter university<br />
is between 15 and 23 years. Currently, the oil painting department<br />
and the chosunhua department enrol 20 students each annually.<br />
In total, around 150 students graduate every year in the fine art<br />
department (including all arts, from embroidery and ceramics to<br />
chosunhua). After finishing university, students are then selected<br />
by the various art studios, the most recognised being Mansudae,<br />
Paekho, Minye and Central.<br />
While female painters are in a minority in the chosunhua and oil<br />
painting departments, women can obtain revered status as ‘People’s<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ist’, like Kim Sung Hui, whose work has a very distinct style.<br />
<strong>Art</strong> studios<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ists are employed by the art studio system. <strong>Art</strong> studios are<br />
headed by a director, supported by a first assistant director, and<br />
assistant directors, who are responsible for overseeing the creation,<br />
organisation, production and distribution of the art.<br />
The studios are places where younger members learn from their<br />
peers and their more experienced colleagues. For example, in the<br />
ink painting department of Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio, there are around<br />
100 artists assigned to 5 teams, and a team leader is responsible<br />
for the development of the artists’ work. Every morning, artist teams<br />
participate in a life-drawing class with artists either posing or sketching.<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ists share a studio with others (around two to five artists per room),<br />
with some highly regarded artists having their own studio.<br />
Choe Yong Sun<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1958<br />
The construction site 2005<br />
Linocut on paper / 65.5 x 52.5cm /<br />
Collection: Nicholas Bonner, Beijing<br />
106 107
Im Hyok<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1965<br />
Breaktime (detail) 2009<br />
Ink on paper (chosunhua) / 200 x 200cm /<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Collection: Nicholas Bonner,<br />
Beijing / Courtesy: The artist and Nicholas Bonner<br />
Opposite<br />
Kim Yong IL<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1971<br />
Study for In the face of the flame (detail) 2009<br />
Oil on canvas / 54 x 63cm / Commissioned for APT6 /<br />
Collection: Nicholas Bonner, Beijing / Courtesy:<br />
The artist and Nicholas Bonner<br />
An artist’s week generally sees them work eight-hour days from<br />
Monday to Friday, with Thursdays often set aside for technical practice<br />
to improve and hone skills. Saturdays are devoted to political study.<br />
Unless working on a government commission, artists are free to paint<br />
what they wish, although they need approval for trips out of the city.<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ists often arrange trips to scenic areas throughout Korea to sketch,<br />
and may travel with their spouses, often camping in the countryside or<br />
billeted by members of a local community.<br />
While the number of works an artist is required to produce in a year is<br />
not stipulated, there is an obvious pressure to produce works of high<br />
quality. <strong>Art</strong>ists receive a fixed salary, with basic items such as painting<br />
equipment and related materials supplied by the studio. Individuals<br />
can earn additional money by exhibiting work at the National Exhibition<br />
with the Ministry of Culture, which pays fees. <strong>Art</strong>ists are awarded<br />
various accolades during their lifetime — titles include ‘Merited’ and<br />
‘People’s <strong>Art</strong>ist’ — while winning the Kim IL Sung prize and obtaining<br />
membership of the Korean <strong>Art</strong>ists Union are some of the achievements<br />
for which they strive.<br />
They are also allowed to specialise, depending on their skill and<br />
where their talent lies. For example, some prefer landscape, others<br />
chuchehua (art on a revolutionary theme), others wildlife or dance.<br />
At some point in their careers, most artists will paint one chuchehua<br />
piece for society, revolution and education, even if it is not their<br />
speciality. Individual creativity and freedom of expression are most<br />
often articulated through choice of subject matter and technique.<br />
Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio<br />
The Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio was established in November 1959 by<br />
Leader Kim IL Sung and placed under his direct supervision. In 1970,<br />
control of the studio passed to Leader Kim Jong IL, who took a great<br />
interest in art and cinema. That the studio is under the guidance of the<br />
Leader is considered an enormous honour, and it is therefore the most<br />
sought-after for artists to join.<br />
In 2009, the Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio enlisted around 1000 artists,<br />
craftspeople, designers, sculptors, ceramicists, embroiderers, mosaic<br />
and propaganda artists. Mansudae’s chosunhua department has over<br />
100 artists, while its oil painting department has 80 artists. These<br />
departments enjoy a fair degree of autonomy, with final decisions on<br />
projects being made by the director.<br />
Mansudae is well-known for projects such as the sculpture of the<br />
Chollima Horse, completed in 1961; the 22-metre bronze statue of<br />
former Leader Kim IL Sung, completed in 1972; and the mosaics of the<br />
Pyongyang Metro and various government buildings. <strong>Art</strong>ists who are<br />
not commissioned by the studio via state projects can select themes<br />
based on their artistic lives and loves. When a request is made by the<br />
government or other institutions for a specific work of art, subjects<br />
are based on the brief. This was the process undertaken for the 13<br />
commissions for APT6, and it was conducted via consultation with the<br />
artists exploring subject matter, styles, scale and media.<br />
Commissions for APT6<br />
From the start, it was considered imperative that chosunhua should be<br />
included in APT6. Oil painting and mosaic are also included, as they<br />
reflect the important position these practices occupy in the broader<br />
artistic vocabulary of contemporary DPRK art. The mosaic takes the form<br />
of the chuchehua, and it is the only work in this suite of commissions to<br />
be developed in this way.<br />
The overarching subject for the seven commissions in the main display<br />
was developed around the theme of work and the everyday. In this<br />
sense, the revolutionary subject is a genuine one; it encompasses<br />
an aspect of the everyday for Koreans, as well as the mundane work<br />
of the foundry. The five two-metre-square brush-and-ink paintings<br />
are rare undertakings, demonstrating a willingness to experiment<br />
with both form and content. The unusual square format in this scale<br />
tested the usual bounds of chosunhua paintings. Each work observes<br />
different aspects of the everyday, from the workplace to home, from<br />
young workers to the aged. These inks are a meditation on interior and<br />
exterior lives, humble illustrations of a familiar scenario expressed in an<br />
unpretentious manner.<br />
Im Hyok, the painter of Breaktime 2009, describes the process of arriving<br />
at the composition, and his thoughts about making the work in this way:<br />
I was working from a photograph that Mr Kim Dong Hwan (head<br />
of the Korean painting section) had taken from another steelworks<br />
a year previously. There are many problems working from a<br />
photograph. The photo is small so it is only a small reference.<br />
So I used my site visits to Kangson Steelworks to complete the<br />
picture. But also it was so important to meet the workers and get<br />
an understanding of their life . . . a photograph is after all only this<br />
thin [demonstrates with the tiny gap between his fingers] so it is<br />
important to get behind the eyes of the subject. 2<br />
He explains how he envisaged the audience’s thoughts on<br />
encountering such a portrait:<br />
When people see this painting I want them to first of all ask [the]<br />
question, ‘Why is he drawing this face so big?’ Secondly I want them<br />
to see the details and see the skill. I hope to give the feeling of this<br />
man to whoever is looking at my painting but any point of view is<br />
acceptable — it is up to you to take from it what you want. Perhaps in<br />
Australia people should be surprised as they know only their own life<br />
— and they are thinking they have come to a gallery to observe art,<br />
but it is in fact a shock for them to be observed by a Korean worker. 3<br />
Rim Ho Chol — who painted On the way to work 2009, showing a<br />
scene of factory workers as they stream into work in the morning<br />
— discusses his work:<br />
Most people would concentrate on the factory but I went outside — for<br />
in art it is important to take different viewpoints and perspectives and<br />
many artists tend to concentrate just on the inside. For some artists they<br />
see life too directly in that they go straight for the subject but I think in<br />
108 109
Kim Chang Gil<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1943<br />
Portrait of merited artist Hong Bu Un 1980<br />
Oil on canvas / 35.5 x 25.4cm /<br />
Collection: Nicholas Bonner, Beijing<br />
Won Song Ryong<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.unknown<br />
Figure of harmony 1981<br />
Oil on canvas / 58.5 x 42.5cm /<br />
Collection: Nicholas Bonner, Beijing<br />
Opposite<br />
Kang Jae Won<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1947<br />
Going to work undated<br />
Linocut on paper / 43.5 x 81cm /<br />
Collection: Nicholas Bonner, Beijing<br />
Next page<br />
Hwang In Jae (attrib.)<br />
North Korea (DPRK)/China b.1943<br />
Potato flower smell in the Daehongdan<br />
Highland (detail) 1999<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 1/5 / 41 x 80cm /<br />
Collection: Nicholas Bonner, Beijing<br />
making art it is important not to think directly and I wanted to show the<br />
feeling of the workers heading to their jobs in winter time. The feeling of<br />
comradeship, morning, winter . . . I created my own perspective, viewed<br />
from above. I wanted to exaggerate the feeling of a river of people.<br />
Often when ink artists draw winter scenes they use shell powder to<br />
place on top of the paper before painting and when removed it leaves<br />
white spots — but I prefer to use my skill to paint around leaving the<br />
paper showing through — it’s more natural, more truthful. 4<br />
The oil painting In the face of the flames 2009 by O Sung Gyu is set<br />
around the white heat of the furnace at the heart of the foundry. It takes<br />
an almost scroll-like format, and encompasses the calm of the foundry<br />
interior, depicting crouched foundry workers and those tackling the<br />
untamed energy of the fire. O Sung Gyu describes his work:<br />
This is the first time I have worked on anything this size — so that has<br />
been a challenge. Also I am surprised to work on something with<br />
such contrasts. If you look at the painting there are three distinct areas<br />
all with varying intensities. I captured the intense heat in my original<br />
sketch and the furnace creates vibrant light with a life of its own<br />
appearing in strange places but also contrasts with the calm and the<br />
cool light from the skylights. Both lights require your eyes to adjust.<br />
This is the first time I have painted faces without all the detail — in both<br />
cases of the bright furnace and deep recess of the building you get a<br />
very interesting way of how your eyes see people — the intense heat<br />
distorts your vision in real life and when you look back into the dark<br />
away from the light again the figures are not all that clear. 5<br />
The mosaic Work team contest 2009 is virtuosic and monumental<br />
in scale. Most murals and public sculptures in the DPRK today adopt<br />
themes of great and often overt narrative power. Designed by the<br />
artists Kim Hung IL and Kang Yong Sam and produced in collaboration<br />
with others from the Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio, Work team contest is a<br />
tribute to the industriousness of workers in various sites of production.<br />
The scene is meticulously planned; a border of magnolias (the national<br />
flower) frames the scene and above the workers is a banner which<br />
reads, ‘Let’s support our Party by iron’. The workers themselves are<br />
decorated with flower garlands or hold bouquets; beaming, jubilant<br />
and curiously uniform in their demeanour, they appear radiant in<br />
their moment of glory. This image of striving for common prosperity,<br />
of ‘unbounded joy’, is typical of various forms of visual culture in<br />
the DPRK. Featured across media, including posters, film, television<br />
and billboards, this imagery reinforces the far-reaching influence of a<br />
singular creed in North Korean society.<br />
Prints<br />
The woodblock has a respected revolutionary history in Korea; a cheap<br />
and fast method of delivering propaganda during the anti-Japanese<br />
Liberation War, this genre of printmaking continues to be a distinct<br />
and recognisable art form advocating social and political messages.<br />
The woodblock has an immediacy and vitality easily understood and<br />
accepted. The linocut was introduced in the 1970s and has overtaken<br />
woodcuts in popularity due to its low cost, the ease with which it can<br />
be used, and the effects achieved by the use of heavily oiled inks in<br />
the printing process.<br />
The selection of prints in APT6 ranges in date from the late 1980s<br />
to the present. They illustrate technical skill and encompass typical<br />
subject matter, including rural landscapes, labour, the workplace and<br />
the city. They provide a particular picture of DPRK, as they encompass<br />
conceptions of daily life, work, family, propaganda and the ‘Fatherland’.<br />
Portraits<br />
In APT6, a display of portraits is placed in proximity to the monumental<br />
mosaic Work team contest. The succession of faces is positioned<br />
deliberately in counterpoint to the topic of the mosaic, which is realised<br />
in the manner of chuchehua. Dating from as early as 1956, these<br />
works illustrate an intimate perspective. Portraits result from the<br />
artist’s personal attachment to the sitter, as practice or as studies for<br />
incorporating into future work. Here, it is worth noting that the artists’<br />
painting in oil has been influenced by the Japanese occupation of the<br />
country, when artists were exposed not only to Japanese but also to<br />
European schools of painting.<br />
The platform of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> offers an<br />
important context for bringing this selection of works together. APT6<br />
presents the chance to consider the many forms that art takes in the<br />
DPRK today, and to exhibit these for the first time in Australia. The most<br />
satisfying aspect has been the opportunity to work with the various<br />
artists at the Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio, and to develop this suite of new<br />
works on show here.<br />
Nicholas Bonner<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Jane Portal, <strong>Art</strong> Under Control in North Korea, The British Museum Press and<br />
Reaktion, London, 2005, p.124.<br />
2 Author’s unpublished notes from artist interviews conducted at the Pyongyang<br />
studio, July 2009.<br />
3 Author’s unpublished notes.<br />
4 Author’s unpublished notes.<br />
5 Author’s unpublished notes.<br />
Further reading:<br />
Philippe Chancel, North Korea (including texts by Michel Poivert and Jonathan Fenby),<br />
Thames and Hudson, London, 2006.<br />
Jane Portal, <strong>Art</strong> Under Control in North Korea, The British Museum Press and Reaktion,<br />
London, 2005.<br />
Pier Luigi Tazzi, The Hermit Country: Today’s <strong>Art</strong> from the Democratic People’s Republic<br />
of Korea, Petra, Padova, Italy, 2007.<br />
Yoo Jae-kil, ‘The past of North Korean art: Focusing on before and after 1950’ and<br />
Kim Chan-dong, ‘Northern Korean art today’, in Kwangju Biennale 2000: Man +<br />
Space [exhibition catalogue], Kwangju Biennale Press, Kwangju, 2000, pp.340–85.<br />
110 111
Rudi Mantofani<br />
What is aslant and what is oblique<br />
To know what is aslant and what is oblique<br />
To know where the shadow of a word lays<br />
Clarity comes even before shown<br />
A glimpse of fish in the water<br />
Its mysteries unfold<br />
A traditional Minangkabau aphorism 1<br />
Rudi Mantofani makes beautiful objects and paintings whose crisp<br />
surfaces and precise facture suggest absolute certainty. One imagines,<br />
at first glance, that these assured works are completely legible. Look<br />
again: for every one of his sculptures, like the series of eccentric guitar<br />
works shown in APT6, or his detailed ‘representational’ paintings, is<br />
aslant, oblique, bent — to use current parlance.<br />
It’s not just that the guitars themselves are wickedly unplayable, with<br />
their multiple necks positioned so it would be impossible for the<br />
suggested number of players to strike a note. One instrument is cut<br />
in half, another curves improbably, the necks of others are too long<br />
for human arms. Perfectly inaccessible, these guitars frustrate our<br />
desire to hold them, play our fingers across the strings, release their<br />
magnificent chords. The guitars are gorgeous, and Mantofani has<br />
fastidiously crafted them himself, from scratch, so these impossibilities<br />
are deliberate: these are not transformed ready-made objects, they are<br />
custom-made affronts to common usage and common sense. What<br />
are we to make of these glossy enigmatic objects, which seem on one<br />
hand to be so straightforward, yet on the other so perverse?<br />
The sturdy ambiguity of Mantofani’s sculptures, together with the<br />
resolute refusal of his Jendela Group to issue manifestos, has played<br />
brilliantly to the didactic, politically committed strain in Indonesian<br />
contemporary art. A critical storm raged over the meaning or, more<br />
precisely, what seemed a problematical lack of clear meaning in<br />
Jendela Group works, with their focus on everyday, overlooked,<br />
even banal, objects and subjects; veteran curator Jim Supangkat<br />
astutely noted the characteristic ‘silence’ of Jendela works. 2 The<br />
artists, including Mantofani, have been accused of errors ranging from<br />
formalism to lack of ‘soul’ to failure of social commitment, the latter a<br />
particularly grievous charge given they trained in Yogyakarta, the hub<br />
of politically committed art in Indonesia. 3 If artists from Bandung, the<br />
other important contemporary art centre, are stereotyped as Westerninfluenced<br />
formalists, where does this leave artists like Mantofani?<br />
Occupying a carefully chosen position that eschews singular meanings<br />
in favour of a plethora of open possibilities, of open allusions — the<br />
word Jendela itself means ‘window’ in Bahasa Indonesia. What is<br />
aslant, as the Minangkabau aphorism wisely implies, is not the same<br />
as what is oblique. One is merely a fact, the other an intention.<br />
Mantofani evades the simple opposition of Yogyakarta figuration<br />
versus Bandung abstraction. I am struck by the wide range of art<br />
history references in his guitar series: Pop art, with his deadpan<br />
presentation of perfect simulacra; Cubism, since Picasso and Braque<br />
used guitars for experimental still-life compositions before World<br />
War One; and his paintings, which often disturb exquisite landscapes<br />
with non-representational blocks of colour, gesture to Yogyakarta’s<br />
enduring fascination with veristic Surrealism, as much as to abstraction.<br />
As several writers noted, Mantofani works with a multiplicity of cultural<br />
sources and signs. 4<br />
Here, Mantofani plays around with music. More often than not,<br />
outsiders associate Indonesian music with gamelan orchestras<br />
from Bali or Java, making assumptions that perplex contemporary<br />
Indonesians who play music ranging from local traditional forms to<br />
European classics, and whose younger generations are fans of rock<br />
music. Rock uses electric guitars, and Mantofani’s perfect yet estranged<br />
versions evoke a complex of tensions in contemporary Indonesia:<br />
between imported versus local cultures, expensive consumer goods<br />
and unrealisable desires for ownership and status, the growth of mall<br />
culture and the persistence of traditional cultural and social values.<br />
Life is full of contradictions: Mantofani recently said that for him the<br />
guitars are ‘symbols of exaggeration, distortion and amplification, in a<br />
negative sense . . . symbols of the distortion of reality.’ 5<br />
I regularly pass a guitar shop in Brisbane. The electric guitars hanging on<br />
its walls make one bright shiny silent promise, in unison: the possibility<br />
of immense noise, of harmony or discord. Mantofani’s title for many<br />
guitar sculptures is Nada yang hilang — ‘The lost note’. Potentiality does<br />
not ensure action, then, and imagination must summon what is lacking.<br />
Rudi Mantofani’s art may be oblique, but his invitation remains open.<br />
Let the band play on.<br />
Julie Ewington<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Quoted in Enin Supriyanto, ‘Seeing through the window’, in Jendela: A Play of<br />
the Ordinary [exhibition catalogue], NUS Museum and Gajah <strong>Gallery</strong>, Singapore,<br />
2009, pp.10–19, 15. Supriyanto argues Minang word play is crucial for Kelompok<br />
Seni Rupa Jendela (KSRJ), or Jendela Fine <strong>Art</strong> Group, all of whom come from West<br />
Sumatra and, as Minangkabau people, speak Minang as their preferred language.<br />
2 Jim Supangkat, ‘Exploration into the world of things’, in The Culture of Things: Solo<br />
Exhibition by Rudi Mantofani [exhibition catalogue], CP <strong>Art</strong>space, Jakarta, 2006, p.1.<br />
3 Critic Agus Dermawan T, writing in Kompas in 2000, accused KSRJ of being<br />
‘indecent’ and ‘lazy’. See Supriyanto, pp.12–13.<br />
4 Ahmad Mashadi in Jendela: A Play of the Ordinary, pp.3–8, and Wang Zineng,<br />
‘Wondrous visions, simple truths’, Asian <strong>Art</strong> News, vol.18(2), March–April 2008,<br />
pp.91–5.<br />
5 Email from Gajah <strong>Gallery</strong>, Singapore, 22 October 2009. See also Wang Zineng,<br />
p.94–5; the original inspiration for the guitar works was when Mantofani saw rock<br />
musicians playing at a New York charity concert in 2005 and reflected on the<br />
contradictions between this and US foreign policy.<br />
Rudi Mantofani<br />
Indonesia b.1973<br />
Nada yang hilang (The lost note) 2008<br />
Wood, metal, leather and oil / 30 x 122 x 14cm /<br />
Image courtesy: The artist and Gajah <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
Singapore / Photograph: Agung Sukindra<br />
114 115
Mataso Printmakers<br />
When Australian artist Newell Harry, in collaboration with Carl Amneus<br />
and Jack Siviu Martau, established a series of workshops with the Mataso<br />
community in Ohlen village, Port Vila, Vanuatu, he recognised that a<br />
fluid and flexible model was necessary to achieve creative outcomes.<br />
Workshops and creative initiatives in such communities are successful<br />
when relationships and partnerships — based on respect and trust — are<br />
formed between artists and teachers, communities and participants.<br />
The Mataso community consists of permanent residents on the island<br />
of Mataso and Ohlen village on the main island of Efate. Movement<br />
between the two locations is frequent and relatively easy. Younger<br />
members have inevitably spent more time on the larger island, where<br />
television, reggae and soul music and other influences from popular<br />
culture have merged with traditional beliefs and lifestyles. This postindependence<br />
(July 1980) generation constituted the majority of the<br />
artists involved in the workshops.<br />
As a medium, printmaking, in particular screenprinting, is often a<br />
technique of choice for collective workshops. The ability to generate<br />
multiple prints of substantial scale marks it as a cost- and time-effective<br />
means to explore creative solutions in a group context. Its industrial<br />
origins set it slightly apart from more technically demanding and timeconsuming<br />
techniques, such as stone or zinc plate lithography, wood<br />
engraving and intaglio methods of engraving, etching and aquatint. 1<br />
particular locale. Imagery used and adapted by the artists includes<br />
fish, butterflies, fruit, turtles and hybrid creatures. Other sources, such<br />
as packaging, tourist imagery and advertising, have provided initial<br />
impetus for the designs.<br />
The kastom of sand-drawing is an indigenous graphic tradition<br />
practised mainly in the northern islands of the archipelago of Vanuatu,<br />
such as Pentecost, Malakula and the Banks Islands. Sand-drawing has<br />
increasingly been adopted as a graphic branding for Vanuatu, while<br />
its cultural and communicative role has somewhat diminished. The<br />
linear geometry of the designs drawn with the fingers into the sand<br />
can be complex and relates to both ritual and practical knowledge,<br />
cosmologies and song cycles.<br />
While there are vestiges of the practice in some of the imagery<br />
produced by this younger group of artists, its stylistic application<br />
in the works has largely been appropriated from the commercial<br />
sphere. Works by Saires Kalo and Herveline Lité, for example, draw<br />
on the geometry of sand-drawing as a framework for images fusing<br />
cultural traditions with contemporary observations and practice. The<br />
contemporary nature of these prints is particularly evident in works<br />
such as David Kolin’s Mi laekem kae kaeman 2006 and Weetbix-boy<br />
2006, which are inspired by popular magazines and contemporary<br />
music culture, particularly reggae and hip-hop.<br />
Sepa Seule<br />
Vanuatu b.1983<br />
Popo (from ‘Bebellic’ portfolio) 2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani paper ed. 1/45 / 56 x 76cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Stanley Firiam<br />
Vanuatu b.unknown<br />
Pig tusk 2005<br />
Screenprint on arches paper / 56 x 76cm / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
In its simplest form, screenprinting is essentially stencil printing; using<br />
cut paper stencils, bold graphic designs are possible, which are suitable<br />
for packaging, posters and advertising. Resist techniques produce a<br />
more autographic image in which the design is drawn directly onto<br />
the silkscreen using a solvent or water-resistant crayon or emulsion.<br />
As the technique evolved and was increasingly coopted by artists in<br />
the late 1950s and early 1960s, photographic stencils and emulsions<br />
were developed. A generation of artist–printmakers in England and the<br />
United States expanded the language of screenprinting to incorporate<br />
the modern aesthetic of collage, overlays and found imagery to<br />
produce some of the defining ‘Pop’ images of the twentieth century. 2<br />
The Mataso artists used transparent acetate sheets as the ‘original’<br />
support for their designs rather than working directly onto the<br />
screens. Freely drawn, these designs also functioned as stencils when<br />
transferred with light-sensitive emulsions to the screen mesh. Each<br />
colour was printed using a separate acetate sheet design to build the<br />
matrix of up to four colours in the final print. The acetate designs were<br />
produced by the artists, while the specific technical and mechanical<br />
preparation of the screens (requiring a darkroom facility) was managed<br />
in Australia for the majority by master printer Theo Tremblay. With a<br />
combination of painterly, hand-drawn imagery and the layering of bold<br />
colours and textural effects, the Mataso Printmakers have produced<br />
a body of work that is refreshing, expressive and rooted in their<br />
These freely adopted and adapted images represent the visual<br />
language of a generation born into a more commercialised culture<br />
than their parents. The strength and vitality of the works resides in the<br />
individual artists’ intuitive and unique views of their world in transition.<br />
David Burnett<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 One of the first collective deployments of the technique was in the 1930s in the<br />
United States under Franklin D Roosevelt’s Federal <strong>Art</strong>s Project.<br />
2 This generation of artist–printmakers included Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton,<br />
Joe Tilson, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol.<br />
116 117
Sepa Seule<br />
Vanuatu b.1983<br />
Afokka and mango (Avocado and mango) 2008<br />
Screenprint on arches paper / 76 x 56cm /<br />
Purchased 2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Opposite top<br />
Sepa Seule<br />
Wota melon (Watermelon) 2006<br />
Screenprint on arches paper / 76 x 56cm /<br />
Purchased 2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Middle<br />
David Kolin<br />
Mi laekem kae kaeman 2006<br />
Screenprint on arches paper / 76 x 56cm /<br />
Purchased 2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Below<br />
Stanley Firiam<br />
Vanuatu b.unknown<br />
Batta flae 2005–06<br />
Screenprint on arches paper, ed 1/20 / 76 x 56cm /<br />
Purchased 2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
David Kolin<br />
Vanuatu b.1983<br />
Weetbix-boy 2006<br />
Screenprint on arches paper / 76 x 56cm /<br />
Purchased 2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Saires Kalo<br />
Vanuatu 1983–2009<br />
Kavaman (from ’Bebellic’ portfolio) 2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani paper ed. 1/45 / 76 x 56cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Simeon Simix<br />
Vanuatu b.1981<br />
Mataso coconut-man, Port Vila 2008<br />
Screenprint on arches paper / 76 x 56cm /<br />
Purchased 2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
David Kolin<br />
Tomatto 2006<br />
Oil on paper / 33 x 25cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Priscilla Thomas<br />
Vanuatu b.unknown<br />
Kava bowl 2006<br />
Screenprint on arches paper / 76 x 56cm /<br />
Purchased 2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Simeon Simix<br />
Vanuatu b.1981<br />
Paw paw/breadfruit (from ‘Bebellic’ portfolio) 2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani paper ed. 1/45 / 76 x 56cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
118 119
Mapping the Mekong<br />
The source<br />
In 2005, I received the Martell Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong> Research<br />
Grant through the Asia <strong>Art</strong> Archive in Hong Kong. My project involved<br />
studying the relationship between economic development and<br />
civil society, and their combined influence on the development of<br />
contemporary art production in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS),<br />
which includes the nations of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma),<br />
Thailand and Vietnam. Using the Mekong River as a metaphor for the<br />
flow and re-flow of arts knowledge, the project — entitled Mediating<br />
the Mekong — was intended to be a starting point not only for my<br />
personal investigation into emerging contemporary arts communities<br />
in South-East Asia, but also to provide a guide, if incomplete, for future<br />
curators, artists and scholars. 1<br />
At the time of my initial research, the Japan Foundation had published<br />
two editions of the guidebook Alternatives: Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> Spaces<br />
in Asia, and Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar were unrepresented in<br />
both. 2 Much has changed in the few years since the publication of<br />
the last Alternatives guide in 2004, and Mediating the Mekong in<br />
2006. The apparent art vacuum, then, has now been replaced with<br />
vibrant art communities, their programming and spaces increasingly<br />
well-organised. In August 2009, the Japan Foundation published<br />
an updated guide focusing exclusively on the Mekong region, with<br />
contributions from each of the GMS nations. GMS artists are more<br />
frequently represented now in international art exhibitions, fairs and<br />
galleries. Recently established spaces, such as the New Zero <strong>Art</strong> Space<br />
in Yangon (Rangoon), the Bangkok <strong>Art</strong> and Culture Centre, and San<br />
<strong>Art</strong> in Ho Chi Minh City, continue to encourage and support local<br />
emerging arts communities.<br />
Downstream<br />
The Mekong River, one of Asia’s longest rivers at over 4000 kilometres,<br />
begins in the Tibetan plateau in China and ends in the southern<br />
deltas of Vietnam. Among the richest regions in the world in terms<br />
of biodiversity, the zone south of China has historically been a site<br />
of the complex interweaving of cultures, particularly in terms of its<br />
assimilation of, and resistance to, religious, political and cultural<br />
influences from India and China, spanning many centuries.<br />
As a distinct region, the Mekong is a construct in which definitions<br />
have largely been created for convenience or specific utility:<br />
The Mekong region is often referred to through a variety of organisational<br />
frameworks including historic–cultural areas, sociolinguistic zones, and<br />
by the borders of the nations themselves. It has always been a shifting<br />
territory — an ebb and flow of conflict and cooperation, modernisation<br />
and preservation, exploitation and conservation. Each struggle can be<br />
found documented in the arts, whether in historical artefact or in the<br />
contemporary work featured in APT6.<br />
In APT6, The Mekong project features work by eight artists in the GMS,<br />
including internationally established, locally significant and emerging<br />
practitioners. It is also the first time that the APT will present works by<br />
artists from Cambodia and Myanmar. Looking back in order to move<br />
forward seems to be one element common to each of the works in<br />
The Mekong: from the use of traditional materials and references to<br />
historical figures and events, these artists have used their cultural and<br />
intellectual inheritance to apply individual interpretations to works that<br />
clearly and powerfully speak to a contemporary audience.<br />
The Mekong as a concept is one that we have looked at broadly. Akin<br />
to the Mekong River itself, life in this region is complex and changes<br />
quickly. Even since the last APT, in 2006, a world of change has<br />
occurred, fundamentally shifting the Mekong’s social, economic and<br />
cultural dynamics. Thailand seems to be at an internal political stalemate,<br />
while externally at loggerheads with Cambodia over contested land<br />
at Preah Vihear; 4 Myanmar has announced its first elections in over 20<br />
years, despite the continued incarceration of Aung San Suu Kyi and<br />
2007’s violent crackdown on public demonstrations; and while Vietnam<br />
continues toward its goal of integration into the global community,<br />
it remains firm in its domestic policy of cultural and political control.<br />
The artists in this project have confronted regional and global change<br />
— sometimes turbulent, often subtle — in terms of their individual<br />
connection to place by creating works that can be read, understood and<br />
appreciated by local communities and international audiences alike.<br />
Through the documentation of the everyday in the photography of<br />
Manit Sriwanichpoom and Vandy Rattana, we begin to appreciate the<br />
tensions beneath the image that are frequently obscured by stylised<br />
media representations — clichéd scenes of teeming global cities and<br />
grinding poverty on the one hand and, on the other, of charming rural<br />
life promoted by the nations themselves. In a way, the artists challenge<br />
representation itself.<br />
Although the concept of ‘the Mekong’ as a region . . . appears<br />
everywhere in documents on development cooperation, the term<br />
requires critical analysis because many fundamental questions<br />
remain about what it connotes . . . More fundamentally, do the<br />
societies in the geographical area we refer to as the Mekong region<br />
possess any distinct cultural identity? 3<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ists and married couple Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu of Myanmar<br />
have chosen a unique strategy in their photographic series ‘Blurring<br />
the boundaries’; they speak about the process of creating work in an<br />
environment often hostile to the creative process. They have created<br />
a series of photographs of models for exhibitions that have yet to,<br />
and may never, be realised. The simulacrum reaches full maturity in<br />
that the models replace the need for physical space and become<br />
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba<br />
Japan/United States/Vietnam b.1968<br />
The Ground, the Root, and the Air: The Passing of the<br />
Bodhi Tree (still) 2004–07<br />
High-definition digital video, single channel, colour, sound,<br />
14:30 minutes / Image courtesy: The artist; The Quiet in the<br />
Land, Laos; Mizuma <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Tokyo; Lehmann Maupin<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, New York / Photograph: Yukari Imai<br />
120 121
Svay Ken<br />
Cambodia 1933–2008<br />
Leaving the meat and chewing the bone leads one<br />
to ruin (from ‘Sharing knowledge’ series) 2008<br />
Oil on canvas / 80 x 100.2cm / Purchased 2008.<br />
The <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong><br />
Acquisitions Fund / Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Wah Nu, Rich Streitmatter-Tran and Tun Win Aung<br />
review art work in the studio, Yangon, Myanmar,<br />
November 2008 / Photograph: Aung Ko<br />
Sopheap Pich<br />
Cambodia b.1971<br />
Binoculars with Buffalo (from ‘1979’ series) 2009<br />
Bamboo, rattan, plywood, paint, wire, wood / 2 pieces:<br />
171 x 61 x 61cm (each); 21 x 28 x 9.5cm / Project for<br />
APT6 / Image courtesy: The artist / Photograph:<br />
Vandy Rattana<br />
the exhibition of the exhibition. The works redefine ‘space’ in a place<br />
where many have lamented its shortage for art, and suggest that, no<br />
matter the conditions, the artist and the imagination still have the<br />
power to move forward.<br />
In my role as co-curator and as an artist living in the region, I believe it<br />
is not a matter of defining what the Mekong essentially is, but where it<br />
is now. The river will always reinvent new paths, and the communities in<br />
turn must adapt to ever-changing conditions. We might reconsider art<br />
as response and responsibility. Some of the artists have been witness to<br />
generations of change and, in certain cases, the formation of the modern<br />
states that exist today. Svay Ken, the most senior artist represented in<br />
the project, inspired a new community of Cambodian artists before<br />
his passing in 2008. His series ‘Sharing knowledge’ 2008 was painted<br />
to transfer moral messages to the young generation of Cambodians.<br />
Borrowing from the timeless forms of Buddhist temple paintings and<br />
moral teachings, these works read like a manual for modern living,<br />
urging the viewer to consider their responsibility to society.<br />
Other artists have returned to live and work in the region after years<br />
abroad, such as Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, based in Ho Chi Minh City; and<br />
Sopheap Pich, based in Phnom Penh. Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s work is central<br />
to the display, comprising a video projection filmed along the Mekong<br />
River in Laos. Produced in collaboration with students from the School<br />
of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s in Luang Prabang, The Ground, the Root, and the Air: The<br />
Passing of the Bodhi Tree 2004–07 conveys the growing tide of economic<br />
development and its effect on traditional life and Buddhist values.<br />
Sopheap Pich and I returned from the United States to Cambodia<br />
and Vietnam, respectively, around the same time. We first met in<br />
2006, when we collaborated on an installation for the Java Cafe and<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> in Phnom Penh. It has been interesting to see his work evolve<br />
into what is shown in The Mekong, in which his earlier experiments<br />
with material and form have taken a much bolder conceptual leap.<br />
The sculptures in bamboo and rattan — signature materials in Pich’s<br />
work — recall objects from childhood memories of the traumatic<br />
period at the end of the Khmer Rouge era in 1979. Vietnamese<br />
artist Bùi Công Khánh also works with traditional materials with his<br />
blue-and-white porcelain vases. Imagery of daily urban life in Ho Chi<br />
Minh City is interwoven with traditional motifs of dragons, flowers<br />
and birds, placing the contemporary situation of Vietnam within the<br />
flow of its history.<br />
Two streams<br />
The pairing of ‘curator’ and ‘local expert’ encourages an equitable<br />
process and signals a clear move toward sustainable arts development<br />
and exchange for the future. It says that each has a voice that can<br />
best be articulated through conversation and dialogue, undermining<br />
a history of authority, and configuring a metaphor for negotiating a<br />
river rather than exploring it. A ‘mutual Mekong’ could form the<br />
foundation for an adaptable model, the future development of<br />
which might flourish using a number of cultural initiatives, particularly<br />
where there is a lack of a developed institutional infrastructure for<br />
contemporary arts and culture currently.<br />
The Mekong region, and South-East Asia broadly, has yet to establish<br />
a curatorial studies program at university level. While we may not<br />
see such a university program in the short term, education-centred<br />
and community-focused initiatives have occurred in lieu, such as the<br />
Rockefeller Foundation-supported Mekong <strong>Art</strong> and Culture Project in<br />
2007. 5 <strong>Art</strong>ists from the region know only too well that their individual<br />
practices can move forward only as fast as other developments fall into<br />
place. More artists are investing time in the creation and maintenance<br />
of shared spaces and collectives, as well as assuming different hats<br />
depending on needs, at times becoming writers, critics and curators.<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ist Nguyen Nhu Huy, for example, has for the last few years invested an<br />
enormous effort in translating international art texts into Vietnamese, as<br />
well as curating local exhibitions and writing criticism for online journals.<br />
An important component of The Mekong is the display of children’s<br />
drawings from four cities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and<br />
Australia. Titled My River, My Future, the display presents drawings<br />
by the younger generation about their connection to their local rivers<br />
— the Saigon in Ho Chi Minh City, the Sangker in Battambang, the<br />
Irrawaddy in Yangon and the Brisbane River. Drawings not selected<br />
for display will be redistributed among the three other communities<br />
to complete a loop of mutual exchange.<br />
As an artist, I feel that my investment in the Mekong region has been<br />
affirmed by working with the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> for both The<br />
Mekong and the children’s project. Cooperation proves to be a model<br />
that I hope can be replicated in future activities, and I am pleased to<br />
be able to share our region with a broader community in Brisbane.<br />
What started out for me as a research project has become more fully<br />
realised here, and more closely developed my relationship with the<br />
arts and artists of this region. Through the works of the artists, writers<br />
and children involved in this project, The Mekong invites audiences to<br />
make new connections, which extend beyond tropical temptations, to<br />
this unique region. There are still many rivers to cross.<br />
Rich Streitmatter-Tran<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Rich Streitmatter-Tran, Mediating the Mekong [2005 Martell Contemporary <strong>Art</strong><br />
Research Grant for the Asia <strong>Art</strong> Archive report], Asia <strong>Art</strong> Archive, Hong Kong, 2006.<br />
2 Furuichi Yasuko (ed.), Alternatives 2005: Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>s Spaces in Asia, The<br />
Japan Foundation/Tankosha Publishing Co., Ltd., Tokyo, 2004.<br />
3 Maria SI Diokno and Nguyen Van Chinh (eds), ‘Introduction: Mother of waters’, in<br />
The Mekong Arranged and Rearranged, The Mekong Press, Chiang Mai, 2006, p.2.<br />
4 Preah Vihear is a Khmer temple on the Cambodian side of the Cambodia–Thai<br />
border. It has been the location of a century-long border dispute between the two<br />
countries, erupting again in 2008 when Cambodia sought World Heritage Listing<br />
for the site, leading to a military standoff. See Jonathan Head, ‘Modern conflict<br />
near ancient ruins’, BBC News Online, 15 October 2008, , viewed 18 October 2009.<br />
5 The Mekong <strong>Art</strong> and Culture Project comprised lectures, artist and curatorial<br />
workshops, art camps, research awards and scholarships run in collaboration with<br />
eight art institutes in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam during the period<br />
2006–08. It resulted in a regional touring exhibition in 2008. See Dr Toeingam<br />
Guptabutra (ed.), ‘Underlying’: Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> Exhibition from the Mekong<br />
Subregion [exhibition catalogue], The Mekong <strong>Art</strong> and Culture Project, Silpakorn<br />
University, Bangkok, 2008.<br />
122 123
Bùi Công Khánh<br />
Contemporary story<br />
Bùi Công Khánh’s painted porcelain vessels feature the ubiquitous sights<br />
and sounds of Vietnamese daily life: motorbike riders, street signage,<br />
advertising and romantic interludes. By combining what he calls ‘the<br />
character of the present’ with the traditional form of the porcelain vase,<br />
Bùi places the culture of modern life into the flow of history. 1<br />
Bùi’s ceramic work draws particularly on traditional Vietnamese blueand-white<br />
pottery, which is decorated using an underglaze technique<br />
— cobalt blue oxide is applied to the porcelain vessel and covered with<br />
a translucent glaze before being fired in a kiln at high temperature.<br />
The use of cobalt blue underglaze, for painting classic images such as<br />
landscapes, dragons, flowers, fish and birds, began in Vietnam during<br />
the fourteenth century, about the same time as it did in China. 2 Blueand-white<br />
porcelain, whether Chinese or Vietnamese, soon became a<br />
trading commodity in markets in South-East Asia and the Middle East,<br />
and eventually worldwide, versions of which are still made today for<br />
international markets. 3<br />
Despite the layers of images and texts, Bùi says he wants to present<br />
modern life as simply as possible: ‘like when we close our eyes and<br />
we can hear the noise on the streets’. 8 Life in Vietnamese cities has<br />
altered dramatically over the last 20 years, starting in 1986 with Ðôi<br />
môi (literally, change and newness), when Vietnam began transforming<br />
itself into a market economy with a socialist direction. Since then, the<br />
country has seen amazing economic growth accompanied by cultural<br />
changes including tacit acceptance of personal freedoms. 9<br />
It is this new life in Vietnam that Bùi comments on in his art. ‘I paint the<br />
life calmly like writing my diary’, he says. Bùi Công Khánh’s ceramics<br />
— as well as his paintings, performances and sculptures — skilfully link<br />
contemporary society in Vietnam to history. But, even as he draws on<br />
traditional practice, what he cares most about ‘is the present life,<br />
I don’t want to sponge the past, I don’t want to use the past like a<br />
way to preserve the “national cultural character”’. 10<br />
Bùi Công Khánh<br />
Vietnam b.1972<br />
A contemporary story 2 2008<br />
Porcelain, hand-painted / 58 x 20 x 20cm / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation Grant /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Vietnamese porcelain was mainly off-white in hue, and the subtle<br />
contrast between the blue decoration and white clay body was<br />
considered a distinguishing feature. 4 Vietnamese potters also benefited<br />
from smooth-textured clays, enabling them to produce light vessels<br />
with thin walls. 5 Both qualities are apparent in Bùi’s vases, but he has<br />
subverted traditional practices and designs to suit his own purposes.<br />
In APT6 there are two large vases (over a metre high), as well as a<br />
series of seven smaller vases (around half a metre high), one for each<br />
day of the week, creating a kind of diary of life in Vietnam, ‘life that<br />
seems never to be interrupted’. 6 Bùi’s graphic, figurative images drawn<br />
on the porcelain, woven with traditional elements, portray the artist’s<br />
personal stories mixed with frenetic city life. As he explains, one vase,<br />
titled A contemporary story 1 2008, includes his own face along with<br />
his mother’s because ‘my knowledge, my artistry were supported<br />
by my mom and her hard work’; another, A contemporary story 2<br />
2008, includes an image of a man submerged in a container of water,<br />
‘swimming in his puddle of life and thinking that it is as huge as [an]<br />
ocean’ — a familiar predicament. 7<br />
Bùi’s often humorous stories are, however, more intriguing than these<br />
descriptions might suggest; the vases present layered narratives,<br />
composed of multiple images. A contemporary story 2, for example,<br />
has an image of a second man sitting on a toilet and holding a plate<br />
with a hamburger and a can of soft drink. Writ large above the figure<br />
are the words ‘Live to eat’, which comments on far-reaching Western<br />
consumerist society — a recurrent theme in Bùi’s art. He also incorporates<br />
texts taken from propaganda banners or street signage, such as:<br />
‘Attention please!’, ‘No gathering and no trading’ and ‘Culture quarter’,<br />
while the words ‘Tonight I celebrate my love’ are taken from the Peabo<br />
Bryson and Roberta Flack song, popular in Vietnamese karaoke bars.<br />
Ian Were<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Bùi Công Khánh, email to Russell Storer, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, 8 February 2009.<br />
2 Blue-and-white ceramics prospered in Jingdezhen, China, during the Yuan dynasty<br />
(1271–1368) and were introduced to Vietnam towards the end of the Tran dynasty<br />
(1225–1400). See Tokyo National Museum, , viewed August 2009; see also the Metropolitan Museum<br />
of <strong>Art</strong>, New York, ,<br />
viewed August 2009.<br />
3 See Asia Society, New York, , viewed August 2009.<br />
4 See Tokyo National Museum, , viewed August 2009.<br />
5 Allison Eckardt Ledes, ‘Vietnamese ceramics’, The Magazine Antiques, vol.150,<br />
no.3, September 1996, pp.238–9.<br />
6 Bùi, email to Russell Storer.<br />
7 Bùi, email to Russell Storer.<br />
8 Bùi, email to Russell Storer.<br />
9 See San José State University Department of Economics, ‘The political and<br />
economic history of Vietnam’, <br />
viewed August 2009; and The Star Online, , viewed August 2009.<br />
10 Bùi, email to Russell Storer.<br />
124 125
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba<br />
Breathing is free<br />
Central to Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s work is the socioeconomic change<br />
brought to postwar Vietnam by the rising tide of globalisation. In<br />
considering this issue, however, the artist takes a broad view; he does<br />
not identify himself with one single country making up his heritage —<br />
Japan (his mother’s country, and where he was born), the United States<br />
(where he was raised), or Vietnam (his father’s country and where he<br />
has lived since 1997). Rather, he moves fluidly between them, drawing<br />
on all three cultures. Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s memorials to the plights of<br />
his compatriots — the ‘boat people’ who left Vietnam to seek freedom,<br />
only to become refugees — are attempts at ensuring the problems of<br />
refugees worldwide are in the forefront of peoples’ minds.<br />
Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s practice has taken multiple forms since<br />
1994, with his drawings, sculptures, performances and installations<br />
consistently referencing local motifs such as rice, mosquito nets,<br />
dragons and cyclos. His ‘Memorial project’ video series, a suite of<br />
four films shot between 2001 and 2003, is particularly noteworthy 1 —<br />
Nguyen-Hatsushiba aligned imagery of figures floating underwater<br />
with acts of mourning victims of war and environmental destruction.<br />
This poetic approach, alerting audiences to social concerns, has<br />
brought him wide acclaim internationally.<br />
The video work The Ground, the Root, and the Air: The Passing of<br />
the Bodhi Tree 2004–07 was realised in cooperation with 50 students<br />
from the School of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s in Luang Prabang in Laos, an ancient<br />
city experiencing the influence of global market forces. However, it<br />
differs from Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s ‘Memorial project’ series in that<br />
its social messages are treated more abstractly, contributing to its<br />
beauty and lyricism.<br />
Hatsushiba aims to run the shortest distance to the other side of the<br />
earth (12 756.3 kilometres, the earth’s diameter), as a metaphor for<br />
the refugee’s unfulfilled wish to escape to the polar opposite of their<br />
circumstances. The bodies of his performers are subjected to tough<br />
conditions, entering territory somewhat beyond their control. Air is a<br />
metaphor for freedom in Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s work; breathing is free,<br />
indeed. People struggle underwater, on the ground, or in the river, to<br />
release themselves and to find freedom, and when they finally do, it<br />
offers a vision of hope for the future.<br />
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba encourages a realist approach to his work:<br />
‘My work might look political, but I am not here to take sides on<br />
which perspective is correct’. 2 The magic of art does not lie in political<br />
correctness or in the direct quotation of a real situation. It is far more<br />
effective to engage viewers through beauty based on reality and<br />
tangibility. In examining society’s realities, Nguyen-Hatsushiba says,<br />
‘what I need to create at the end must present itself as magic’. 3<br />
Shihoko Iida<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the complex — For the courageous,<br />
the curious, and the cowards 2001; Happy New Year: Memorial Project Vietnam II<br />
2003; Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas: Battle of Easel Point — Memorial Project<br />
Okinawa 2003; and Memorial Project Minamata: Neither either nor neither — A love<br />
story 2002–03.<br />
2 Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, interview by Fernando Galán, art.es, no.1, 2004, p.59.<br />
3 Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, email to the author, 4 July 2008.<br />
The film features the students sketching the spectacular landscape<br />
along the Mekong River as they sweep along it on their wooden<br />
motorboats. When the boats near a sacred Bodhi tree on the<br />
riverbank, some of the students suddenly leap into the water and swim<br />
towards it, as if led by the Buddhist chants on the soundtrack. This act<br />
may be interpreted as the silent will of the Laotian people to maintain<br />
the flow of Buddha’s spirit, even as multinational capital pours into<br />
the country. It could also be read as an attempt to locate oneself in<br />
the great cycle of life, recognising that each one of us is a part of it.<br />
As the work approaches its serene yet dramatic climax, we gradually<br />
see these tensions appear and disappear in the drift of eternal time<br />
that the Mekong symbolises.<br />
The work of Nguyen-Hatsushiba both recognises history and steps<br />
into the future. He has worked with the people of Nha Trang in<br />
Vietnam, and Okinawa and Minamata in Japan — who bear the<br />
historical scars of war and pollution — inviting them to perform in his<br />
underwater works. In his ongoing running project, Breathing is free:<br />
12,756.3 for global refugee crisis, which he began in 2007, Nguyen-<br />
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba<br />
Japan/United States/Vietnam b.1968<br />
The Ground, the Root, and the Air: The Passing of the<br />
Bodhi Tree (stills) 2004–07<br />
High-definition digital video, single channel, colour,<br />
sound, 14:30 minutes / Courtesy: The artist and Mizuma<br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Tokyo / Images courtesy: The artist; The Quiet<br />
in the Land, Laos; Mizuma <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Tokyo; Lehmann<br />
Maupin <strong>Gallery</strong>, New York / Photographs: Yukari Imai<br />
126 127
Sopheap Pich<br />
1979<br />
Sopheap Pich creates sculptures that respond to his surroundings,<br />
landscape and history. Central to Pich’s practice is how we perceive<br />
and experience the world, and his works reflect his upbringing and<br />
contemporary experience in Cambodia, as well as his years living<br />
and studying in the United States. Working with rattan, bamboo and<br />
burlap — materials used in Cambodian craft and agriculture — his<br />
refined, expressive sculptures move between abstract and figurative<br />
representations of forms and phenomena, observed in the natural<br />
environment and in daily Cambodian life.<br />
For the installation ‘1979’, made for APT6, Pich has created a series of<br />
evocative sculptures that recall objects he observed in the landscape<br />
during the journey back to his hometown of Battambang, shortly after<br />
the fall of the Khmer Rouge. 1 When the Vietnamese army defeated<br />
the regime in January 1979, families began to drift out of the village<br />
communes they had been imprisoned in and return home. Pich and<br />
his family walked for several days across country roads and rice fields,<br />
encountering others like themselves, making their way back to places<br />
and lives they had once known.<br />
Drawing on this experience in ‘1979’, Pich provides a personal context<br />
in which to consider this pivotal period of Cambodian history, and the<br />
complex function of memory in narratives of the past. Eight years old at<br />
the time, Pich recalls the journey as a surreal introduction to the unknown:<br />
These objects were alien to me at the time but in seeing them I<br />
realised my world was bigger, that Cambodia was bigger, and that<br />
I was seeing things for the first time. 2<br />
evoking an aeroplane turbine. Its pierced burlap surface allows light to<br />
enter, revealing internal segments and cavities. Binoculars with Buffalo<br />
(from ‘1979’ series) is an oversized pair of field-glasses realised as<br />
finely structured conical shapes which are wall-mounted, exaggerating<br />
its redundancy as a tool. Hundreds of strands of rattan are knitted<br />
together with wire to create the sculpture, which cast shadows onto an<br />
upward-gazing buffalo below. Buffaloes are celebrated in Cambodia<br />
for their endurance and strength, and Pich draws parallels between<br />
them and the state of the Khmer people at the time: ‘We were thin and<br />
laboured and we had endured . . . we were like buffaloes, we had been<br />
deprived’. 5 Like fragments of memory, his reconfigured forms reflect<br />
the intangible components of human perception.<br />
At the end of their journey, Pich’s family settled temporarily in the<br />
grounds of Wat Ta Mim temple in Battambang town before being<br />
repatriated to a refugee camp in Thailand. Buddha (from ‘1979’ series)<br />
marks the significance of the journey, its twists and turns echoed in<br />
the contours of the sculpture’s body. The willowy curls of the rattan,<br />
its tips stained with red dye, produce ethereal patterns on the floor<br />
and wall. Citing the fragments of pillaged statuary throughout the<br />
countryside, it is a sombre finale. Sopheap Pich recalls his experience<br />
upon entering the temple:<br />
. . . there was a feeling of fear, of haunt. Inside the temple, on<br />
the ceiling, and floor, red all over. On the other end was ghostly,<br />
shadowy shapes of different objects unclear to me at the time, but<br />
this was a place where statues are located. 6<br />
Sopheap Pich<br />
Cambodia b.1971<br />
Buddha (from ‘1979’ series) 2009<br />
Rattan, wire, dye / Installed dimensions:<br />
220 x 110 x 30cm / Project for APT6 / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist / Photograph: Vandy Rattana<br />
While the anticipation of a changed world was palpable, the sudden<br />
surfacing of incongruous forms in the countryside was equally<br />
disquieting. Rusted, burnt, and in various states of disuse, of these<br />
forms he notes, ‘I didn’t know what they were or where they came<br />
from. From the sky? From the war?’. 3<br />
Pich’s characteristic rattan sculptures are reworked here with opaque<br />
and transparent materials. In ‘1979’, landmines, military equipment,<br />
machine parts and bombshells — meticulously crafted from rattan,<br />
bamboo and burlap — are assembled in the gallery space as if<br />
discarded in a field. Buffaloes carved by village craftsmen are reduced<br />
by the enormity of the objects scattered nearby. Textured with burlap<br />
and coloured with paint, the forms evoke what the artist refers to as<br />
‘the vagueness of memory . . . these are weighted memories and they<br />
are also unclear’. 4 The variations in both scale and proportion of these<br />
combined elements suggest a forensic investigation of the remnants<br />
of war from the vantage point of a child.<br />
Pich’s Machine (from ‘1979’ series) appears as a large curvilinear<br />
remnant of a formerly functional object, its worn, punctured lining<br />
Mellissa Kavenagh<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge seized power, Pich and his family were<br />
relocated from their town of Battambang in north-western Cambodia, near the<br />
border of Thailand, to a labour camp in a village commune known as Macleaur.<br />
See Cambodian <strong>Art</strong>ists Speak Out: The <strong>Art</strong> of Survival (Occasional Papers on<br />
Democratic Development), Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, vol.4, 2008, pp.53–7.<br />
See , viewed 8 July 2009.<br />
2 Sopheap Pich, conversation with the author, Brisbane, 3 July 2009.<br />
3 Pich, conversation with the author.<br />
4 Sopheap Pich, email to the author, 12 June 2009.<br />
5 Pich, conversation with the author.<br />
6 Sopheap Pich, email to the author, 22 August 2009.<br />
128 129
Manit Sriwanichpoom<br />
The agony of waiting<br />
In 2006, the 60th anniversary of Thailand’s revered King Bhumibol<br />
Adulyadej’s accession to the throne was marked by celebrations across<br />
the country. Also known as Rama IX, Bhumibol is the world’s longest<br />
serving head of state and Thailand’s longest reigning monarch. Yet,<br />
this figure of remarkable consistency and respect sits above a deeply<br />
divided and volatile nation: Bhumibol’s reign has seen 17 military<br />
coups and 29 prime ministers. Although a constitutional monarch,<br />
the king has played a crucial, if ambiguous, role in Thai politics,<br />
notably supporting the 1992 transition from military rule to an elected<br />
government. For a country experiencing endemic political corruption,<br />
and facing widening gaps between the urban middle classes and the<br />
rural poor, the king offers a model of detached integrity and a symbol<br />
of social cohesion and moral authority.<br />
On the surface, Manit Sriwanichpoom’s 2006 series of photographs<br />
‘Waiting for the King’ is a straightforward record of crowds gathered<br />
for the king’s birthday at the Royal Ground in Bangkok on 5 December.<br />
The photographs are black and white, but it is clear that most of the<br />
subjects are wearing the canary yellow shirts — the colour representing<br />
Monday and the king’s day of birth — produced for the 60th jubilee,<br />
which many Thais continue to wear today. 1 However, the people do not<br />
look particularly jubilant, appearing alternatively bored, stern, tired,<br />
wary or even slightly hostile. Many have waited for hours in Bangkok’s<br />
humid heat, some sleeping overnight to gain a position for only a few<br />
seconds’ glimpse of the king as his motorcade passes on its journey<br />
from his residence to the ceremonial Grand Palace.<br />
urban environment are featured in the book Bangkok in Black and<br />
White (1999) 3 , and the series ‘Dream interruptus’ 2000 records the<br />
abandoned and unfinished buildings left behind in the wake of<br />
the financial crisis, like the ruins of a war zone. Protest 2002–03 was<br />
produced from a year of weekly visits to the gates of Bangkok’s<br />
<strong>Government</strong> House, where protestors from all over Thailand, from laidoff<br />
city workers to displaced farmers, come to make their cases heard.<br />
With poignant directness, these works convey the effects of rapid<br />
economic transformation on individual lives, and the failure of public<br />
institutions to assist and support them.<br />
‘Waiting for the King’ continues this documentary approach in a less<br />
overt but equally powerful manner. Sriwanichpoom brings to the<br />
dynamic action and immediacy of street photography the deep focus<br />
of portraiture, its pared-back style strengthened by his use of blackand-white<br />
film. The frieze of 14 photographs in this series extends over<br />
seven metres, yet we are drawn instantly to individuals. The stationary<br />
nature of waiting, and the stillness of the work, makes it appear as if<br />
these people are posing for the artist. We see the apprehensive, yet<br />
direct, stares of a couple with their arms folded, her spotted hat, his<br />
tattooed forearms; a young man in his camouflage pants, seemingly<br />
faraway; and a mother and her young son, in his unwittingly graceful<br />
pose. With elegant simplicity and clarity, Sriwanichpoom captures the<br />
anxiety of a nation looking toward an uncertain future — its beloved<br />
king cannot always be counted on to arrive.<br />
In a culture where confrontation is traditionally frowned upon,<br />
Sriwanichpoom has made political commentary and social activism<br />
the driving force for his work. He is perhaps best known for staged<br />
photographic tableaux exploring the effects of Thailand’s economic<br />
booms and busts, fuelled by the forces of global capitalism and<br />
Western influence. In This bloodless war 1997, he reworked famous<br />
war photography to portray a society in meltdown during that year’s<br />
Asian financial crisis, brought about by the devaluation of the inflated<br />
Thai baht. His ongoing series featuring the Pink Man (performance<br />
artist Sompong Thawee) considers the globalised world through the<br />
eyes of a contemporary Thai consumer, embodied by Thawee with<br />
his lurid pink suit, mobile phone and empty pink shopping cart. He<br />
appears against postcard-perfect landscapes and religious sites —<br />
internationally renowned images and lucrative resources of Thailand<br />
— or inserted into media images of violent uprisings and crackdowns<br />
that have occurred all too frequently in Thai history. ‘Fat and happy’,<br />
the Pink Man epitomises what Sriwanichpoom views as an apathetic,<br />
consumerist populace, continually failing to learn from its mistakes. 2<br />
Alongside these acerbic constructions, Sriwanichpoom, who has<br />
worked as a press and advertising photographer, also makes images<br />
in a photojournalistic mode. His photographs of Bangkok’s changing<br />
Russell Storer<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Yellow shirts are still worn by many Thais on Mondays, and have also been taken up<br />
by the People’s Alliance for Democracy, a movement constituted largely by royalist<br />
members of Bangkok’s middle classes. This movement was behind the street<br />
protests which led to the overthrow of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006,<br />
and of the Thaksin-aligned Somchai Wongsawat government in 2008. Thaksin<br />
supporters, mostly from rural Thailand, are known as ‘red shirts’.<br />
2 Chawadee Nualkhair, ‘The politics of art and the art of politics’, Bangkok Post,<br />
28 September 2008.<br />
3 Manit Sriwanichpoom, Bangkok in Black and White, Chang Phuak Ngadam,<br />
Bangkok, 1999.<br />
Manit Sriwanichpoom<br />
Thailand b.1961<br />
‘Waiting for the King (standing)’ series 2006<br />
Gelatin silver print, ed. 1/9 / 50 x 49.5cm / Purchased 2008<br />
with funds derived from the Bequest of Grace Davies<br />
and Nell Davies through the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
130 131
Manit Sriwanichpoom<br />
Thailand b.1961<br />
‘Waiting for the King (standing)’ series (details) 2006<br />
Gelatin silver prints, ed. 1/9 / 14 sheets: 50 x 49.5cm (each) /<br />
Purchased 2008 with funds derived from the Bequest of<br />
Grace Davies and Nell Davies through the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
132 133
Svay Ken<br />
Painting from life<br />
Svay Ken<br />
Cambodia 1933–2008<br />
One who is rich but neither feeds nor looks after one’s<br />
parents is subject to ruin (from ‘Sharing knowledge’<br />
series) 2008<br />
Oil on canvas / 80 x 100.2cm<br />
One who is rich and has abundant food but hides<br />
delicious food for himself is subject to ruin (from<br />
‘Sharing knowledge’ series) 2008<br />
Oil on canvas / 79.5 x 99.8cm<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Government</strong>’s<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Svay Ken’s powerfully honest and vivid observations of daily life forged<br />
a new path for Cambodian contemporary art, in which self-expression<br />
and personal history merge with the Khmer artisan tradition of the<br />
cheang salapak gor, or worker–artist. 1 His subjects include still lifes,<br />
portraits, moral allegories and everyday scenes, often drawn from<br />
memory and photographs. During his 15-year painting career, Svay<br />
was internationally renowned as one of the few Cambodian artists<br />
to have openly depicted life under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime<br />
(1975–79); in 2000–01, he painted a significant 128-canvas cycle<br />
tracing his wife’s life, from birth to her death from cancer — in the<br />
process encompassing 60 years of modern Cambodian history. Before<br />
his own death in 2008, Svay completed a final series of paintings<br />
entitled ‘Sharing knowledge’, a selection of which is featured in APT6.<br />
Svay Ken was born in 1933 into a family of farmers and temple painters<br />
in the southern province of Takeo. He was sent to a monastery as a<br />
youth, where he studied Buddhist scriptures and philosophy, as well<br />
as the Khmer alphabet. As a young man he moved to Phnom Penh,<br />
and worked as a porter at the prestigious Hotel Le Royal until he and<br />
his family were forced out of the city in 1975, under Pol Pot’s Maoinfluenced<br />
regime, to work as rural labourers. The family survived but<br />
were separated, and did not reunite until four years later, following the<br />
Khmer Rouge’s defeat by the Vietnamese army, when Svay returned to<br />
Phnom Penh and resumed work at the hotel, remaining there until his<br />
retirement in 1993.<br />
To continue supporting his family, Svay Ken began painting<br />
shortly before his retirement, at first selling works to hotel guests.<br />
Although self-taught, he quickly gained local attention, and his<br />
first exhibition was held at the New <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> in Phnom Penh in<br />
1994. He subsequently began showing regularly in Cambodia and<br />
internationally, and became a role model for younger artists. With<br />
the destruction of much Khmer culture during the Pol Pot era, the<br />
visual arts in Cambodia was, and still is, largely comprised of slick<br />
landscapes and traditional imagery produced for the tourist market.<br />
Svay Ken’s paintings differ markedly, using raw, direct brushwork and<br />
an intuitive palette to depict quotidian experience, even under harsh<br />
circumstances. His Khmer Rouge period paintings, for example, include<br />
scenes of violence and warfare, but also of people cooking, eating and<br />
working. These recollections are unique and significant; as so much<br />
individual and collective memory was lost, the era remains largely<br />
unrepresented, particularly from a local perspective. Svay once stated:<br />
I don’t want people to forget how life was. I make my paintings so<br />
that future generations can ponder the question: ‘How was life then<br />
and how is life now?’ 2<br />
The ‘Sharing knowledge’ series was also conceived as a message<br />
for the future. It illustrates Buddhist religious and moral statements,<br />
offering guidance to the young for living a good and honest life.<br />
The works reflect Svay’s early temple education and lifelong ethos,<br />
and indicate his concern with the decline of morals and tradition<br />
in contemporary Cambodian society. They warn against greed,<br />
selfishness, and the neglect of parents and those in need, as well as<br />
affirming the importance of respecting elders. As the artist has said:<br />
I didn’t choose to share many lessons on prosperity. I want the young<br />
people to know more the causes of self-ruin. Sometimes one’s nature<br />
is good, but one commits sins absentmindedly. 3<br />
Svay Ken’s selected statements are painted in a flat, structured format<br />
evoking traditional temple murals. The elaborate Khmer script forms<br />
a distinctive and central feature of each work, and the images are<br />
comprised of group portraits and tableaux. Set against monochromatic<br />
backgrounds of dark greens and blacks — and, in one startling work,<br />
sickly yellow — the paintings communicate the artist’s moral advice<br />
directly and assertively. While located in time-honoured religious<br />
teachings, they are also grounded in contemporary life; a recurrent<br />
theme is the growth of a wealthy urban middle class in Phnom Penh,<br />
who often come from farming families and increasingly leave their<br />
poorer rural relatives behind. As with all of Svay’s paintings, the<br />
apparent simplicity and immediacy of the ‘Sharing knowledge’ series<br />
is underpinned by keen observation, a deep understanding of the<br />
function of painting in Cambodian society, and a belief in the role of<br />
the artist as witness and storyteller.<br />
Russell Storer<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Erin Gleeson, ‘Where I work: Svay Ken’, <strong>Art</strong> Asia Pacific, no.59, July–August 2008,<br />
p.172.<br />
2 Svay Ken, quoted in Erin Gleeson, ‘Svay Ken: Home and country’, <strong>Art</strong> Asia Pacific,<br />
no.46, fall 2005, p.61.<br />
3 Svay Ken, ‘<strong>Art</strong>ist’s statement’, in Svay Ken: Sharing Knowledge [exhibition<br />
catalogue], Bophana Audiovisual Resource Centre, Phnom Penh, 2008, p.7.<br />
134 135
Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu<br />
Between the two<br />
The Asia Pacific Triennial continues to connect artists and communities,<br />
this year including artists from the Union of Myanmar (sometimes<br />
referred to by its former colonial name, Burma) 1 for the first time in the<br />
series’ 16-year history. Featured in The Mekong project of APT6 is the<br />
photography series ‘Blurring the Boundaries’ 2007–09, a collaborative<br />
work by artists and married couple Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu, based<br />
in Yangon (Rangoon).<br />
Myanmar is perhaps the most restrictive among the states of the<br />
Greater Mekong Subregion in terms of control over internal cultural<br />
and political activity. Information for and about contemporary arts is<br />
severely limited, while all exhibitions, publications and performances<br />
must receive official permission. People of the ASEAN (Association<br />
of South-East Asian Nations) member states can generally travel<br />
without the need for visas, however, Myanmar is the exception in<br />
that its citizens must obtain visas for nearly every venture outside the<br />
country. In the past, this has made it difficult for many of its artists<br />
to connect with the larger South-East Asian and international arts<br />
communities. In spite of this, Myanmar has developed a bold new<br />
generation of artists that has increasingly attracted attention from<br />
international galleries and curators.<br />
When I started to do my video work, at that time, I never saw video art<br />
before . . . That kind of art is very new for [our] country till that time.<br />
But I know about this technique, because I grew up in [a] film industry<br />
family. I know where I can find the materials such as cameras. This is [a]<br />
good reason why I can present my idea with this new media. 4<br />
While artists from Myanmar continue to struggle to find their place at<br />
home and as part of a larger arts community, their honest and inspiring<br />
‘do-it-yourself-by-any-means-necessary’ work ethic demonstrates that<br />
the imagination cannot be bound.<br />
Rich Streitmatter-Tran<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 The socialist republic of Burma officially adopted the name Myanmar (formally<br />
the Union of Myanmar) in 1989.<br />
2 Jean Baudrillard, The Simulcra and the Simulation, University of Michigan Press,<br />
Ann Arbor, MI, 1995.<br />
3 Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu, email to the author, 30 September 2009.<br />
4 Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu, email to the author.<br />
The relationship between fiction and reality has always been complex.<br />
Theorist Jean Baudrillard, known for his work on simulation and the<br />
complications that arise from it, posited that a simulacrum is a thirdgeneration<br />
copy where reality is ultimately replaced — the simulacrum<br />
is the reality. 2 The photographs in ‘Blurring the Boundaries’ trace this<br />
phenomenon. Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu have referred to original<br />
works in scaled simulations. These simulations are then photographed,<br />
in effect becoming the third-generation simulacra and, for this<br />
exhibition, they replace the original work, obliterate the reference, and<br />
become the art work itself. In certain photographs, the illusion is so<br />
convincing that the viewer is hard-pressed to identify the model at all.<br />
When asked why they created the models, the artists responded:<br />
Tun Win Aung: This is a very simple reason. I want to see my idea as<br />
an actual work. But most of my ideas are difficult to see realised.<br />
Wah Nu: Sometimes I have an idea but I can’t do the final installation.<br />
But I want to see it by myself. I want to show it to another person. And<br />
I want to know how my work is going to affect them when they finish<br />
seeing it. This is not only something special, but also to see and tell. 3<br />
Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu, trained in sculpture and music<br />
respectively, and graduated from the University of Culture in Yangon<br />
in 1998, where they met. Since then, both artists have become freer in<br />
terms of the media and the forms they explore. While Wah Nu studied<br />
music, she had inclinations for the visual arts:<br />
Tun Win Aung<br />
Myanmar b.1975<br />
Wah Nu<br />
Myanmar b.1977<br />
Blurring the Boundaries #5 2009<br />
Digital print / 42 x 59cm / Image courtesy: The artists<br />
136 137
Vandy Rattana<br />
Fire of the year<br />
Vandy Rattana<br />
Cambodia b.1980<br />
Fire of the year 8 2008<br />
Digital print / 105.5 x 63.5cm / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Cambodian photographer Vandy Rattana’s ‘Fire of the year’ 2008 is a<br />
poignant series of images of a blaze on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.<br />
The fire razed the district of Dteuk Tlah (Clear Water), where 300 families<br />
lived cheek-by-jowl in wooden homes above a polluted lake. Most<br />
of the buildings in the district perished, although some were saved<br />
through bribes and negotiations with the fire police. 1 Fires are common<br />
in today’s Cambodia, as Vandy notes: ‘they are part of our lives, like<br />
eating or playing sports’, 2 implying that the most unsettling aspect<br />
of this tragedy is its familiarity. ‘Fire of the year’ powerfully gestures<br />
to a deeper political condition in Cambodia — its expanding urban<br />
populations, and the limited infrastructure available to support them. 3<br />
With their careful composition, these photographs provide a vital<br />
context in which to consider the reality of contemporary life in<br />
Cambodia, a concern which sustains the artist’s practice. These<br />
images are made all the more compelling through their visual<br />
finesse — specifically, the artist’s attention to detail, and his play with<br />
composition and depth of field. In one photograph, a fireman emerges<br />
from a cloud of smoke, framed by the grille of a security door and the<br />
tightly cropped head of an observer in the foreground. In another<br />
image, a fire hose spouts an arc of water into a billowing smoke stack,<br />
while another almost moves into abstraction, with its dense haze of<br />
smoke filling the frame, the outline of a TV antenna barely visible.<br />
There is a moment of sobering gravity — and perhaps precarious hope<br />
— in the final photograph of the series, where a small child, almost out<br />
of frame, fossicks among the debris floating on the lake for materials to<br />
sell on the streets.<br />
Vandy’s photographs evoke the rhythm and pulse of life in Cambodia.<br />
Working in series, he uses light, composition and subtle layers of<br />
colour to build associations between images. Photography is a<br />
practice unique to his generation of artists; his travel within the region<br />
as a resident artist and his experience as a press photographer has<br />
deepened his resolve to represent everyday realities. Vandy’s serial<br />
approach recalls the long history of narrative composition in Khmer<br />
art, where epic stories and legends are vividly illustrated in the fresco<br />
paintings and bas-reliefs of ancient temples. His images also have<br />
an intensely cinematic quality; the frame-by-frame approach and<br />
finely constructed compositions reveal situations of great drama<br />
and consequence, and are perhaps informed by the artist’s strong<br />
appreciation of film culture.<br />
Vandy’s evocative and sharply observed studies of his environment,<br />
however, suggest a passionate commitment to influence and<br />
communicate, rather than to simply document:<br />
My goal is to show life and invite people to examine life. I want my<br />
pictures to have the smell of my mother’s food and the sound of my<br />
father’s stories. 4<br />
This intimacy can be seen in earlier works which portray quiet domestic<br />
interiors and social routines, such as games of chess in the street, as<br />
well as portraits of friends and family. His first solo exhibition, ‘Looking<br />
in My Office’, was a wry and candid portrayal of corporate behaviour. 5<br />
When employed at a telecommunications company, Vandy captured<br />
the inner workings of the office environment by furtively snapping<br />
pictures of his colleagues — applying makeup, draped wearily across<br />
keyboards, and filing, endlessly filing.<br />
More recently, Vandy has undertaken a rigorous exploration of the built<br />
environment of Phnom Penh, where the changing cityscape has been<br />
supported by a meteoric rise in foreign investment. 6 Canadia Building<br />
2007 documents the construction of the capital’s first skyscraper,<br />
while his collaborative project The building 2008 considers the social<br />
and demographic transformation of the city’s first public housing<br />
development, an iconic structure now slated for demolition. 7 As with<br />
‘Fire of the year’, these images are considered observations of daily life<br />
that make critical connections between present-day narratives and the<br />
historical value inherent in chronicling the contemporary moment. As<br />
Vandy Rattana says:<br />
. . . it is important to create images because in Cambodia we lack<br />
an archive. Documentation is both a reflector and creator of history.<br />
We need documentation to help us understand the changes from<br />
generation to generation. 8<br />
Mellissa Kavenagh<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 The fire brigade is colloquially referred to as the ‘fire police’ in Cambodia, as cited<br />
by the artist in an email to the author, 22 August 2009.<br />
2 Vandy, email to the author.<br />
3 The various implications of population expansion, land management and urban<br />
planning in the capital are outlined further in Vann Molyvann, Modern Khmer Cities,<br />
Reyum Publishing, Phnom Penh, 2003, pp.111–15.<br />
4 Vandy, email to the author.<br />
5 ‘Looking in My Office’ was held at Popil <strong>Gallery</strong> in Phnom Penh, Cambodia,<br />
November 2006 – January 2007.<br />
6 In recent times, Cambodia has experienced remarkable change, due in part to the<br />
dual quest for foreign investment and increased economic growth. See Adrian<br />
Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, ‘Country for sale’, The Guardian, 26 April 2008.<br />
7 Designed by architect Vann Molyvann, ‘The building’ is an example of the school<br />
of Khmer Modernism that flourished briefly under King Norodom Sihanouk in the<br />
1950s and 1960s. Part of an ambitious city planning scheme, it has an important<br />
place in the history of modern Khmer architecture. See Ly Daravuth and Ingrid<br />
Muan, Cultures of Independence, Reyum Publishing, Phnom Penh, 2001, p.11.<br />
8 Vandy Rattana, quoted in Erin Gleeson, ‘Avant-garde blaze new trails’, Phnom Penh<br />
Post, 12 August 2009.<br />
138 139
Tracey Moffatt<br />
Plantation<br />
In film, an establishing shot sets up a location, a scene, often an entire<br />
scenario that allows the narrative to unfold. When that first image is a<br />
point-of-view shot, as in Tracey Moffatt’s photo series ‘Plantation‘ 2009,<br />
we pay attention. A guide directing our gaze, Moffatt’s protagonist<br />
appears in 9 of the 24 images and immediately tells us, even though<br />
his back is turned to us, especially because it is, that he wants to see<br />
the interior of the graceful white plantation house before him; even<br />
more, he longs to be inside. If lack drives desire, as the psychoanalysts<br />
tell us, this will be a story of deprivation and unfulfilled longing. 1<br />
Who is this man? What is he doing here, what does he want? The<br />
entire suite suggests a narrative that eludes one’s grasp — literally, as<br />
the man’s hand holding a tree at the perimeter of two images makes<br />
plain: he can see the house but cannot grasp it or what it signifies, what<br />
he so ardently desires. As ‘Plantation‘ unfolds, as one walks along the<br />
paired images, we see that this is not a simple story; it is profoundly<br />
ambiguous. The cane glows golden; skies become ominously red; we<br />
see glimpses of the great plantation, its glamour and squalor separating<br />
owners and workers; other-worldly lights dance unexplained; we sense<br />
an unspecified menace lying hidden.<br />
Burning flames, ardent desire: this is a classic tale of the tropics,<br />
where beauty and grace are rooted in bounteous soil and nourished<br />
by inequity. Its dark Gothic tone recalls the literature of the American<br />
South, a distinguished modern canon with tales of passions fuelled by<br />
injustice, at once sad, dignified, and ultimately ferocious. 2 Wherever<br />
sugar has been planted (the Caribbean, Africa, the American South,<br />
the Philippines, northern <strong>Queensland</strong>, Fiji), the politics of the industry’s<br />
economy invariably plays out to the disadvantage of its labour —<br />
usually imported, indentured men. Moffatt’s man is alone, as so many<br />
were, transported without their families and left to make a future. (As<br />
a commentator recently remarked about migrant labour, ‘We asked<br />
for workers. We got people instead’.) 3 As the storyboard of images<br />
in ‘Plantation‘ reveals, the protagonists in this drama, both seen and<br />
unseen, are not yet entirely aware of what is happening — they are only<br />
beginning to discover the nature of their predicament.<br />
In ‘Plantation‘, one is simultaneously in the past and the present. The<br />
elegant old house speaks of the authority of past generations and<br />
established privilege, of desiccated glamour under the burning sun.<br />
But the work’s cinematic immediacy places us firmly in the present.<br />
There is no easy nostalgia, no faded touristic glamour for its own sake.<br />
Moffatt is an astute student of cinema, hypersensitive to its languages,<br />
conventions, genres and iconic moments. She reads them carefully,<br />
though she collects scenes from fiction as well, and ‘Plantation‘ has<br />
been richly nourished. 4 Here, Moffatt also borrows louche allure from<br />
vintage photography, the studied pairing of the images suggesting<br />
late nineteenth-century stereoscopic photographs, though hers don’t<br />
coalesce into one image as stereotypes do; on the contrary, each<br />
counterpoised pair offers a partial and carefully calibrated glimpse<br />
into a larger and more complex narrative. This strangely present past<br />
derives directly from Moffatt’s use of old black-and-white photographs<br />
that have now been hand-coloured, printed on delicate bamboo paper<br />
and cropped in archaic vignettes. These stylistic discrepancies register<br />
subliminally, like memories.<br />
What does this man desire so ardently, that the country eventually<br />
burns up? To belong to this place? Is it finally a question of not what,<br />
but who is planted — or implanted — in this unsustainable economy?<br />
The ‘plantation’, then, is not only a place, a house, a property; it is also<br />
a set of actions, a history that is not fully played out.<br />
In a completely different tone, at APT6 Moffatt is also debuting OTHER<br />
2009, the last in a suite of seven video works that take key themes in<br />
cinema as their topics. 5 Witty, sexy, fast-paced, OTHER reminds us that<br />
popular films create compelling images of relationships across race and<br />
gender lines. In the contemporary world, people migrate, meet, love<br />
and part in unexpected ways that underline our ‘other-ness’, but, at the<br />
same time, also rely on our common humanity. Desires are implanted<br />
in our hearts by forces beyond our control, yet acting them out always<br />
remains our decision, our responsibility, our hope for redemption.<br />
Julie Ewington<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Influential theories on the operations of desire in cinema are indebted to the<br />
revisionist French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, especially in writings by Laura<br />
Mulvey and other Anglophone and French film theorists. See Mulvey’s classic,<br />
‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, originally published in Screen, vol.16, no.3,<br />
Autumn 1975, pp.6–18.<br />
2 William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and Harper Lee are amongst a group of authors<br />
who took American literature to international prominence by focusing on<br />
entrenched privilege in the American South and using the vernaculars of white<br />
and black Americans. Faulkner’s cinematic style, rooted in theatre, transferred<br />
immediately to Hollywood, where he wrote screenplays; Lee’s novel To Kill a<br />
Mockingbird (1960) became, in 1962, one of the most celebrated films of the<br />
modern civil rights movement.<br />
3 Dr Khalid Koser of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and the Brookings<br />
Institution, Washington, DC, from a conversation recorded in July at the 2009<br />
Adelaide Festival of Ideas about borders, human rights, the economics of<br />
migration and its consequences, broadcast on ABC Radio National’s The National<br />
Interest, 9 and 11 October 2009. Koser was quoting Swiss writer Max Frisch in 1986<br />
on the Swiss guest worker experience.<br />
4 Moffatt’s favourite mid twentieth-century authors include southerners Carson<br />
McCullers, Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. Email to the author,<br />
November 2008.<br />
5 The complete series is Lip 1999, <strong>Art</strong>ist 2000, Love 2003, Doomed 2007,<br />
Revolution 2008, Mother 2009 and OTHER 2009.<br />
Tracey Moffatt<br />
Australia/United States b.1960<br />
Diptych no.2 (from ‘Plantation’ series) 2009<br />
Diptych no.11 (from ‘Plantation’ series) 2009<br />
Digital prints with archival pigments, InkAid, watercolour<br />
paint and archival glue on handmade Chautara Lokta<br />
paper / 45.5 x 50cm (each) / Images courtesy: The artist<br />
and Roslyn Oxley9 <strong>Gallery</strong>, Sydney<br />
140 141
Farhad Moshiri<br />
Hybrid confections<br />
The vast city of Tehran, with its rich cultural and visual art traditions<br />
and volatile recent history, inspired Farhad Moshiri’s three ‘candy<br />
store’ paintings in APT6. A vibrant modern city with a strong art scene,<br />
Tehran has been shaped by numerous turbulent events over the last<br />
30 years — from the 1979 revolution, which saw the overthrow of the<br />
Pahlavi dynasty and the politicisation of Islam, to the war with Iraq in<br />
the 1980s, and the recent troubled elections of 12 June 2009, which<br />
reinstated conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is a city<br />
characterised by a productive clash between tradition and modernity,<br />
and the desire to find a uniquely Iranian way of negotiating such<br />
discord. Accordingly, Moshiri has described Iran as ‘a gigantic art<br />
project’: ‘you feel like this whole country is an experiment, trying to<br />
do something different’. 1<br />
Moshiri studied in the United States at the Californian Institute of the<br />
<strong>Art</strong>s (Cal<strong>Art</strong>s) in the 1980s, returning to Iran a decade later. His aesthetic<br />
language is formed by a pop sensibility, a keen eye for vernacular<br />
culture and a consciousness of Persian cultural heritage. American<br />
conceptual artist John Baldessari was Moshiri’s mentor at Cal<strong>Art</strong>s, while<br />
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is also an influence. His interests are in<br />
‘consumption and cultural hybridity’ and, ‘using the embedded cynicism<br />
in the material’, he often lets his subjects and materials speak for<br />
themselves. 2 A versatile and multifaceted artist, Moshiri’s practice has<br />
encompassed painting, photography, installation and the occasional<br />
curatorial project. His materials and motifs range from Farsi script,<br />
Persian poetry, Swarovski crystals and gilt furniture and weaponry, to<br />
post-revolution architecture and commercial household items.<br />
The architecture of Tehran forms the unlikely starting point for Mobile<br />
Talker 2007, Soldier 2007 and Magic White Horse with Gold Saddle<br />
2008. Inspired by ‘the mall, the bazaar, the decorative and ornamental,<br />
and wedding culture in Iran’, 3 these paintings were initially prompted by<br />
the excess of the popular post-Islamic revolution style of architecture:<br />
layered wedding cake and modern drapery, adorned with red roses.<br />
Although they refer to items which are significant in Persian culture —<br />
the red rose of Rumi’s thirteenth-century poetry and fabric — they are<br />
emptied of obvious importance to become satiric signifiers of kitsch<br />
wedding culture and nouveau riche aspirations. Over this imagery,<br />
Moshiri draws the outline of a figure formed using his acrylic ‘icing’.<br />
In Mobile Talker, a veiled young woman is outlined in bright hues,<br />
her mobile phone pointing to the tension between tradition and<br />
modernity in Iran. Soldier shows a moustachioed soldier in a style<br />
suggesting Persian miniature painting. The third work, Magic White<br />
Horse with Gold Saddle, plays on the idea of the minimal or op art<br />
canvas; this idea is subverted both by the title (which refers to a classic<br />
Persian tale), and by the textural detail of the work’s surface, which is<br />
covered with sculptural, jewel-like confectionery. The white horse of<br />
legend is almost buried by the abundance of ornamental food and<br />
scintillating colour.<br />
Farhad Moshiri’s works are beautiful, hybrid objects, which undermine<br />
attempts to stereotype either the exoticism of the East or the<br />
consumerism of the West. Complex and multilayered, they combine<br />
local and global references to take a light-hearted, yet penetrating,<br />
look at the paradoxes of contemporary life in Iran.<br />
Abigail Fitzgibbons<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Farhad Moshiri, in Deborah Campbell, ‘Unveiled: Can Iranian artists depict the real<br />
Iran?’, Modern Painters, no.56, October 2005, p.58.<br />
2 Farhad Moshiri and Antonia Carver (interview), ‘Every society has its taboos’, <strong>Art</strong>s<br />
Newspaper, vol.17, no.191, May 2008, p.49.<br />
3 Moshiri and Carver, p.49.<br />
4 Farhad Moshiri, in Jyoti Kalsi, Gulf News, 10 May 2007, , viewed 10 September 2009.<br />
To me the white buildings decorated with layers of baroque, Roman<br />
and Iranian carving look like cakes. The idea of people living in a huge<br />
wedding cake and their ostentatious lifestyle, especially the extravagant<br />
weddings, was the starting point for a cake series that took a tongue-incheek<br />
look at high society and the hybridisation of cultures. 4<br />
Farhad Moshiri<br />
Iran<br />
Mobile Talker 2007<br />
Oil, synthetic polymer paint and glitter on canvas /<br />
170 x 140cm / Private collection, Dubai / Image<br />
courtesy: The artist and The Third Line, Dubai<br />
All three paintings are associated with a group of works referred to as<br />
Moshiri’s ‘candy store’ works, after the kitsch, evocative name of the<br />
solo exhibition in which they appeared, and for their characteristically<br />
sculptural surfaces of acrylic ‘confectionery’ created with a cakedecorating<br />
tool. Subsequent exhibitions were titled ‘Sweet Dreams’<br />
and ‘Threshold of Happiness’.<br />
Soldier and Mobile Talker use two layers of imagery. Backgrounds are<br />
formed by a flat hyperrealist painting of an ornamental, elaborately<br />
142 143
Kohei Nawa<br />
Seeing is believing<br />
Kohei Nawa’s creations reveal ‘the uncertainties of reality between<br />
seeing and perception’. 1 Nawa’s works take various forms, from<br />
ink drawings to works made with materials such as silicone oil or<br />
polyurethane foam. But his most eye-catching sculptures, produced<br />
since 2002, transform pre-existing objects through the addition of a<br />
new surface layer of transparent glass or resin beads. In focusing on<br />
the outer layer, or epidermis, of things, Nawa creates poetic visions<br />
that draw from, and reflect, our new information society.<br />
Nawa is fascinated with how we gather information from our<br />
environment with the senses of sight and touch. To the sense of<br />
sight, everything around us is a series of light-reflecting surfaces, and<br />
everything we can perceive by touch is covered by some kind of skin.<br />
Nawa is acutely aware of how we identify with, and are made conscious<br />
of, the world at the level of these skins or membranes. He is interested<br />
in probing the interface between our senses and external objects, and<br />
how our understanding of the world is formed from this interplay.<br />
In realising his sculptures, Nawa undertakes a formalised process<br />
that meshes virtual images from the internet with real objects. First,<br />
through online searches using keywords, he finds an item and captures<br />
it as a digital image on a computer screen; he considers this the ‘first<br />
contact’ with the item. Describing his interest in this initial encounter<br />
with the image and how it changes with the physical reality of the<br />
object, Nawa states:<br />
I believe that the image one sees is different from the actual thing<br />
in many ways. The thing has a weight and an odour. By judging the<br />
thing at the image stage, one ends up rejecting its physical reality. 2<br />
Once the object has been acquired and physically received, Nawa<br />
proceeds to the ‘second contact’ stage. After altering the appearance<br />
of the physical object through the transformative effect of applying<br />
glass and resin beads in various sizes, the object is presented as the<br />
third stage: a work emerging from, and informed by, the new order of<br />
the information society. 3 Here, the structure engages reality through<br />
the cyber world: in using the resin beads, Nawa tries to recapture the<br />
properties of the virtual image in physical form. In this context, each<br />
bead becomes a component in a project to recapture something of the<br />
original, pixelated computer image. Nawa calls the result a ‘PixCell’. 4<br />
A way of intervening in or manipulating reality, the PixCell becomes a<br />
new kind of visual medium, another way to fix an image in time. Nawa<br />
likens the PixCell to ‘storage formats, such as JPEG or MPEG. All works<br />
that are added automatically become part of the PixCell world’. 5<br />
In APT6, Nawa’s creation PixCell-Elk#2 2009 transforms the body of<br />
an elk purchased through an internet auction site. 6 Although this<br />
species (Cervus elaphus) is native to parts of North America and East<br />
Asia, it is found in other countries around the world, and this particular<br />
specimen — preserved through taxidermy — originated in New<br />
Zealand. The transparent glass and resin beads dramatically change<br />
our perception of the original creature. The surface of the animal is<br />
fractured, magnified and distorted through the images captured inside<br />
the spheres, transforming it into particles of deconstructed light that<br />
create an effect of enchanting effervescence. Viewed through this shell,<br />
the elk’s textures and colours are filtered through, and dissipated into,<br />
a myriad of individual surfaces, like the pixels on a computer screen.<br />
There is an overwhelming desire to touch the beaded structure to see<br />
if the beads will dissolve, like blown bubbles. The surface also conveys<br />
something elemental, organic or even fungal in appearance, as though<br />
the unfortunate creature has been consumed by some fantastic<br />
alien cellular organism. Nawa’s use of this medium has the effect of<br />
destabilising our sense of what is real and what is virtual.<br />
In Japanese Shinto belief, deer are considered to be divine<br />
messengers. Perhaps in the twenty-first-century world, Kohei Nawa’s<br />
PixCell-Elk#2 is a harbinger of a new kind of creative potential.<br />
Michael Hawker<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 SCAI The Bathhouse , viewed 6 August 2009.<br />
2 ‘Interview with the artist’, Galerie Vera Munro, , viewed<br />
7 August 2009.<br />
3 SCAI The Bathhouse website.<br />
4 This term was devised by the artist from the words ‘pixel’, which is the smallest<br />
element of an image, and ‘cell’, a biological cell; ‘PixCell’ thus means the cell of<br />
an image. See ‘Interview with the artist’, Galerie Vera Munro.<br />
5 See ‘Interview with the artist’, Galerie Vera Munro.<br />
6 Researching ‘deer taxidermy basics’ on the internet, it is interesting to note that only<br />
the hide of the animal is retained (apart from the antlers), and this is stretched over<br />
an armature, usually a polyurethane foam mould. Paradoxically little remains of the<br />
original animal’s body, but we still very much perceive the object as the ‘real thing’.<br />
See , viewed 6 May 2009.<br />
Kohei Nawa<br />
Japan b.1975<br />
PixCell-Elk#2 (detail) 2009<br />
Taxidermied elk, glass, acrylic, crystal beads /<br />
240 x 249.5 x 198cm / Work created with the support<br />
of the Fondation d’enterprise Hermės / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and SCAI, Tokyo / Photograph: Seiji Toyonaga<br />
144 145
Shinji Ohmaki<br />
Dissolving into light<br />
It is often said that artists ‘transform spaces’, yet their approaches<br />
vary greatly. The works of Shinji Ohmaki transform space, but not by<br />
assimilation; rather, by dissimilation. 1 Aristotle wrote that ‘<strong>Art</strong> imitates<br />
nature’; Ohmaki’s works neither imitate nature nor try to be natural.<br />
Instead, they make us recognise that we, as human beings, are ‘others’,<br />
existing outside the natural laws of space.<br />
I remember the first time I walked into Ohmaki’s 2002 installation<br />
ECHO. I felt a sense of dislocation as the bright flowers drawn with<br />
food colouring on the floor began to blur and disintegrate from the<br />
impact of my own footsteps, and were left as a stain on the floor. I was<br />
the one who destroyed the beauty of the work.<br />
Works that encourage audience participation, and require viewers<br />
to complete them, tend to be united under the banner of ‘relational’<br />
or ‘interactive’ art. In the case of ECHO, however, the installation<br />
dissimilates us, making us aware that the beauty of the flowers<br />
is artificial on several levels. It is created by human hands and,<br />
furthermore, drawn in artificial food colouring, the result of human<br />
desire to make natural colours and flavours more intense. It is the<br />
viewer who collapses this artificiality.<br />
According to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, flowers and<br />
plants are not intended to be beautiful; it is nature’s rationality that<br />
gives them beauty. However, beauty created by people is motivated<br />
by a desire that Kant called ‘purpose’. 2 At first glance, Ohmaki’s<br />
works often appear seductive and serene, perhaps because of their<br />
accessibility and use of appealing motifs, such as flowers, soap<br />
bubbles and light. On the other hand, the works gently point out<br />
that human life and energy motivated by desire or ‘purpose’ can<br />
sometimes be violently transformed — and this transformation may<br />
not always be welcome.<br />
anime film Akira, in which the lead character’s spirit becomes fused<br />
with his body, which dissolves into light and then transforms into energy.<br />
The white ropes and white light surround viewers in the glass space,<br />
merging them into the glowing installation like the character in the<br />
film. Liminal Air – descend – 2007–09 is a work inviting an experience of<br />
dissolution, in which we become fused with our environment.<br />
In Ohmaki’s most recent installation, Vacuum Fluctuation 2009, shown<br />
at Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya, the dregs of consumer society —<br />
represented by tonnes of industrial slag — gradually fell to the floor<br />
from a small hole in the ceiling during the course of the exhibition.<br />
Like a grisly hourglass, the work registered how human beings are<br />
consuming the earth’s energy and rapidly destroying its environment.<br />
Shinji Ohmaki’s practice is beautiful. The seductiveness and serenity<br />
of his work may perhaps overshadow the fact that his practice also<br />
works as a warning to contemporary society. Human beings are a part<br />
of nature, but will be dissimilated easily, as Ohmaki’s work tells us, if we<br />
do not pay it enough attention. Yet Ohmaki never becomes cynical. He<br />
maintains hopes and dreams, and tries to encourage us to coexist with<br />
our natural environment — by communicating through art.<br />
Shihoko Iida<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 ‘Dissimilation’ means to become dissimilar or less similar to one’s environment. In<br />
this essay, the word means that a viewer becomes alien in the installation space by<br />
invading and destroying its spatial harmony, and comes to realise his/her isolated<br />
existence in the environment.<br />
2 See Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, 1790, trans. Shinoda, Hideo,<br />
Iwanami Shoten, Japan, 1964.<br />
Shinji Ohmaki<br />
Japan b.1971<br />
Liminal Air – descend – 2007<br />
Nylon string, fluorescent light, glass / Installation view,<br />
21st Century Museum of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>, Kanazawa /<br />
Image courtesy: Tokyo <strong>Gallery</strong> + BTAP / Photograph:<br />
Tadasu Yamamoto<br />
Still, Ohmaki does not place us in a double bind; rather, his works offer<br />
multifarious viewpoints, particularly in his ‘Liminal Air’ series started<br />
in 2003. These massive installations invite us to experience multiple<br />
ideas of ‘liminality’, including the reversal of inside and outside, the<br />
visible and invisible, body and spirit, and life and death. In 2003,<br />
Ohmaki played with physiological and spatial liminality, covering the<br />
entire ceiling of the Tokyo Wonder Site Hongo gallery space with a<br />
large cascade-like structure made of plaster, which reached down<br />
to the floor. Later that year, at <strong>Gallery</strong> A4 (A-quad) in Tokyo, Ohmaki<br />
constructed a new version of the work by suspending approximately<br />
120 000 braided nylon ropes from the ceiling. In 2007, at the 21st<br />
Century Museum of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>, Kanazawa, this work was<br />
developed further to create Liminal Air – descend – 2007. Here, Ohmaki<br />
hung approximately 120 000 braided nylon ropes from the ceiling in<br />
a specially constructed glass space filled with subdued lighting. The<br />
work crystallised a concept he drew from a scene in the 1988 Japanese<br />
146 147
The One Year Drawing Project<br />
‘The One Year Drawing Project’ is an artist book commissioned<br />
by the imprint Raking Leaves and involving the Sri Lankan artists<br />
Muhanned Cader, Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan, Chandraguptha<br />
Thenuwara and Jagath Weerasinghe. 1 Consisting of 208 individual<br />
drawings, this suite of works is one of the most fascinating, revealing<br />
and significant artistic undertakings produced in Sri Lanka. These are<br />
senior practitioners who have made distinct contributions to Sri Lanka’s<br />
burgeoning contemporary art scene through teaching, curating, art<br />
criticism, design and anti-war activism.<br />
The project began in May 2005, with each of the four artists creating<br />
one drawing which was then posted to one of the others. On receiving<br />
a drawing, each artist then produced another and sent this on. In this<br />
way, the body of drawings was made, exchanged, scrutinised, added<br />
to and developed, forming a group of original art works reflecting<br />
on an array of subject matter. As Raking Leaves founder and curator<br />
Sharmini Pereira describes it:<br />
For each of the participating artists drawing represents an indispensable<br />
investigative tool. Used as a reflective process, practised vehemently,<br />
privately and repeatedly, their drawing practices occupy a much overlooked<br />
side of contemporary Sri Lankan art. What binds them in this<br />
respect is their use of drawing as a visual short hand for scrutinising a<br />
range of subjects from popular culture to current affairs through the<br />
idiom of mark making and figuration. 2<br />
Like the surrealists’ use of the ‘exquisite corpse’ technique, ‘The One<br />
Year Drawing Project’ exploits its method’s openness to accident<br />
and interruption, the absurd and the workings of the subconscious.<br />
Exquisite corpse (in French cadavre exquis) was based on an old<br />
parlour game called Consequences, in which players would, in turn,<br />
write a sentence or phrase on a sheet of paper, fold it to conceal the<br />
writing, and pass it to the next player for a further contribution. The<br />
unexpected and playful nature of this game appealed to André Breton<br />
and his surrealist colleagues, and they adapted it to drawing. A suite of<br />
hybrid images was soon produced, the first of which was published in<br />
the journal La Révolution Surrealiste, in October 1927. 4<br />
‘The One Year Drawing Project’ differs from the surrealist endeavour<br />
in that the works are individually signed and can be followed as a<br />
linear sequence. The project also includes a timeline compiled from<br />
each artist’s contributions, ranging from personal events through to<br />
political incidents. Like the exquisite corpse, however, which began<br />
after World War One, this suite of drawings uses elements of free<br />
association and play in response to an atmosphere of political and<br />
military violence, and mobilises the ability of the subconscious to<br />
express deeply personal responses.<br />
Suhanya Raffel<br />
The artists’ studios are located across Sri Lanka, from Jaffna in the<br />
north to the outer suburbs of the capital, Colombo, on the south-west<br />
coast. Based on a process of exchange, what is described in the title<br />
as a ‘one-year’ project in fact took two and a half years, ending in<br />
October 2007. The optimism of this exchange continued a dialogue<br />
and mode of cooperation, characterised by persistence, which was<br />
undertaken against a backdrop of the civil war that began in the early<br />
1980s. Importantly, the four artists conducted this project with care,<br />
understanding the legacy of years of ethnic violence and despite their<br />
different ethnicities. The extended completion time was, in part, due<br />
to ongoing violence and instability (concentrated in the north and<br />
east and, periodically, in the capital), which inevitably affected daily<br />
life. As Pereira notes:<br />
Each of the artists brings his own approach, style and sensibility to<br />
the project. Cader’s drawings are characterised by the repeated<br />
use of a tightly drawn abstract yet whimsical form whose changing<br />
persona becomes a leitmotif throughout the project. Shanaathanan<br />
uses the male nude figure to explore experiences of human<br />
suffering, loss and dislocation. Thenuwara’s drawings move<br />
between figuration and abstraction, often using the iconography<br />
of camouflage — a symbol of military presence — to reflect on the<br />
conflict ridden situation in Sri Lanka. While Weerasinghe creates<br />
expressive, fervently composed drawings that combine and overlay<br />
political satire with the anxiety of the individual. 3<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Raking Leaves is an independent publisher of contemporary artist book projects,<br />
established in 2006 by the curator Sharmini Pereira.<br />
2 Sharmini Pereira, in material sent to the author, May 2007.<br />
3 Didactic material produced by Raking Leaves for presentation of ‘The One Year<br />
Drawing Project’, 21 August – 1 November 2009, at the Devi <strong>Art</strong> Foundation,<br />
Gurgaon, India.<br />
4 See William S Rubin, Dada and Surrealist <strong>Art</strong>, Museum of Modern <strong>Art</strong>,<br />
Harry N Abrams Inc., New York, 1968.<br />
The One Year Drawing Project<br />
Muhanned Cader<br />
Sri Lanka b.1966<br />
Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan<br />
Sri Lanka b.1969<br />
Chandraguptha Thenuwara<br />
Sri Lanka b.1960<br />
Jagath Weerasinghe<br />
Sri Lanka b.1954<br />
The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007 2005–07<br />
Pencil, synthetic polymer paint, pen and gouache<br />
on paper / 187 sheets: 29 x 21cm (each) / 21 sheets:<br />
21 x 29cm (each) / The Lekha and Anupam Poddar<br />
Collection<br />
Muhanned Cader<br />
Sri Lanka b.1966<br />
Drawing A5 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
The Lekha and Anupam Poddar Collection /<br />
Image courtesy: The artists and Raking Leaves<br />
148 149
Muhanned Cader<br />
Sri Lanka b.1966<br />
Drawing B4 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
Muhanned Cader<br />
Sri Lanka b.1966<br />
Drawing B7 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan<br />
Sri Lanka b.1969<br />
Drawing B5 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
Chandraguptha Thenuwara<br />
Sri Lanka b.1960<br />
Drawing B8 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
Jagath Weerasinghe<br />
Sri Lanka b.1954<br />
Drawing B6 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
Muhanned Cader<br />
Sri Lanka b.1966<br />
Drawing B9 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
The Lekha and Anupam Poddar Collection /<br />
Images courtesy: The artists and Raking Leaves<br />
Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan<br />
Sri Lanka b.1969<br />
Drawing C1 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
Chandraguptha Thenuwara<br />
Sri Lanka b.1960<br />
Drawing C4 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
Jagath Weerasinghe<br />
Sri Lanka b.1954<br />
Drawing C2 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
Jagath Weerasinghe<br />
Sri Lanka b.1954<br />
Drawing C5 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
Muhanned Cader<br />
Sri Lanka b.1966<br />
Drawing C3 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
Muhanned Cader<br />
Sri Lanka b.1966<br />
Drawing C6 (from The One Year Drawing Project<br />
May 2005-October 2007)<br />
The Lekha and Anupam Poddar Collection /<br />
Images courtesy: The artists and Raking Leaves<br />
150 151
Pacific Reggae<br />
Roots Beyond the Reef<br />
Reggae is everywhere in the Pacific, from Honiara to Honolulu, Papeete<br />
to Port Moresby. In a region covering a third of the world’s surface — with<br />
vast distances between population centres and profound historical,<br />
political and linguistic differences — few other contemporary cultural<br />
imports (except maybe spiced ham in a can and various brands of<br />
Christianity) have achieved the near ubiquity of reggae. For APT6, Pacific<br />
Reggae: Roots Beyond the Reef offers a snapshot of the grassroots<br />
dynamism marking reggae’s fairly recent indigenisation in the region,<br />
with an emphasis on the Melanesian islands of the western Pacific.<br />
In the Pacific, reggae booms from backyards, bars and cars, embellished<br />
by distinctively Pacific elements like tight vocal harmonies sung in local<br />
language, or maybe pidgin, and clattering log drums or cha-lang-a-lang<br />
ukulele. It’s a neighbourhood sound and part of the fabric of island<br />
life — almost traditional to many, while dismissed as an inappropriate<br />
foreign import by certain guardians of tradition. 1<br />
Now, more than ever, reggae artists — veterans and young hopefuls<br />
alike — are appearing on TV and online, offering contemporary Pacific<br />
music to a global audience. Videos are often simply documents of<br />
performances; at times, they take on the high production values of<br />
international cinema or advertising, but frequently they represent<br />
artists in their chosen milieu — at home in their family village,<br />
shantytown or recording studio. Current affairs, community politics,<br />
traditional words of wisdom, advice for changing times; all are<br />
rendered as a ‘performance’ for a reggae video. Even in light-hearted<br />
or romantic songs, a connection to ‘roots’ is evident, with everyday<br />
people or places momentarily transformed into pop iconography.<br />
And it is in these slices of contemporary island life — beyond, but not<br />
excluding, the tourist imagery of palm-fringed beaches and smiling<br />
faces — where a web of affinities between the Caribbean and Pacific<br />
becomes apparent. They make reggae a shared form of expression<br />
and pleasure, and a way of dealing with postcolonial realities without<br />
abandoning the deeper rhythms of local life. According to Emmanuel<br />
Narakobi, editor of rokrokmusic.com:<br />
On a cultural level Papua New Guinea could identify with Jamaica<br />
because both are developing nations. So the song content in terms<br />
of talking about struggle and hardships were identifiable with the<br />
PNG market. 2<br />
As Solomon Islands reggae luminary Sharzy (Sammy Saeni) says,<br />
‘We feel reggae music belongs to us, black people’. 3<br />
This sense of the appropriateness of Jamaican culture to Pacific<br />
conditions and sensibilities runs through Pacific Reggae’s broad<br />
sampling of local artists. The occasional complaint of ‘imitation’ or<br />
‘Jafaikin’ accents hardly registers when it comes to the local adaptation<br />
of reggae. It simply fits, and reggae’s musical appeal, coupled with<br />
its framework for social commentary and spiritual yearning, has tied<br />
it to the Pacific world, just as US rhythm and blues and soul once<br />
functioned for Jamaican audiences. David Nalo, from Vanuatu band<br />
26 Roots, notes:<br />
. . . reggae rhythms are similar to kastom (traditional) rhythms and<br />
other similarities include . . . colonialism, the idea of independence,<br />
similar environments (bush, living off the land). We have our own<br />
culture, reggae is parallel to it. 4<br />
Since 1979, when Bob Marley and the Wailers toured Australia, New<br />
Zealand and Hawai‘i, the Jamaican avatar’s famous approach to roots<br />
reggae, black history and identity has prospered in the Pacific, and<br />
was reinforced by visits by the late South African reggae star, Lucky<br />
Dube. Whatever international music trends wash over the region —<br />
hip-hop, techno, R & B — a familiar second and fourth ‘skank’ beat of<br />
guitar or keyboard, a steady bassline, inclusion of Jamaican patois<br />
and Rastafarian terms (which might hail Jah, confront injustice, or<br />
delight in the joys of love) signify an abiding respect for the early<br />
innovations of Jamaican musicians.<br />
In Pacific Reggae, you can hear and see the legacy of Uncle Bob and<br />
roots reggae. The young lions of JVDK (Justice et Vérité des Droits<br />
Kanak) from Kanaky/New Caledonia defend ‘Rastakanaky’ 5 , the fusion<br />
of indigenous Kanak cultural and political rights with notions of<br />
Rastafarian redemption from their particular colonial ‘Babylon’, which<br />
they chant down in pure Marley fashion. 26 Roots — who debuted at<br />
Fest’Napuan, the foremost live event in Melanesia, in 2008 — like many<br />
local bands, use a ‘one drop’ drum pattern (stressing the third beat of<br />
the bar) made famous by the Wailers’ drummer, Carlton Barrett, and<br />
incorporate traditional ni-Vanuatu tam tam log drums. Hawaiian Paula<br />
Fuga performs Bob’s ‘Stir it up’ with fellow Hawaiian Jack Johnson at<br />
the annual Kokua Festival. In her recordings, Paula combines reggae<br />
with powerful R & B vocal stylings and Hawaiian language and<br />
instrumentation (including nose flute), to further the native Kanaka<br />
Maoli agenda of cultural and political self-determination.<br />
That reggae roots are ever present doesn’t mean they’re unchanging.<br />
Also from Vanuatu, XX Squad, led by Marcel Meltherorong aka Mars<br />
Melto, have employed ni-Vanuatu percussion and bamboo flute, as<br />
well as ska, rock and folk arrangements to augment their repertoire.<br />
Sunshiners (Vanuatu/France) have made a name for themselves on the<br />
European tour circuit by covering ‘70s and ‘80s English pop standards<br />
with a mixture of reggae and indigenous string band music — tea chest<br />
bass and ukulele feature prominently. In their pitch to fans in Europe,<br />
they describe Vanuatu as a ‘tropical paradise whose very name invites<br />
you to dream. U2 is not known, nor is The Cure. Bob Marley is the only<br />
one who has left his imprint’. 6<br />
Marcel Meltherorong (aka Mars Melto) (New Caledonia/<br />
Vanuatu b.1975) performing at Fest’Napuan, Port Vila,<br />
Vanuatu 2008 / Image © Marke Lowen<br />
152 153
Not that ‘strictly roots’ approaches contradict the growing enthusiasm<br />
of young Pacific artists for blending reggae with hip-hop; dance music,<br />
in its myriad sub genres; and the electronic pulse of reggae’s Jamaican<br />
offspring, dancehall. <strong>Art</strong>ists such as O-shen and Chief Ragga (both<br />
based in Hawai’i), and Zennith from Kuranda in far north <strong>Queensland</strong>,<br />
add their own spin on hip-hop and dancehall, but are still identifiably<br />
reggae acts. O-shen, in particular, has created a unique pan-Pacific<br />
form of contemporary reggae rooted in his use of tok pisin and<br />
regional dialects from his childhood home in Papua New Guinea.<br />
The new variants of reggae are often invitations to dance, and<br />
nothing stops Anstine Energy, from Malaita in the Solomon Islands,<br />
from partying. With ‘fro and aviator shades in place — and moves<br />
to prove his moniker — Mr Energy gets down around Gizo town in<br />
Western Province. ‘Me wari’ exemplifies the creative possibilities (and<br />
pitfalls according to some critics) of popular Melanesian music which,<br />
like much of the current crop of Jamaican dancehall, is based on<br />
synthesiser- and sampler-based arrangements, assembled quickly in<br />
digital home studios by entrepreneurial producers who probably also<br />
edited the accompanying video. ‘Me wari’ is built around a two-note<br />
techno-style keyboard riff and looped drum pattern which settles into<br />
a bouncy reggae rhythm for Anstine Energy’s catchy choruses and<br />
lyrics, alternating between Jamaican-influenced English and Solomon’s<br />
pidgin. The colour-saturated video and the singer’s irrepressible sense<br />
of style make for a tropical pop explosion.<br />
Brent Clough<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 See John Berger, ‘’02 not the year Jawaiian dies, but watch out’, Honolulu<br />
Star-Bulletin, 1 January 2002.<br />
2 Emmanuel Narakobi, email to the author, September 2009.<br />
3 Sammy Saeni, email to the author, September 2009.<br />
4 David Nalo, email to the author, September 2009.<br />
5 User ‘Geronimo2967’ in text comments for JVDK YouTube video for ‘Nu Me Kade’,<br />
, viewed September 2009.<br />
6 Sunshiners, , viewed September 2009.<br />
7 Tiki Taane, , viewed September 2009.<br />
Maybe the most ambitious inclusion in Pacific Reggae is the video<br />
by the proud Māori artist Tiki Taane, who has spent many years<br />
performing dub reggae with the band Salmonella Dub. Tiki received<br />
considerable recognition in Aotearoa New Zealand for mixing<br />
dancehall, UK drum ‘n’ bass and kapa haka, or posture dance and<br />
chant, into a te reo Māori lesson on history and the environment in the<br />
song ‘Tangaroa’. According to Taane, this song expresses ‘the anger<br />
and rage Tangaroa [the Māori god of the sea] had towards mankind as<br />
we have shown no respect for the ocean and its inhabitants’. 7 Reggae<br />
and its offshoots are arguably the most popular styles of music in<br />
Aotearoa New Zealand today, and the attention to cultural detail in<br />
the ‘Tangaroa’ video demonstrates the sophistication at work.<br />
Performer Paula Fuga (United States b.1978)<br />
Image courtesy: Paula Fuga, Pakipika Productions LLC /<br />
Photograph © Sean M Hower<br />
Whatever its forms, reggae continues to ‘make sense’ in the Pacific.<br />
For 30 years, it has become a focus of popular culture for the young<br />
and a vehicle for social and spiritual expression. With its sinuous and<br />
potent rhythms, driven by the proliferation of small-scale recording<br />
and editing facilities and online diffusion via YouTube and other online<br />
outlets, reggae offers geographically isolated Pacific communities<br />
a vital way of negotiating a broader sense of the world — remaining<br />
rooted in island homes yet projecting far ‘beyond the reef’.<br />
154 155
Rithy Panh<br />
Gestures of protest<br />
Rithy Panh’s compelling documentary and feature films explore<br />
Cambodia’s recent traumatic past and its uncertain present. His body<br />
of work eloquently contributes to the reconstruction of Cambodian<br />
identity, which was largely stripped away during the Khmer Rouge<br />
regime (1975–79). His early feature film Neak Sre (Rice People) 1994<br />
focuses on a family’s struggle to eke out a living from the rice paddies,<br />
while One Evening After the War 1998 looks at the love between a<br />
returned soldier and an indentured prostitute. Exploring deceptively<br />
simple situations, Panh’s cinematic works present quiet understandings<br />
of the complexities surrounding love, loss, hope and frustration in<br />
contemporary Cambodia. Panh uses film as a way for survivors to<br />
record their memories, both personal and cultural, and to restore a<br />
semblance of identity and social cohesion in a country disconnected<br />
from its rich past.<br />
As a young child growing up in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh,<br />
Panh dreamt of becoming an astronaut like his hero Neil Armstrong,<br />
or an educator like his father. The ascension of the Khmer Rouge to<br />
power and the subsequent decimation of both population and culture<br />
— including the death of Panh’s parents, sister and nephew — would<br />
forever change his aspirations. After fleeing to France as a refugee,<br />
he took up painting, and then writing, in an attempt to piece his life<br />
together. However, it was not until he was handed a camera that he<br />
faced the memories of his past: 1<br />
films about the Cambodian genocide do not focus on the broader<br />
political and historical context of the regime. Instead, he articulates<br />
the psychological trauma associated with genocide through the<br />
recollections of those who survived. Even Panh’s S-21: la machine de<br />
mort Khmère rouge (S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine) 2003, in<br />
which a survivor of the regime’s most feared extermination facilities<br />
confronts his former guards and torturers, is carefully focused on<br />
the personal memories and experiences of individuals within the<br />
collective history of genocide. Uninterested in the usual conventions<br />
of documentary — archival image montages and accompanying<br />
voice-over — Panh relies on the camera to record, to interrogate and,<br />
above all, to listen.<br />
Through each intimate remembrance and historically inspired story,<br />
Panh interweaves evidence of human dignity and memory, utilising the<br />
camera to both record and actively listen to the unfolding narrative.<br />
Each film is a gesture of protest to awaken a nation still traumatised. 4<br />
With his sparse observational style and uncompromising lens,<br />
Panh’s filmmaking resolutely challenges the status quo, prompting<br />
Cambodians to give voice to the lost — both dead and living— and to<br />
embrace the importance of culture, identity, memory and dignity. 5<br />
Amanda Slack-Smith<br />
Rithy Panh<br />
Cambodia/France b.1964<br />
Production still from Neak Sre (Rice People) 1994 /<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 125 minutes, Cambodia/France/<br />
Switzerland/Germany, Khmer (English subtitles) /<br />
Image courtesy: CulturesFrance, Paris<br />
Production still from S-21: la machine de mort Khmère<br />
rouge (S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine) 2003 /<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 101 minutes, Cambodia/France,<br />
Khmer/Vietnamese (English subtitles) / Image courtesy:<br />
CulturesFrance, Paris<br />
Without genocide, without wars, I would probably not have become<br />
a filmmaker. But life after genocide is a terrifying void. It is impossible<br />
to live in forgetfulness. You risk losing your soul. Day after day, I felt<br />
myself sucked into the void. As if keeping silent was capitulation,<br />
death. Contrary to what I at first thought, to relive is also to take back<br />
your memory and your ability to speak. 2<br />
Empowered by his experience, Panh enrolled in the influential<br />
L’Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (Institute for<br />
Advanced Cinematographic Studies) in Paris, and directed his<br />
first documentary film Site ll in 1989, which examined the story of<br />
a displaced Cambodian woman living in a refugee camp on the<br />
Cambodia–Thai border. It was through these early works that Panh<br />
began to understand the need to reclaim identity through memory.<br />
This philosophy was further inspired by the work of French New Wave<br />
director Alain Resnais, once a student of the same film school.<br />
Having just emerged myself from genocide, Alain Resnais’ work on<br />
Night and Fog [1955] and Hiroshima Mon Amour [1959] really moved<br />
me. Resnais was the filmmaker who made me realize that filmmaking<br />
is a tool of expression I could use to express my own story. 3<br />
Unlike Resnais’s Night and Fog, which was one of the first films to take<br />
a confronting look at the Nazi concentration camps in Poland, Panh’s<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Sophie Boukhari, ‘Directors in exile’, The UNESCO Courier, October 2000, p.37.<br />
2 Rithy Panh, ‘Je suis un arpenteur de mémoires’, Cahiers du Cinéma, February 2004,<br />
pp.14–17, trans. and quoted in William Guynn, Writing History in Film, Routledge,<br />
New York, 2006, p.187.<br />
3 Michael Guillen, ‘TIFF08: Un barrage contre le Pacifique (The Sea Wall) —The<br />
Evening Class interview with Rithy Panh’, The Evening Class, 21 September 2008,<br />
,<br />
viewed 1 September 2009.<br />
4 The trial of Kaing Guek Eav, the first of five former Khmer Rouge leaders, began<br />
in August 2009. He was the head of the notorious Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison camp<br />
in Phnom Penh, presiding over the death of approximately 17 000 people. Young<br />
Cambodians are often unaware of the genocide due to a selective educational<br />
curriculum, while ageing generations are still fearful of former leaders yet to be tried.<br />
5 With the assistance of Leu Pannakar (cinematographer for former leader King<br />
Norodom Sihanouk) and selected international supporters, Panh has created the<br />
Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center in Phnom Penh, named after a woman<br />
whose torture and death was the focus of his early documentary Bophana:<br />
A Cambodian Tragedy 1996. Ten years in the making, the centre is dedicated to<br />
the preservation of Cambodian filmic, photographic and audio histories.<br />
156 157
Reuben Paterson<br />
Pathways through history<br />
In the monumental Whakapapa: get down upon your knees 2009,<br />
created for APT6 and installed on the soaring wall of the <strong>Gallery</strong> of<br />
Modern <strong>Art</strong>’s Long <strong>Gallery</strong>, Reuben Paterson combines his well-known<br />
motifs of fabric patterns, glitter and optically dazzling structures.<br />
Paterson is a young Auckland-based artist of Ngati Rangitihi and Scottish<br />
pakeha (non-Māori) descent. His practice draws from a combination of<br />
popular culture references, Pacific kitsch and Māori ancestral symbolism.<br />
Whakapapa: get down upon your knees is comprised of 16 richly<br />
patterned canvases abutted in a grid to form a work eight metres<br />
square. Its motifs relate to fabric patterns Paterson has encountered<br />
throughout his life, from sources as diverse as wallpaper, Hawaiian<br />
shirts, women’s frocks and men’s ties. Bisected diagonally, each<br />
module is comprised of two different patterns, arranged so that the<br />
final composition resembles a kaleidoscope. Glitter and diamond dust<br />
are incorporated into the paint, creating shimmering surfaces. The art<br />
work’s title suggests its concern with Māori whakapapa (genealogy).<br />
Papa means anything broad, flat and hard, such as a flat rock, slab or<br />
board; while whakapapa is to place in layers, or lay one upon another,<br />
and to name and recite one’s genealogy in proper order. 1<br />
While exuberant in appearance, the painting also refers to sad and<br />
sober events in Paterson’s life. His fabric motifs pay homage to his<br />
mother’s whakapapa, in particular to her mother, whom he never met.<br />
Many of the patterns are drawn from fabrics popular in the 1960s,<br />
when Paterson’s kuia (grandmother) was known for her fashionable<br />
party frocks, before depression and alcoholism led to her suicide.<br />
sequential recital of the various names for the first states of existence<br />
designated Te Kore (the void), Te Po (the dark), and Te Ao Marama<br />
(the world of light). Te Po, as the celestial realm, relates to the aeons<br />
of time when the earth came into being and is the phenomenological<br />
state these new works issue forth, divide and then unify from. 3<br />
Reuben Paterson layers a personal symbology that melds Māori<br />
traditions with Western cultural modalities into cultural forms,<br />
reinventing cultural specificity and symbolic power. In his fabrications<br />
and reconstructions, working through genealogies interrupted by<br />
marginalisation and social malaise, Paterson constructs new pathways<br />
through history.<br />
Angela Goddard<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Reuben Paterson, email to Maud Page, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, 13 October 2009.<br />
2 Paterson, email to Maud Page. Paterson continues: ‘Kowhaiwhai is most often<br />
found in the whare, or meeting house ridgepole (tahu) and on the rafters (heke).<br />
The patterns most often represent tribal genealogy. The main line of descent,<br />
beginning with the founding ancestor, is depicted as a single continuously flowing<br />
pattern. On the rafters, patterns depict diverging branches of descent. The fact<br />
that kowhaiwhai is used to depict tribal lineage carries with it associations of<br />
“authority by descent”’.<br />
3 Paterson, email to Maud Page.<br />
In some of the patterns, stylised versions of kowhaiwhai are<br />
discernable. Paterson consistently invokes Māori customs in his<br />
practice, such as these sacred and special patterns, to denote familial<br />
groups and alliances. He explains:<br />
The black kowhaiwhai pattern is called Puhoro. It is found on the<br />
waka (canoe), which links directly to whakapapa in that they brought<br />
our ancestors to Aotearoa, and also to swift movement. I use this<br />
kowhaiwhai to recite and create the motion of time, like that of<br />
whakapapa, and that of a turning kaleidoscope. 2<br />
The red–black–white pattern that sits against this kowhaiwhai design<br />
is from a Pucci fabric reworked by Paterson to contain more koru (the<br />
unfurling frond of the silver fern, a frequent motif in Māori culture).<br />
The kaleidoscopic structure enfolds and refracts the individual fabric<br />
patterns. Paterson describes the resulting form in terms of the Māori<br />
concept of the dark centre:<br />
A central concept in these new works reiterates my gratitude to<br />
life and acknowledges life’s juxtaposition to misdeed through the<br />
Reuben Paterson<br />
New Zealand b.1973<br />
Whakapapa: get down upon your knees 2009<br />
Glitter and synthetic polymer paint on canvas /<br />
16 canvases: 200 x 200cm (each) / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and Gow Langsford <strong>Gallery</strong>, Auckland /<br />
Photograph: Schwere Webber<br />
158 159
Campbell Patterson<br />
Intimate videos<br />
There is a disarming moment in Old clothes 2009, by New Zealand<br />
artist Campbell Patterson, when his performance before the camera<br />
is momentarily disrupted. Someone passes by and he must feign a<br />
casual stance, halfway through removing his clothing and dropping it<br />
into a rubbish bin in a quiet corner of a public space. The possibility<br />
that he may be sprung in the act haunts his videos — for they are mostly<br />
made in secret.<br />
Like the adolescent reader consuming something scandalous by<br />
torchlight under the bedcovers, Patterson works furtively in an intimate<br />
relationship with his camera.<br />
It’s important for me to perform to the camera only. If there is<br />
someone else watching it may change the way I act (unless this is<br />
part of the work). In a way the secrecy takes the performance directly<br />
to the audience. I don’t do live performance. 1<br />
However, the work is not confessional, revelatory nor expressly<br />
exhibitionistic. It does not share these intentions — the capture of<br />
something ‘real’ — with user-generated content found in abundance<br />
on the internet. What it does share is that style: an uncontrived use of<br />
the camera that is rough and immediate. Patterson is also heir to the<br />
performance art tradition of Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman and Marina<br />
Abramović, and the videos documenting their actions. His work draws<br />
on the possibilities opened up by post-object art, but synthesises them<br />
with the DIY aesthetic of YouTube. As he says:<br />
It is my job as an artist to think of ways to turn myself and my<br />
surroundings into compositions/art works. The way I behave in a<br />
situation, the things in my room, the interiors that belong to my life<br />
all can be used. It’s a process of turning nothing into something. 2<br />
who could, or would, never do. Patterson’s actions, however, are simple<br />
enough for the viewer to feel that he or she could take his place,<br />
lending a particular intimacy to his work.<br />
The viewer can also feel drawn in by the latent eroticism of works such<br />
as Glue balls 2004, in which Patterson rubs white glue between his<br />
hands. As the glue dries, its sound becomes less and less allusive, until<br />
finally it becomes a sphere in his palms. Again, Patterson suspends<br />
the work between the carnality of life and the abstraction of art. So,<br />
while the act of undressing, and all that it implies, is conventionally<br />
understood to lead to nakedness rather than nudity, in Old clothes<br />
Patterson is nude.<br />
Patterson performs his nudity, wearing it like a layer to be imparted<br />
to the digital medium, recalling Balzac’s notion of a spectral sphere<br />
transferred to the photographic plate like a shed skin. 4 Patterson’s<br />
camera effects the transformation of bodily experience into abstraction<br />
and, accordingly, he sees his filmed self as a separate entity rather than<br />
an extension of his own persona.<br />
. . . when I’m in the same room as the works while they are playing I<br />
don’t feel embarrassed, in fact I can kind of relax as if the video body<br />
is doing my work for me. 5<br />
Campbell Patterson’s videos are a tender transfer of the real into<br />
the artificial, of life into performance and, as in the photographic<br />
darkroom, they must be made in isolation.<br />
Francis E Parker<br />
Campbell Patterson<br />
United Kingdom/New Zealand b.1983<br />
Old clothes (stills) 2009<br />
High-definition digital video, single channel, continuous<br />
loop, colour, 4:28 minutes, ed. of 3 / Courtesy: The artist<br />
and Michael Lett, Auckland<br />
Glue balls (still) 2004<br />
Digital Betacam transferred from digital video, single<br />
channel, colour, sound, 56:14 minutes, ed. 3/3<br />
Tickle (still) 2005<br />
Digital Betacam transferred from digital video, single<br />
channel, colour, sound, 2:47 minutes, ed. 1/3<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Government</strong>’s<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Patterson’s compositions are therefore abstract, with little narrative<br />
beyond task accomplishment or repetition. This emphasis on action<br />
over narrative and the treatment of his body as an object are both<br />
approaches that Patterson identifies with pornography. His videos<br />
also do not suture the viewer into an illusion of reality, because the<br />
presence of the camera is constantly registered by direct glances and<br />
adjustments while the camera is running. Nor do they present reality<br />
in the manner of ‘gonzo porn’, for example, because his actions are<br />
devised for the camera rather than sourced from the repertoire of daily<br />
life. 3 The paradox of his work is that its stylistic references speak of<br />
contemporary ‘realism’, while its content is formally artificial.<br />
Patterson’s actions take place between real life — the nearest to which<br />
might be Tickle 2005, where he is tickled until he rolls out of shot —<br />
and the extreme examples of performance or endurance art in which<br />
the artist’s wellbeing is compromised. The latter starkly separates the<br />
performer from the audience, dividing the one who does from those<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Campbell Patterson, email to the author, 3 August 2009.<br />
2 Patterson, email to the author.<br />
3 Taking its name from ‘gonzo journalism’, an innovation in journalism pioneered<br />
by Hunter S Thompson in 1970 in which the reporter is a participant in the story,<br />
gonzo porn derived from amateur pornography where the camera is operated<br />
by the participants.<br />
4 See Anne Marsh, The Darkroom: Photography and the Theatre of Desire, Macmillan,<br />
Melbourne, 2003, p.92.<br />
5 Patterson, email to the author.<br />
160 161
Wit Pimkanchanapong<br />
In-between spaces<br />
Most of my work focuses around the ideas of mapping, distortion,<br />
unfolding, hypertext, and the space in-between. I intend to practice,<br />
work and live in Bangkok, and circumstantially, most recent works of<br />
mine are aware of ‘accessibility’ for local public audiences, and how<br />
this works together with the global art context. This has been done<br />
through multidisciplinary practices including time-based media,<br />
digital media, diagrams and graphics, and architecture. 1<br />
Interactivity is inherent to the development of Wit Pimkanchanapong’s<br />
works. He continually explores innovative multimedia technology for<br />
new ways to connect people with their contexts. Google Earth, for<br />
example, was the inspiration for Singapore 2008, an immense floorbased<br />
digital image of the city printed on vinyl, produced for the 2008<br />
Singapore Biennale. Visitors were invited to walk over the image, and<br />
to place notes and comments highlighting places of significance.<br />
By combining his experiences of shared technology with intelligent<br />
considerations of architectural spaces, Pimkanchanapong extends his<br />
work beyond the usual and everyday and into the spectacular and<br />
interactive. Cloud 2009 — the artist’s commission for APT6 installed in<br />
the <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong> foyer — is based on a ceiling installation first<br />
designed in 2005 for a Bangkok concert by Pru, a progressive Thai<br />
rock band. It has since morphed beyond the initial, practical necessity<br />
to baffle the venue’s roof, to enhance the acoustics of the concert, into<br />
various site-specific installations and animations. 2<br />
In APT6, Cloud appears as a heaven of billowing forms made from<br />
thousands of sheets of standard A3 white printing paper, wire and<br />
bulldog clips. The arcs of paper create a repeating motif across the<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> ceiling. 3 Paper is a prominent material in Pimkanchanapong’s<br />
work — economical, versatile and dynamic. Soaring high above<br />
visitors as they enter the <strong>Gallery</strong>, Cloud partially obscures the interior<br />
architecture, focusing our attention instead on the often unnoticed<br />
beauty of this ordinary material. The work also enhances the features of<br />
the building by accentuating the long lines of the grand interior space.<br />
That Cloud can be viewed from multiple levels within the <strong>Gallery</strong> is<br />
crucial to the experience of the work. Looking up from the entry, the<br />
work is all-encompassing in its scale and breadth. As visitors ascend<br />
the building’s stairs and escalators, there is a sense of soaring through<br />
clouds, re-orientating visitors already familiar with the building.<br />
Pimkanchanapong’s Fruits features photographic reproductions of<br />
fruit skins, including bananas, apples and pears, mangosteens and star<br />
fruit. Through computer modelling, the fruits are deconstructed and<br />
represented as a kind of map, offering an unexpected perspective. To<br />
make the fruits, participants join small tabs depicting the names of the<br />
fruits in different languages. As these tabs join, the words literally meet,<br />
and a linguistic exchange takes place between the visitor and artist,<br />
and between people from different cultures.<br />
The simulation of the real object through technology highlights<br />
Pimkanchanapong’s broader considerations of the ‘in-between’, such<br />
as the processes of exchange, commodification and communication.<br />
These affect us daily in ‘virtual’ and ‘actual’ contexts and can differ<br />
dramatically between cultures. Wit Pimkanchanapong’s works involve<br />
astonishing physical and visual transformations of materials, objects<br />
or places. The artist exposes the mechanics and artifice of technology<br />
and, in doing so, brings his viewers closer to the reality of their<br />
surroundings, creating new spaces and means for shared interaction.<br />
Donna McColm<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Wit Pimkanchanapong, , viewed September 2009.<br />
2 Pimkanchanapong’s 21-second animation Test sequence formed part of his<br />
installation of Cloud for the exhibition ‘Animated Painting’, referencing the 8000<br />
sheets of paper used to create the installation. ‘Animated Painting’, San Diego<br />
Museum of <strong>Art</strong>, 13 October 2007 – 13 January 2008.<br />
3 There are over 6500 sheets of paper in Cloud in APT6, with the installation<br />
taking approximately one week, reinforcing the importance of the handmade in<br />
Pimkanchanapong’s work.<br />
In addition to his art practice, Pimkanchanapong is a founding member<br />
of the collectives Soi Music and Soi Project, established in 2002 with<br />
Japanese architect Jiro Endo. Soi initiates collaborations between<br />
artists, musicians, designers and architects, melding art forms in<br />
temporary projects including concerts, events and exhibitions. One<br />
of Soi Project’s key works is Fruits, first presented in the 2007 Sharjah<br />
Biennial in the United Arab Emirates, and also featured in APT6, where<br />
visitors can make three-dimensional fruits from printed templates.<br />
Wit Pimkanchanapong<br />
Thailand b.1976<br />
Test installation (detail) for Cloud 2009, <strong>Gallery</strong> of<br />
Modern <strong>Art</strong><br />
Site-specific work for APT6 / Photograph: Ray Fulton<br />
Fruits (detail) 2007<br />
Installation view, Sharjah Biennale 2007 /<br />
Image courtesy: The artist<br />
162 163
Qiu Anxiong<br />
The new book of mountains and seas<br />
There is an animal on this mountain which looks like a horse, but it<br />
has a white head and stripes like a tiger, and a scarlet tail . . . There<br />
is a bird on this mountain that looks like a chicken, but it has three<br />
heads, six eyes, six feet, and three wings . . . There is an animal on this<br />
mountain that looks like a fox, but it has nine tails. It makes a noise<br />
like a baby. It can devour humans . . . 1<br />
In the immediacy and transience of contemporary life, it seems<br />
improbable that a book about strange places, and even stranger<br />
animals, has the power to survive some 2000 years. Yet, this is the<br />
case for Shan Hai Jing (The Classic of Mountains and Seas), an ancient<br />
work of Chinese geography and mythology. The text is no less than<br />
an attempt to ‘provide a comprehensive survey of the whole world’ 2<br />
— some 400 Chinese mountains and rivers (and corresponding plant<br />
and animal life) are explored, as well as the regions beyond.<br />
China’s many fanciful, mythological creatures have inspired<br />
artists throughout the ages, and Qiu Anxiong’s The new book of<br />
mountains and seas 2006–09 continues in this vein, though more as<br />
a contemporary reinvention than as an illustrative response. Like its<br />
centuries-old counterpart, Qiu’s hour-long, painstakingly handpainted<br />
animation — which is produced from some 6000 individual ink<br />
drawings — is a disconcerting mix of the everyday and the impossible.<br />
It is dreamily symbolic and, as in a lucid dream, we are protected from<br />
the tragic absurdities of the modern world it presents: environmental<br />
degradation and self-annihilating warfare in the first part and, in the<br />
second, mad cow disease, human organ farming, industrialised animal<br />
farming, and China’s controversial damming of the Yangtze River.<br />
Qiu’s fragmented and often beautiful imagery records the visions of<br />
an interested but objective third party; possibly a visitor from the past.<br />
Such a person would likely conceptualise modern machines as the<br />
strange hybrids depicted here: tank-like elephants with buffalo bodies,<br />
submarines come to life as bizarre whales, and galactic unicorns with<br />
satellite-dish heads. (The exception is the rat with the human ear<br />
growing on its back — a modern-day reality that would be equally<br />
at home as one of Shang Hai Jing’s impossible creatures.) Curator<br />
Chang Tsong-zung writes of this sense of distance as a perspective<br />
Qiu has reached by ‘stretching his vision into the horizon, where all<br />
the world’s dramas are but distant tremors, and all human strife are<br />
inconsequential disputes within the greater order of the universe’. 3<br />
The artist haunts us, rather than confronts us, with the evidence of our<br />
failings, frailties and oddities.<br />
traditional things’. 5 The new book of mountains and seas is a powerful<br />
representation of the meeting of old and new in Qiu’s practice, which<br />
also encompasses large-scale sculpture. The much-lauded debut of<br />
part one of the work at the 2006 Shanghai Biennale announced Qiu<br />
Anxiong as an artist with a richly lyrical vision — a vision that continues<br />
to unfold across the world art stage, not unlike the wings of one of his<br />
strange, beguiling creatures.<br />
Sarah Stutchbury<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Anne Birrell, ‘Introduction’, in Anonymous, The Classic of Mountains and Seas,<br />
trans. Anne Birrell, Penguin, London, 1999, pp.3–4.<br />
2 Anonymous, p.xvi.<br />
3 Chang Tsong-zung, ‘The world seen from afar’, in Qiu Anxiong: The New Sutra of<br />
Mountains and the Seas [exhibition catalogue], Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> Centre of South<br />
Australia, Adelaide, 2007, unpaginated.<br />
4 Qiu Anxiong studied at Germany’s University of Kassel in the early 2000s.<br />
5 Maggie Ma, ‘Biennale wonder boy: Qiu Anxiong’, , viewed 26 July 2009.<br />
Qiu Anxiong<br />
China b.1972<br />
The new book of mountains and seas (part 1) (stills) 2006<br />
Digital hand-painted animation, AVI file, 3 channel<br />
projection, continuous loop exhibited from PC, 4:1,<br />
black and white, sound, 30:15 minutes, ed. 1/10 / Images<br />
courtesy: The artist and Hanart TZ <strong>Gallery</strong>, Hong Kong<br />
Qiu Anxiong and contemporaries such as Yang Fudong are part of<br />
a growing number of Chinese artists looking to their cultural past to<br />
make sense of the modern world and their place in it. Reflecting on<br />
his experience of living and studying outside China, 4 Qiu said that:<br />
‘The best thing I could do to keep my own identity was to begin<br />
reading [revered Buddhist teacher] Nan Huaijin’s books and learn<br />
164 165
Kibong Rhee<br />
There is no place<br />
In order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find<br />
both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to<br />
think what cannot be thought). It will therefore only be in language<br />
that the limit can be set, and what lies on the other side of the limit<br />
will simply be nonsense. 1<br />
Like many contemporary artists, for Kibong Rhee the limits of Western<br />
philosophy’s ‘grand narratives’ of representation and truth provide rich<br />
subject matter. Rhee’s recent installations use metaphysics as a basis<br />
for developing an ecological relationship between nature and human<br />
intervention in art.<br />
mediated by a screen, which relates to the intuitive processes of the<br />
artist’s drawing practice. Human presence is positioned as diminutive<br />
against the natural world and its inherent mysteries. Rhee explains this<br />
relationship in his approach to drawing:<br />
The surfaces, in endless transformation and combustion, together<br />
with the quivering outline, disappear into a void, leaving behind the<br />
traces of a certain accumulation. This might be seen as a ‘pattern of<br />
slowness’, another kind of generative energy, of recurrent production<br />
and renewal, exerting influence on the totality of motion and flux<br />
known as life. 5<br />
In a previous work entitled Bachelor: The dual body 2003, Rhee<br />
presented a leather-bound copy of Austrian philosopher Ludwig<br />
Wittgenstein’s 1921 text Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus — which<br />
proposed the impossibility of truth or objective representation —<br />
trapped in an aquarium. Dense with the weight of history, this canonical<br />
text was affected by the natural element of water, while air jets produced<br />
currents inside the enclosure. The text and pages were therefore<br />
subject to the whim of the water’s currents. Curator Park Kyung-Mee’s<br />
suggestion of Rhee’s ‘free thinking acting upon objects’ is an apt<br />
metaphor for the effect of such processes employed by the artist. 2<br />
Wittgenstein was keenly interested in the representation of everyday<br />
objects by the artificial framework of language or logic. He proposed<br />
that we should examine the world through sets of propositions<br />
or speculations in order to test the limits of representation: ‘In a<br />
proposition a situation is, as it were, constructed by way of experiment’. 3<br />
With this in mind, we might approach Rhee’s works as an ongoing<br />
set of experiments or propositions about the world, mediated by our<br />
individual experiences, language and preconceptions.<br />
There is no place – Shallow cuts 2008, featured in APT6, is one such<br />
experiment. Walking into a seemingly empty room, we are arrested by<br />
the moving shadow of a willow tree behind a glass screen. A shadowy<br />
mist partially obscures its boughs. As though taken from its natural<br />
environment and placed within the gallery setting, the installation<br />
reiterates the workings of Rhee’s Bachelor: The dual body; the artificial<br />
tree becomes subject to a ‘natural’ element, produced through the<br />
means of a mechanical fog machine. 4<br />
Just as Wittgenstein exploited language’s artifice, Rhee is interested in<br />
making works that are as much about the disappearance or obscurity of<br />
objects as they are about their existence. Through the partial ‘vanishment’<br />
of his objects in installations such as There is no place, Rhee asks us to<br />
consider the natural spaces we inhabit and how we affect them.<br />
The willow tree, for instance, is revered in traditional East Asian<br />
painting and poetry. In this work, our impression of the tree is<br />
The flux or energy that Rhee exploits through his works suggest<br />
that logic alone cannot convince us of the objective reality of our<br />
surroundings. The artist’s engagement with his immediate environment<br />
and its contradictions — such as modernity’s insistent drive for progress<br />
and preoccupation with so much visual, often empty, stimulus — is<br />
crucial to our appreciation of his work:<br />
Our history is racing toward a better new world with an unbelievable<br />
speed. We used to be full of great expectations. However, we are now<br />
left with a great deal of negatives as well: The universe became filled<br />
with helpless images and symbols. Only empty feeling of non-existence<br />
and aimless, mindless acts prevail in the contemporary world. 6<br />
Kibong Rhee persuades us to shift our concerns from the global (‘infinite’,<br />
philosophical questions) to the immediate (everyday locales, and the<br />
objects and experiences constituting our daily existence), prompting<br />
us to deepen our consideration of the objects occupying our lives.<br />
Donna McColm<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, author’s preface, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans.<br />
DF Pears and BF McGuinness, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1961, p.3.<br />
2 Park Kyung-Mee, ‘When mind and matter meet: Towards minus entropy’, in<br />
Rhee Ki-Bong: About Vanishment II 1997 [exhibition catalogue], Kukje <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
Seoul, 1997, unpaginated.<br />
3 Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.031f, p.43.<br />
4 This element of Rhee’s installation recalls the canonical work by Marcel Duchamp,<br />
The bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even, also known as The large glass<br />
1915–23. In the work, an ‘illuminating gas’ is secreted from the abstracted bride<br />
figure over her nine ‘bachelors’ below, instigating a schematic process of desire<br />
and non-fulfillment.<br />
5 Kibong Rhee, in Rhee Ki-Bong: About Vanishment II 1997, unpaginated.<br />
6 Kibong Rhee, ‘Paint like a mirror, being erased by a painting’, Rhee Ki-Bong: Mind<br />
and Mirror [exhibition catalogue], <strong>Gallery</strong> Meegun, Seoul, 1992, unpaginated.<br />
Kibong Rhee<br />
South Korea b.1957<br />
There is no place – Shallow cuts 2008<br />
Glass, fog machine, artificial leaves, wood, steel, sand,<br />
motor, timer / Installation views, Kukje <strong>Gallery</strong>, Seoul /<br />
Images courtesy: The artist and Kukje <strong>Gallery</strong>, Seoul<br />
166 167
Hiraki Sawa<br />
Active stillness<br />
Hiraki Sawa’s video animations are eloquent reflections on ideas of<br />
time and motion, home and place. Having lived in both London and<br />
Kanazawa for many years, the themes of travel, mobility and distance<br />
are important references for Sawa, and his works transport ordinary<br />
objects into the realms of the subconscious and the surreal. Recurrent<br />
motifs include aircraft, Ferris wheels and rocking horses, which trace<br />
journeys ‘from one place to another, and back again’. 1<br />
Sawa’s recent works are immersive, spatial installations of image and<br />
sound which explore concepts of abstract motion or ‘active stillness’. 2<br />
Hako 2006 is a six-channel work tracing changes in the landscape<br />
through the imagery of a nuclear power station, model domestic<br />
interiors, and an ancient Shinto shrine that is rebuilt every 20 years. 3<br />
Out of the blue 2009 is a two-channel video installation. One is a<br />
sequential narrative of shadows cast by isolated objects in a domestic<br />
space, the other is a single continuous shot of people walking languidly<br />
up and down a steep sand dune, its measured tracking shots in slow<br />
motion highlighting the physical and perceptual interactions that occur<br />
in one’s passage through a particular terrain.<br />
as a whole and the minute and intricate details, where countless<br />
patterns are revealed.<br />
Complementing the vast, unpeopled spaces of the desert are scenes<br />
of the dusty interiors of an abandoned house:<br />
There is a home in the mountains near the river near the sea. It is tall<br />
and it is old and its floors are of cracked, red clay. It is full of things in<br />
piles and heaps and layers, yet empty of both absence and presence.<br />
It has known too many people and framed too many lives to be<br />
missing only one of these. 6<br />
This focus on a neglected domestic space, once occupied and lively,<br />
reflects on the cycles of life, and is augmented by an enchanting<br />
exploration of the surface of the moon as it orbits the earth. Sawa’s ten<br />
short films in O 2009 feature individual objects — a glass bottle, a brass<br />
bell, a china bowl — which endlessly spin; an action which contradicts<br />
their purpose. The china bowl jerkily rotating on its base, for example,<br />
is an incongruous and comical inversion of its function.<br />
Commissioned for APT6, O 2009 is a multi-channel installation<br />
featuring a soundtrack by London-based composer Dale Berning.<br />
It builds on the artist’s interest in journeys and cycles, while also<br />
considering expression as a continuous flow, using the circle as a<br />
poignant visual metaphor. The work is comprised of ten short films of<br />
spinning objects, as well as a three-channel projection which traverses<br />
the moon’s surface, the empty interiors of an abandoned house, and<br />
the vast expanses of the Central Australian desert, which Sawa visited<br />
in April 2009. Tracing a circuit starting and ending in Alice Springs,<br />
Sawa travelled between the rust red ranges and the bleached spinifex<br />
terrain of the desert landscape:<br />
Hiraki Sawa’s emphasis on action over narrative creates an absorbing<br />
and compelling study of momentum and balance, continuity and<br />
repetition. The soundtrack reinforces the non-linearity of his<br />
approach. It is a composition of spinning sounds and silences<br />
played on rotating speakers. As Sawa says, ‘Coming full circle is<br />
movement without displacement. In that time, you simply are, and<br />
all change is in the looking’. 7<br />
Mellissa Kavenagh<br />
Hiraki Sawa<br />
Japan/United Kingdom b.1977<br />
O (stills) 2009<br />
3 channel video projection, 10 short films on monitors,<br />
5 channel sound by Dale Berning on spinning<br />
speakers, colour and black and white, 8.00 minutes /<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Images courtesy: The artist<br />
A round trip takes you on the same route twice but in opposite<br />
directions. You end up where you began, and in between nothing<br />
takes place. You drive up a road and see the world on either side as<br />
it is. Driving back down again covers the same ground, the world<br />
on either side does not move or change, yet seen from behind,<br />
everything is different. I am interested in this active stillness . . . 4<br />
Towards the end of his journey, Sawa encountered the ancient<br />
meteorite crater of Tnorala (Gosse Bluff), a place of cultural<br />
significance to the Western Arrernte people, as well as a site of<br />
international scientific interest. 5 The projection depicts a bird circling<br />
low over the seabed, as a tugboat travels across the frame against a<br />
background of spinning wind turbines. The crater is depicted from<br />
above, revealing the mounds and cracks in the rock walls. Inherent in<br />
this sequence is the artist’s focus on the elemental: the wind, the sea<br />
and the earth, all moving in an unbroken flow. Images of swaying grass<br />
and rippling clouds shift the viewer’s focus between the composition<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Hiraki Sawa, artist statement in an email to the author, 18 September 2009.<br />
2 Sawa, artist statement.<br />
3 The Shinto shrine in Ise, Japan, is completely reconstructed every 20 years as part<br />
of the Shinto belief in the cycle of renewal in nature; it is also a way of passing<br />
building techniques from one generation to the next.<br />
4 Sawa, artist statement.<br />
5 Tnorala (Gosse Bluff) is an ancient site over 142 million years old, and is located<br />
175 kilometres west of Alice Springs. According to both Aboriginal culture and<br />
scientific interpretation, the site is celestial in origin.<br />
6 Sawa, artist statement.<br />
7 Sawa, artist statement.<br />
168 169
Shirana Shahbazi<br />
A purely visual language<br />
Shirana Shahbazi creates images that are at once ordinary and<br />
beautiful. She has been described as an ‘ambassadress of the<br />
unspectacular’, yet her carefully staged photographic and painted<br />
tableaux are, by definition, dramatic. Her subjects are laden with art<br />
historical references and resonate with today’s image-saturated world<br />
but, in exchange for drawing attention to the ways these subjects have<br />
been represented and reproduced, Shahbazi ‘manages to render their<br />
symbolic meanings equivalent’. 1 In her contemporary reinterpretations<br />
of the still-life genre, the artist traverses geography, history and media<br />
to posit questions of translation and displacement.<br />
Born in Tehran in 1974, Shahbazi immigrated to Germany as an<br />
11 year old and now lives in Zurich. As an artist, her work is not marked<br />
by exile, nor by nostalgic displacement, but is instead distinguished<br />
by a tremendous ease with location. This sense of effortless transit is<br />
evident in her monumental work for APT6: an installation of still-life<br />
images, which mixes and deconstructs an array of seemingly disparate<br />
referents. In an altogether fracturing experience, glossy prints of<br />
varying size and composition are arranged in simple constellations<br />
across the wall, while monumental paintings at either end serve as<br />
quotation marks around this two-dimensional act of speech.<br />
Shahbazi’s work inhabits a zone of non-specificity that defies<br />
easy categorisation. Her lush imagery exploits iconographic and<br />
compositional elements of seventeenth-century nature morte, where the<br />
fleeting beauty of a blooming flower, for example, acts as a reminder<br />
that life is short. Yet, her glorious fruits, flowers and birds also reference<br />
tazhib a tashiri, a variant of the Persian miniature that incorporated<br />
borrowings from China during the Kajar dynasty (1794–1925). 2 While<br />
recalling painterly traditions from both the Middle East and Europe, in<br />
their sharp, vivid colours, these photographs also reference the stock<br />
pictures used to illustrate glossy advertising brochures.<br />
In another gesture that speaks to the hyper-real language of<br />
advertising, Shahbazi has commissioned a group of Iranian billboard<br />
painters to translate her precise studio photographs onto blackpainted<br />
canvas. These paintings employ the reductive style typically<br />
used in advertising or to celebrate religious leaders in Iran today; the<br />
handling of the paint is brushy and viewed to best advantage from a<br />
distance. The dark backgrounds cultivate a funereal aura, while the<br />
luminosity of the perishable blooms, fruit and skulls conjures vanitas<br />
themes familiar from seventeenth-century Flemish painting. If, as<br />
Roland Barthes wrote of that era’s guild portraits, ‘Depth is born only<br />
at the moment the spectacle itself turns its shadow towards man and<br />
begins to look at him’, here, that depth seems to ‘rise out of the past<br />
and the multiple layers of mediation [are] uncannily reanimated’. 3<br />
The basket of fruit and blooms in one painting is saved from glossy<br />
blankness by incongruous elements nestled around its edges:<br />
improbably glowing chrysanthemums, small pieces of sculptural<br />
coral and strings of incandescent pearls. Jewellery suggests a human<br />
presence, albeit an absent one, as does the trio of cheery skulls in<br />
the second painting. Their glaring white domes hover atop a black<br />
ground, keeping empty-eyed watch over gallery visitors. The gaptoothed<br />
grimace may appear as a perversion of the grins of toothpaste<br />
commercials, though these paintings aren’t selling anything.<br />
Ultimately, the images Shahbazi produces and reproduces function as<br />
‘placeholders’ — they are generic rather than specific. The artist takes<br />
a bowerbird approach to image-making, and seamlessly intermingles<br />
visual cues. While Shahbazi’s works mine these representational<br />
conventions, they are not meant to act as citations. Each picture<br />
prompts you to catch yourself in the act of looking. By playing with<br />
‘types’, the artist simultaneously celebrates and exposes the clichés<br />
that cling to them.<br />
The overwhelming effect, then, is decentring. By arranging still-life<br />
compositions to combine distance with proximity, the artist strips away<br />
specificity and opens up a space of imagination. Irregular groupings<br />
and juxtapositions create meanings that break apart and then reform<br />
— like chapters in a book read from front to back, or back to front, or<br />
indeed from any page. The effect recalls Faraj Bou al-Isha’s 2003 poem<br />
Wait: ‘do not leave yet. / Let me rearrange the world / for you’. 4 This is<br />
a nowhere place, but it is also everywhere.<br />
Bree Richards<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Christy Lange, ‘I am an image’, Frieze, no.113, March 2008, p.124.<br />
2 Kate Bush, ‘Introduction’, in Meanwhile: Shirana Shahbazi [exhibition catalogue],<br />
Swiss Institute, New York; Barbican <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, London, 2007, p.6.<br />
3 Kristin M Jones ‘Chronicles of the everyday: Photographs, paintings, collectives<br />
and cultural identity’, Frieze, no.90, April 2005, p.94.<br />
4 Quoted in Cherry Smith, ‘Shirana Shahbazi’, <strong>Art</strong> Monthly, no.294, March 2006, p.32.<br />
Shirana Shahbazi<br />
Iran/Switzerland b.1974<br />
[Voegel-08-2009] (from ‘Flowers, fruits & portraits’ series)<br />
2003–ongoing, printed 2009<br />
Type C photograph, ed. of 5 (+ 1 AP) / 90 x 70cm /<br />
Image courtesy: The artist; Bob van Orsouw <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
Zurich; and Cardi Black Box, Milano<br />
170 171
Shooshie Sulaiman<br />
Who’s afraid of the dark?<br />
My father, of Scottish heritage, is a great storyteller, and I have many<br />
eloquent memories of him telling stories about his life. My parents<br />
have always been very open and no question was taboo in our<br />
household. There was, however, one question I never posed — about<br />
my mother’s life in Malaysia. She was born in Malaysia to Chinese<br />
parents and came to Australia to attend university in the 1970s, but all<br />
other details are shrouded in darkness.<br />
I was the only child with Chinese heritage at my small primary school<br />
in far north <strong>Queensland</strong>. Apart from my mother’s face, the faces on<br />
the nightly news were the only representations of Chinese and Malay<br />
people that I was familiar with. Many years later, I still feel a sense of<br />
the unfamiliar while viewing Shooshie Sulaiman’s Darkroom 2009, an<br />
installation of photographic portraits of men and women from around<br />
Malaysia, posed alone, in pairs and in groups.<br />
Sulaiman found these portraits of nameless people in second-hand<br />
stores around Malacca. The portraits, dating from the 1950s and 1960s<br />
with their sepia tones, reference the time preceding the 13 May 1969<br />
race riots. 1 Sulaiman was born after the riots, but lives with their legacy as<br />
a person of both Malay and Chinese heritage. In Darkroom, she brings<br />
together approximately 50 portraits, transforming the faces of the portrait<br />
sitters using flower petals, collage, ink and paint, and mounting the<br />
images in found frames. The petals of pressed lily, lotus, poppy, tulip and,<br />
particularly, the hibiscus are used to soften the faces of the male figures.<br />
Hibiscus rosa-sinensis is the national flower of Malaysia, although<br />
it is not native to the country. Its five petals represent the nation’s<br />
five principles: belief in God, loyalty to king and country, upholding<br />
the constitution, the sovereignty of the law, and good behaviour<br />
and morality. These were first announced at Independence Day<br />
celebrations in 1970 in response to the events of 1969. Sulaiman’s use<br />
of single hibiscus petals in Darkroom is thus a subtle device through<br />
which she questions Malaysia’s national principles and laws.<br />
people. Single group photographs tend to display a false sense of<br />
unity; although the family is all smiles, many other frames reveal frowns<br />
and tensions. Portraits of a nation also tend towards a false sense<br />
of unity. The Malaysian <strong>Government</strong> describes the nation as a place<br />
where ‘Malays, Chinese, Indians and many other ethnic groups . . . have<br />
influenced each other, creating a truly Malaysian culture’. 2 It may be<br />
argued that Darkroom, as a collection of nameless faces, is better able<br />
to display the diversity and multiplicity of stories — as well as hint at the<br />
lost ones — that create the Malaysian national portrait.<br />
The portraits of these nameless faces are installed in an ‘open house’, a<br />
replication of the library in Sulaiman’s former Kuala Lumpur residence,<br />
a small wooden building behind the National <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> and the<br />
National Theatre — two of Malaysia’s major art institutions. The ‘open<br />
house’ is an ongoing metaphor in Sulaiman’s work — she makes herself<br />
and her work accessible via open spaces. She opens her home for art<br />
exhibitions, in keeping with the Malaysian festive tradition of opening<br />
your home to family, friends and strangers to celebrate cultural or<br />
religious festivities. For Darkroom, Sulaiman opens the doors of her<br />
library to us, inviting us to join her in celebrating the ambiguous and<br />
fractured nature of Malaysian identity.<br />
Ellie Buttrose<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 On 13 May 1969, following the 10 May Malaysian general election, Chinese–Malay<br />
race riots broke out in Kuala Lumpur. A state of emergency was declared, and there<br />
were officially around 200 deaths, although unofficial figures are far greater.<br />
2 Tourism Malaysia, <br />
viewed October 2009.<br />
Shooshie Sulaiman<br />
Malaysia b.1973<br />
Indian father + Indian mother = Chinese daughter 2009<br />
Lily petal, ink, old photograph / 24 x 18.4cm /<br />
Image courtesy: The artist<br />
Women are chronically under-represented in some aspects of Malaysian<br />
society, especially in politics, where they make up only ten per cent of<br />
parliament. Sulaiman counters this by using flower petals to soften the<br />
dominant representation of men, and brings women’s issues to the<br />
surface by painting over the women’s portraits with red ink, with titles<br />
like ‘menstruation’. Sulaiman is also interested in the slippage that occurs<br />
in the process of trying to define genders, which, like race, dominates<br />
identity politics. She creates ambiguity by partially covering female<br />
portraits with paper laden with text and titling them ‘masculine’, and<br />
using flower petals as a mechanism for feminising the male portraits.<br />
My parents, sister and I have very rarely been captured in the same<br />
frame. Our collection of photographs of us in pairs or trios is better<br />
able to represent my family as a group of related but independent<br />
172 173
Thukral and Tagra<br />
Dream merchants<br />
Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra offer a seductive and vibrant take on<br />
contemporary Indian society and culture. Witty and colourful, Thukral and<br />
Tagra’s refined aesthetic is applied to painting, sculpture and installation,<br />
as well as graphics, interiors, fashion and product design, often under the<br />
provocative label, Bosedk. 1 Their structured approach gives their projects<br />
a high level of detail, finish and accessibility, with themes researched<br />
and developed over time, and made adaptable to specific concerns<br />
and contexts. Coming from a generation of Indian artists for whom<br />
‘transcultural experience is the only certain basis for contemporary artistic<br />
practice’, 2 Thukral and Tagra’s work ranges freely across many forms<br />
and references, while maintaining a distinctly local perspective.<br />
Thukral and Tagra’s ongoing series, ‘Effugio/Escape’, is inspired by a<br />
particular aspect of Punjabi society in which young people, particularly<br />
men, are encouraged to move abroad. While wandering and migration<br />
are longstanding in Punjabi culture, emigration accelerated during the<br />
second half of the twentieth century through increased global demand<br />
for labour and more relaxed immigration policies, particularly in the<br />
West. Local ‘push factors’, such as the 1947 partition of India, political<br />
instability around Operation Blue Star in 1984, growing modernisation<br />
and the decline of the rural economy, contributed to this trend; 3<br />
along with persistent cultural forces, such as the high status bestowed<br />
on those who migrate and, by extension, on their families at home.<br />
Evidence of this is the Punjab’s massive industry of education and<br />
migration agencies, leading, for instance, to the increased presence<br />
of Indian students in countries like Australia. 4<br />
Both of Punjabi background, Thukral and Tagra began to document<br />
and analyse this situation around 2003, linking it to broader shifts in<br />
Indian society. Drawing on personal experience, interviews with young<br />
men, as well as their observations of rampant urban development<br />
and consumption throughout India, the artists have constructed a<br />
hallucinatory image world of hyped-up aspirations and burgeoning<br />
wealth. Glossy paintings, fashionable clothing and shelves bursting<br />
with packaging fill their installations, which are often configured as<br />
retail or domestic environments. Adolescere Domus, their 2007 display<br />
at the Basel <strong>Art</strong> Fair, depicted a teenage bedroom hung with portraits<br />
of Punjabi ‘homeboys’ and included furniture, clothes and other<br />
consumer goods. Each item featured the artists’ signature motifs of<br />
flowers, trailing vines and invented logos. While the work reflected the<br />
shiny new consumerism of the subcontinent, Adolescere Domus also<br />
played up to the heady excesses of the Western art market at the time,<br />
which had then recently expanded to include contemporary Indian art.<br />
Thukral and Tagra’s work for APT6 comprises an imaginary living<br />
room, dominated by a large, dreamlike painting of baroque buildings,<br />
inspired by those being built across India. With their pastiche of<br />
European styles, these fantasy villas and apartment blocks reflect the<br />
desires of the growing middle class, yet are thoroughly unsuited to the<br />
local climate and ignore the richness of India’s own architectural history.<br />
The inner and outer walls of the room are lined with portraits of young<br />
men who have left home to pursue a supposedly better life overseas. In<br />
the centre, an enormous table rises from the floor like a plane taking off,<br />
while two empty chairs indicate the parents left behind. Family is at the<br />
heart of Punjabi society, and house and land ownership is of paramount<br />
importance. Although having children abroad promises social prestige<br />
and regular remittances, it also fragments the family unit and risks<br />
serious economic repercussions, not least because the funds to support<br />
emigration are often raised by selling property at home. 5<br />
The gravity of Thukral and Tagra’s subject matter is conveyed with<br />
directness and humour, reflecting empathy for their subject, while their<br />
desire to communicate is facilitated by alluring design and the ‘dream<br />
factory’ approach of advertising. For example, their 2007 exhibition, ‘Put<br />
It On’ addressed the spread of HIV/AIDS in India with the printing of<br />
logos and slogans encouraging condom use onto designer underwear,<br />
rubber thongs and bed linen. As curator Trevor Smith noted:<br />
Thukral and Tagra take their role as cultural entrepreneurs seriously.<br />
For them, the marketplace is not simply a site of economic exchange<br />
but exists as a forum for the contestation of cultural values. 6<br />
Rather than observing consumer culture from a cool, comfortable<br />
distance, Thukral and Tagra are utterly immersed in it, turning its fervent<br />
language to their own ends. As in the commercial world, images and<br />
objects are carriers of information, speaking broadly across borders at<br />
the same time as appealing to us directly, as individuals.<br />
Russell Storer<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 ‘Bosedk’ is an Anglicised version of a colloquial term of abuse in north India, with<br />
differing nuances depending on region.<br />
2 Ranjit Hoskote, ‘Signposting the Indian Highway’, in Indian Highway [exhibition<br />
catalogue], Serpentine <strong>Gallery</strong>/Koenig Books, London, 2009, p.193.<br />
3 See Gurharpal Singh and Darshan Singh Tatla, Sikhs in Britain: The Making of a<br />
Community, Zed Books, London, 2006, pp.26–42. Operation Blue Star was the name<br />
given to a military operation organised by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi against the<br />
Sikh separatists gathered in Amritsar’s Golden Temple. It was a flashpoint in a long<br />
history of tension between Sikhs and Hindus, and resulted in a series of anti-Sikh<br />
riots. Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards four months later.<br />
4 Following a spate of attacks in Melbourne and Sydney in recent months, the<br />
situation of Indian students in Australia (in 2009, around 90 000) has received<br />
unprecedented media and political attention in both India and Australia. See Sushi<br />
Das, ‘Repairing damaged ties’, Age, 29 August 2009.<br />
5 Thukral and Tagra, interview with Russell Storer, 3 June 2009, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Research Library artist file.<br />
6 Trevor Smith, in Thukral & Tagra, Nature Morte/Bose Pacia, New Delhi/New York,<br />
2007, p.40.<br />
Thukral & Tagra<br />
Jiten Thukral<br />
India b.1976<br />
Sumir Tagra<br />
India b.1979<br />
Immortalis (from ‘Effugio’ series) 2008<br />
Synthetic polymer paint and oil on resin / 76 x 72cm /<br />
Image courtesy: The artists and <strong>Gallery</strong> Nature Morte,<br />
New Delhi<br />
Next page<br />
Thukral & Tagra<br />
Dominus Aeris – The Great, Grand Mirage (detail) 2009<br />
Synthetic polymer paint and oil on canvas / Triptych:<br />
213.5 x 213.5cm (each) / Image courtesy: The artists<br />
and <strong>Gallery</strong> Nature Morte, New Delhi<br />
174 175
Charwei Tsai<br />
A space of contemplation<br />
Charwei Tsai’s art engages the viewer in a very direct and intimate<br />
way. For Tsai, art is a type of meditation through which she explores<br />
philosophical questions relating to ethical living and compassion. As<br />
part of her practice, she often invites audiences to find their own space<br />
of contemplation and possible connection.<br />
This desire to share with the viewer is present in works such as<br />
the ‘Mantra’ series, which imaginatively explores the Buddhist<br />
prajnaparamita or Heart Sutra. Begun in New York in 2005, the ‘Mantra’<br />
series involves Tsai writing the Heart Sutra onto flowers, mushrooms,<br />
tofu and other organic materials that change form and gradually<br />
decompose. Tsai memorised the Heart Sutra text as a child in Taiwan:<br />
its central message relates to the transience of the individual and<br />
the universe, the acceptance of which enables a meditative state of<br />
emptiness and non-suffering. Tsai invites her audience to engage in<br />
the materialisation of this spiritual lesson through the transformation of<br />
the object on which she has written.<br />
Tsai’s choice of materials for the works in the ‘Mantra’ series often<br />
reflects the location in which the work is made, enabling direct<br />
connections with the viewer. In Brisbane, she chose locally-grown<br />
mushrooms, inscribed by monks from the local Buddha Light<br />
Association as a form of performance during the course of APT6.<br />
Tsai also created Sky mantra 2008–09 — writing the Heart Sutra onto a<br />
large piece of glass which reflects the changing conditions of the sky<br />
overhead. Tsai references a long tradition of calligraphy as a form of<br />
meditative practice. By writing, she is able to establish the ongoing<br />
presence of her body in relation to the work: the absent human<br />
presence evident in the handwritten text, continuing to attract viewers<br />
whether or not they understand its meaning.<br />
Tsai gently evokes the perception of touch suggested by overlapping<br />
hands to stimulate a sense of intimacy with absent others. The artist’s<br />
engagement of her audience through touch creates opportunities for<br />
more empathetic personal exchange.<br />
I find it interesting that the cause of major social discriminations, such<br />
as racism [and] sexism, all begin from a visual impact. 3<br />
Charwei Tsai produces art which offers myriad connections between<br />
artist and audience, and between viewers. Her intimate and meditative<br />
works act to dissolve the barriers we erect between ourselves and others.<br />
Ruth McDougall<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Tsai only discovered the Zen tradition of ensō after creating Circle and likens it to<br />
a visual manifestation of the Heart Sutra.<br />
2 Charwei Tsai, email to Suhanya Raffel, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, August 2008.<br />
3 Tsai, email to Suhanya Raffel.<br />
In the projection work Circle 2009, with its image of a circle drawn in<br />
black ink on a block of melting ice, Tsai continues to reflect on ideas of<br />
emptiness and transience, now articulated through the act of forming<br />
a circle and watching it disappear. Used as a tool of meditation by Zen<br />
monks, the calligraphic drawing of a circle, or ensō, involves emptying<br />
the mind in order to let the body–spirit create. It is believed that the<br />
way in which the ensō is drawn fully exposes the character of the<br />
drawer. Inviting an audience to hold a projected image of her ensō as<br />
the block of ice melts, Tsai places herself in their hands. 1<br />
Charwei Tsai<br />
Taiwan b.1980<br />
Mushroom mantra 2009<br />
Black ink on mushrooms / Installed dimensions<br />
variable / Site-specific installation for APT6 /<br />
Image courtesy: The artist<br />
Tsai likens the handwashing in her work Hand washing project 2009<br />
to that of a ritual cleansing. 2 Visitors to the <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong> wash<br />
their hands in the bathroom basins, over which images of people of<br />
different ages and cultural backgrounds washing their own hands are<br />
projected. In this work, Tsai is interested in exploring the possibility of<br />
unexpected interactions between people. The invitation to viewers and<br />
visitors to place their own hands within Tsai’s Circle and Hand washing<br />
project projections can also be seen as creating a network of touch —<br />
178 179
Vanuatu Sculptors<br />
Innovation and tradition<br />
Spectacular Ambrym sculptures and drums, carved from the trunks<br />
of black palm and breadfruit trees, are internationally recognised as<br />
emblems of traditional ni-Vanuatu culture. Studied and collected by<br />
anthropological museums all over the world, today these towering<br />
forms — along with the intensely powerful temar ne ari (ancestor<br />
spirit) sculptures and the ‘guardian of tabou house’ figures — are<br />
created in reaffirmation of kastom (customary government, law and<br />
religion) on the island of Ambrym. This strengthening has been<br />
accelerated by the objects’ transformation to ‘art’, by the growing<br />
economic needs of the artists, and by the success of Ambrym<br />
as a tourist destination exhibiting ‘traditional’ culture. With their<br />
presentation in APT6, we see the first appearance of a major group<br />
of works coming from customary practice in this contemporary<br />
international art exhibition.<br />
North Ambrymese men increasingly had to compete for power with<br />
colonists and with Ambrymese men who had embraced Christianity<br />
and/or had familial ties with western Ambrym and Malakula.<br />
Regardless, today the imported Malakulan system, which involves<br />
the use of pigs and other valuables to acquire rank, has largely<br />
replaced the indigenous mague rites and their associated ritual<br />
objects. More secular and, many believe, more democratic in nature,<br />
these imported rites have resulted in important and sometimes<br />
contentious shifts in local power, as well as developments in mague<br />
art. The most important of these is the Ambrymese adoption<br />
and adaptation of a Malakulan copyright system (associated with<br />
monumental Malakulan ranking black palm sculptures) to objects<br />
used in imported mague and other ceremonies.<br />
Strongly tied to male kastom, the powerful works carved by<br />
artists such as Freddy Bule and Michel Rangie are also part of the<br />
historical process of artistic creation and renewal lying at the heart<br />
of Ambrymese life and tradition. 1 Some of the ceremonies involving<br />
carved objects which are practised on Ambrym today are secular, and<br />
have been adopted and adapted from neighbouring islands as part<br />
of a centuries-old process of cultural exchange. While maintaining<br />
a strong link to place and kastom, the Ambrymese enthusiastically<br />
translated other cultural practices where they saw the advantage of<br />
supplementing their own.<br />
As anthropologist Kirk Huffman has noted, in the Malakulan copyright<br />
system, everything — from a whole ritual to individual objects to<br />
the designs used on objects — can be purchased or sold. Once an<br />
individual has purchased the rights to copyright, they then have the<br />
authority to resell. As a result, objects, ceremonies and designs from<br />
one area are able to combine with those from another. This shows that<br />
transformation and change is the norm, not the exception:<br />
. . . the rituals themselves were, and are, thought to have a power<br />
and spirit of their own that urges them to get up, move to other<br />
areas, to stay there for a while, and then move on. 4<br />
One of the most significant of these is the purchase, from the<br />
neighbouring island of Malakula, of the rituals of status acquisition<br />
known as mague, represented in APT6 by painted and carved<br />
‘Mague (ranking black palm)’ figures. Mague is a hierarchical series<br />
of initiations through which men are able to achieve higher levels of<br />
status and authority within the community. While mague rites have<br />
always been practised on Ambrym, this indigenous kin-based system<br />
— ‘which acted as the creative basis for cosmological ideas’ 2 , as well as<br />
indicating social status — has been augmented by a more hierarchical<br />
system from Malakula over the past three or four centuries.<br />
The introduction of a Christian missionary settlement, and the<br />
destabilising effects of competing French and British political interests<br />
within local Ambrymese politics in the first half of the twentieth century,<br />
however, resulted in a decline in the practice of mague and particularly<br />
its indigenous forms, berang yayan and fenbi.<br />
Writing in 1914, ethnologist WHR Rivers (1864–1922) proposed that<br />
the Ambrymese use of abstract design was a way of symbolically<br />
engaging with others at the same time as concealing secret<br />
knowledge. 3 The increasing visual presence of the Malakulan system<br />
in North Ambrym since the 1940s may be an extension of this impulse.<br />
Anthropologists continued to arrive in the area from this time, and<br />
The skill and creativity of Ambrymese sculptors, such as Bule,<br />
Rangie, Kilfan, Marakon and the Mansak family, are manifested in<br />
the way they have creatively adapted the squat face and cropped<br />
head of ranking black palm figures from the Malakulan rites into the<br />
distinctive Ambrymese style.<br />
The Mague (ranking black palm) figures and Atingting (slit drum)<br />
demonstrate this with their deeply carved eyes and brows, their<br />
elongated faces and mesmerising, disc-shaped eyes. With atingting,<br />
the three rows of toothing represent hair around each figure’s face,<br />
and with the mague, the inclusion of carved and painted fauna is<br />
also a common feature of the sculptures, created by contemporary<br />
Ambrymese artists who have the necessary copyright.<br />
The continuing importance of the copyright system to objects made<br />
for many Ambrymese rituals, including those deemed secret, is also<br />
evident in restrictions on the use of new materials and techniques.<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ists must purchase and pass through the various levels of initiation<br />
in order to gain the right to carve and decorate art works that signify<br />
different rankings, or in the case of temar ne ari and ‘guardian of<br />
tabou house’ figures, particular ancestors. Men who have achieved<br />
the highest rankings administer local adherence to the copyright<br />
Freddy Bule<br />
Vanuatu b.1967<br />
Atingting rom (slit drum) 2005<br />
Carved breadfruit tree with synthetic polymer paint /<br />
256 x 24 x 26cm<br />
Michel Rangie<br />
Vanuatu b.c.1981<br />
Mague ne sagran (ranking black palm) grade 4<br />
painted c.2005<br />
Carved black palm with synthetic polymer paint /<br />
250 x 38 x 50cm<br />
Michel Rangie<br />
Vanuatu b.c.1981<br />
Mague ne hiwir (ranking black palm) grade 9<br />
painted c.2005<br />
Carved black palm with synthetic polymer paint /<br />
255 x 35 x 45cm<br />
Gift of David Baker through the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation 2008 / Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
180 181
system and are able to authorise innovations. On Ambrym, this has<br />
included adaptations such as the use of brightly coloured trade paints<br />
for the striking designs on ‘Mague’ figures, as well as the copyright of<br />
knowledge to create blond hair for particular temar ne ari.<br />
The arresting designs and bold colours of the works featured in<br />
APT6 demonstrate the impressive results of the Ambrymese artists’<br />
response to, and embrace of, change. They remind us that the<br />
impulse for innovation lies at the heart of tradition.<br />
Chief Michel Marakon<br />
Vanuatu b.c.1950<br />
Mague ne hiwir (ranking black palm) grade 9 c.1980<br />
Carved black palm with synthetic polymer paint /<br />
257 x 44 x 50cm / Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Opposite<br />
Mansak Family<br />
Vanuatu b.unknown<br />
Guardian of tabou house figure 2005–06<br />
Carved coconut wood with natural dyes / 95 x 30 x 18cm<br />
Guardian of tabou house figure painted, 2005–06<br />
Carved coconut wood with natural dyes / 102 x 22 x 19cm<br />
Gift of David Baker through the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation 2009. Donated through the Australian<br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s Cultural Gifts Program<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Ruth McDougall<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 In his essay ‘Music in Vanuatu’, Peter Russell Crowe notes that the oral and<br />
performative traditions of ni-Vanuatu also operate on the principle of ‘breaking<br />
the rules’, always revising the text and context appropriate to the coming<br />
performance. See Joel Bonnemaison (ed.), <strong>Art</strong>s of Vanuatu, Crawford House<br />
Publishing, Bathurst, NSW, 1996, pp.147–8.<br />
2 M Patterson, ‘Leading lights in the “mother of darkness”: Perspectives on<br />
leadership and value in North Ambrym, Vanuatu’, Oceania, vol.73, 2002, pp.126–<br />
42. See ,<br />
viewed October 2009.<br />
3 Discussed by M Patterson in ‘Mastering the art: An examination of the context of<br />
the production of art in Vanuatu’, in <strong>Art</strong>s of Vanuatu, p.257.<br />
4 KW Huffman, ’Trading, cultural exchange and copyright: Important aspects of<br />
Vanuatu arts’, in <strong>Art</strong>s of Vanuatu, p.190.<br />
182 183
Traditions and rituals in North Ambrym<br />
Ambrym, the name given to the island by an early explorer, 1 which<br />
means ‘Here is your yam’, is situated near the centre of the archipelago<br />
of Vanuatu, with Pentecost to the north, Paama to the south and<br />
Malakula to the west. At the centre of the island are two active<br />
volcanos, called Marum and Benbow by the islanders. North Ambrym<br />
is very remote and accessible only by sea. The nearest airstrip, an<br />
hour’s flight from the capital, Port Vila, is situated on the south-western<br />
side of the island. From there, it takes between two and three hours by<br />
dinghy to reach the northern part of the island.<br />
This remoteness and isolation has helped conserve many of North<br />
Ambrym’s traditions and rituals, particularly in the face of the<br />
challenges posed by the arrival of missionaries and settlers. However,<br />
the fundamental structure of life on Ambrym — categorised into<br />
the three major areas of family ties, rights, and sacred societies or<br />
initiations — has been so well preserved that the art of the island has<br />
gained regional and international recognition.<br />
jealously guarded, being kept far from the villages or in tabou houses<br />
belonging to the high chiefs.<br />
Today, North Ambrymese traditions and rituals live in harmony with<br />
Western culture. The latter has influenced all villages, but the former<br />
remains deep in the minds and the hearts of North Ambrymese people.<br />
Napong Norbert<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 The island of Ambrym owes its name to Captain Cook; see Destination Vanuatu,<br />
,<br />
viewed October 2009.<br />
2 Agnate refers to being related through males or on the father’s side.<br />
In the past, the Ambrymese traded with their neighbour islands, which<br />
share many traditions and rituals: towbuan (boar killing ceremony) and<br />
mague (a hierarchy of grades) are common on Malakula, Pentecost<br />
and Ambrym. These ceremonies are the highest status performance<br />
rituals of North Ambrym. They are performed according to family ties,<br />
of which there are two key elements: te woren (the mother’s agnates)<br />
and te mukuen (the wife’s and/or father’s mother’s and/or mother’s<br />
mother’s agnates). 2 All life events — birth, puberty, circumcision,<br />
marriage and death — are marked by ritual ceremonies performed to<br />
either te mukuen or te woren, or both.<br />
The towbuan is an important rite for conferring status, and both men<br />
and women achieve titles and prestige through this rite. The boar tusks<br />
sacrificed to te woren or te mukuen are returned to the sacrificer, to be<br />
worn around the neck and the arms on public occasions. If the boar<br />
is sacrificed to te woren, the tusks are worn on the right arm; if it is<br />
sacrificed to te mukuen, then they are worn on the left arm.<br />
The mague is another path for gaining prestige in North Ambrymese<br />
society. It is the hierarchy of 15 grades, arranged into 10 ranks, where<br />
men and women (only if a woman’s husband has achieved the 15th<br />
grade) pay rights for either ‘stones’ or the rite of mounting onto a<br />
platform over a carved tree fern to achieve titles. Initiates who attain<br />
these high levels of prestige are influential and, by extension, so are<br />
their wives and children.<br />
Sacred societies and secret initiations also play an important role<br />
in North Ambrym. These are respected men’s societies in which<br />
initiates receive knowledge for objects such as masks or ‘stones’. The<br />
Ambrymese believe these objects are sacred and require an intimate<br />
knowledge of the ancestral spirit world. They are also honoured and<br />
Top<br />
Mansak Family<br />
Vanuatu b.unknown<br />
Temar ne ari (ancestor spirit) c.1995<br />
Natural fibres, clay, synthetic polymer paint, ochres, pig’s<br />
tusks, bamboo and sticks / 130 x 36 x 15cm<br />
Temar ne ari (ancestor spirit) c.1995<br />
Natural fibres, clay, synthetic polymer paint, coconut<br />
shells, bamboo and sticks / 120 x 48 x 24cm<br />
Below<br />
Temar ne ari (ancestor spirit) c.1995<br />
Natural fibres, clay, synthetic polymer paint, pig’s tusks,<br />
coconut shells, bamboo and sticks / 94 x 45 x 50cm<br />
Temar ne ari (ancestor spirit) c.1995<br />
Natural fibres, clay, synthetic polymer paint, ochres, pig’s<br />
tusks, coconut shells, bamboo and sticks / 94 x 34 x 13cm<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
of Modern <strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
184 185
Rohan Wealleans<br />
Ritual and excess<br />
Rohan Wealleans is fascinated by the processes through which a<br />
society develops its own unique and distinctive material culture.<br />
In fact, his own art practice might be read as an attempt to build a<br />
visual culture from the ground up. Since around 2001, his oeuvre has<br />
resembled something like a body of newly discovered artefacts from a<br />
lost civilisation — any single object is notoriously difficult to pin down,<br />
while collectively they suggest a greater system is at play, replete with<br />
its own beliefs, aesthetic codes and influences.<br />
Wealleans’s contribution to APT6 brings together three distinct<br />
elements: ‘horrorgami’ collages, a ‘ritual painting’, and a sculptural<br />
canoe. Each has ritualistic and fetishistic overtones, and shares in an<br />
aesthetic of wild excess coupled with a neurotic attention to detail. Each<br />
work resembles a self-contained, if perverse, archaeological dig, where<br />
an object is methodically buried with the intention of excavating it back<br />
out. The result is an extraordinary array of variegated surfaces, which<br />
encourage the viewer’s gaze to shift between the whole composition<br />
and minute details where countless interior strata are revealed.<br />
At the opening of APT6, Wealleans performed a type of consecration<br />
rite, in which the bulbous, lumpen form of a ritual painting was<br />
disembowelled with a sharp blade, its interior liquid paint spilling<br />
onto the floor of the exhibition space. Wealleans first exhibited a ritual<br />
painting in Auckland in 2004. 1 In an action that has since taken on<br />
mythical status — and sparked debate about the relationship of the<br />
artist’s work to Māori and Pacific Islander visual culture — Wealleans<br />
arrived at the exhibition opening wearing a Polynesian lava-lava and<br />
proceeded to cut the work open in front of gallery visitors, catching<br />
the paint that gushed forth in a ceremonial bowl. These performative<br />
actions draw connections between diverse and seemingly unrelated<br />
cultural and artistic practices — from ritualistic sacrifice and bloodletting<br />
to ‘singing-in’ art works into the gallery space, as well as<br />
Western art historical points of reference, such as Viennese Actionism<br />
and Abstract Expressionism.<br />
seed collector 2009 — a store-bought fibreglass kayak covered in<br />
layers of paint and carved by the artist. Wealleans is keenly interested<br />
in the ability of his works to spark diverse narratives concerning their<br />
potential function and meaning, and Paikea decoy, seed collector — like<br />
its 2007 counterpart, the black Death boat — seems poised to carry an<br />
occupant into the next life.<br />
Importantly, this allusive narrative running through Wealleans’s<br />
practice emerges not from didactic elements, but from the artist’s<br />
formalist, forensic approach to his chosen medium. There is a ‘truth<br />
to materials’ attitude at play, but Wealleans shows us that the truth is<br />
not what we might think. Paint, for example, has nothing to do with<br />
flatness; in Wealleans’s hands it is an alchemical substance capable<br />
of transforming objects, and not just their surfaces. His paintings have<br />
shape, skin and guts.<br />
Wealleans’s synthesis of formalist concerns with an array of crosscultural<br />
references takes on particular significance within the context<br />
of APT. The ongoing APT project provides a framework to consider<br />
cross-cultural and inter-generational influences, without losing sight of<br />
the cultural specificity of an artist’s work. In Rohan Wealleans’s practice,<br />
however, cultural specificity is brashly disregarded, and instead<br />
disparate chunks of visual cultures are sampled and combined into<br />
totally new and compelling forms.<br />
Nicholas Chambers<br />
Endnote<br />
1 The exhibition ‘Albino’ was held at the Ivan Anthony <strong>Gallery</strong> in Auckland in 2004.<br />
Begun in 2005, the horrorgami collage works are indebted to the<br />
aesthetic of B-grade horror films which, like Wealleans’s work, are<br />
shocking not for their realism, but for their sheer excess. In the two<br />
examples exhibited in APT6, the artist has enlarged trading cards<br />
produced for Steven Spielberg’s seminal 1977 film Close Encounters<br />
of the Third Kind, behind which he has placed many layers of paper.<br />
When he carves through the surface of the image, the lurid insides<br />
erupt outwards in an exuberantly controlled explosion. The collages<br />
reveal arcane energies contained within seemingly innocuous bits<br />
of pop culture, raising the spectre of beliefs in supernatural forces<br />
operating subliminally via popular media.<br />
The explosive energies of the horrorgami collages and ritual paintings<br />
are tempered by the totemic and portentous presence of Paikea decoy,<br />
Rohan Wealleans<br />
New Zealand b.1977<br />
The road to tomorrow (detail) 2009<br />
Mixed media / 177 x 120cm / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and Hamish McKay <strong>Gallery</strong>, Wellington /<br />
Photograph: Vanessa McCabe<br />
186 187
Robin White, Leba Toki and Bale Jione<br />
A shared garden<br />
Fijian masi (barkcloth) artist Leba Toki and New Zealand artist–<br />
printmaker Robin White began their collaborative relationship in<br />
2000. Drawing on a shared Bahá’í faith, with its precepts of harmonious<br />
cultural interaction, their extraordinary works involve an extensive<br />
process of community consultation and knowledge sharing to<br />
manifest their rich layers of imagery and meaning. 1 A combination of<br />
Bahá’í concepts, Indian motifs and traditional Fijian patterns, as well<br />
as explorations of social practices common to different cultures, are<br />
primary features of their collaborative works.<br />
Begun in Leba Toki’s home in Lautoka in December 2008, Teitei vou<br />
(A new garden) 2009 is Toki and White’s second collaborative project.<br />
Involving an additional masi artist, Bale Jione, and consultation with<br />
Indo-Fijian neighbours, the work acknowledges the complex histories<br />
of cultural interaction resulting from the creation of a modern ‘sugar’<br />
economy in Fiji. The sugar industry developed when the Australian<br />
CSR company imported indentured Indian labourers between 1879<br />
and 1919. The Indian community’s subsequent growth, its relative<br />
economic success and access to land have proven complex and<br />
divisive issues for Fiji, culminating in recent decades in a series of<br />
military-led coups to reclaim power and land for indigenous Fijians. 2<br />
Known locally as ‘sugar city’, Lautoka boasts the largest of Fiji’s four<br />
sugar mills and its population is a complex mix of different cultures.<br />
Consisting of six masi, one ibe vakabati (wool-fringed pandanus mat)<br />
and two fabric mats, Teitei vou (A new garden) adopts the format in which<br />
masi is displayed within a traditional Fijian wedding. 3 The artists describe<br />
this as ‘representing a marriage of cultures and an acknowledgement of<br />
the bounties and gifts that come from such a union’. 4<br />
the artists’ shared Bahá’í faith — and proclaims in symbolic language the<br />
appearance of a new garden in which those who strive can discover the<br />
mysteries of love. 6 The importance of Bahá’í in the overall conception<br />
of the work is also evident in the imagery on the large taunamu which<br />
references the distinctive terraced gardens and the Shrine of the Bab<br />
on Mount Carmel, in Haifa, Israel. Metaphors for growth and change<br />
are suggested in the work’s title; gardens are regularly altered through<br />
cross-fertilisation and the migration of different plant species. Bringing<br />
together motifs representing Fijian, Indian and Middle Eastern flora and<br />
cultural history in their ‘new garden’, the artists invite considerations<br />
of an organic system dependent on diversity. This contrasts with<br />
references to the House of the Bab in Shiraz, Iran (a Bahá’í place of<br />
pilgrimage that was attacked during the Iranian revolution, and later<br />
completely destroyed), as well as ominous snake and jackal motifs. 7<br />
The less sustainable reality of monoculture sugarcane plantations<br />
and the continued indenture of underpaid Indian workers to service<br />
multinational industries are also suggested by the coupling of<br />
sugarcane and Vodafone logo motifs in the work.<br />
However, the complexities of these divergent cultural histories are not<br />
represented here as unresolvable confrontations: Teitei vou (A new<br />
garden) instead explores their intimate combination. Leba Toki, Bale<br />
Jione and Robin White worked together, and with their communities,<br />
not only to layer woven pandanus, fabric mats and barkcloths to<br />
sanctify a union based on the peaceful precepts of the Bahá’í faith,<br />
but also to celebrate the fruitfulness of diversity.<br />
Ruth McDougall<br />
Robin White New Zealand b.1946<br />
Leba Toki Fiji b.1951<br />
Bale Jione Fiji b.1952<br />
Teitei vou (A new garden) 2009<br />
Natural dyes on barkcloth, woven pandanus, commercial<br />
wool, woven barkcloth, sari fabric mats / 9 components:<br />
taunamu 390 x 240cm; butubutu 150 x 240cm; ibe<br />
vakabati 180 x 240cm; 2 sulu 79 x 242cm (each);<br />
2 oro 30 x 240cm (each); 2 woven mats 67 x 46cm (each).<br />
Installed size variable / Purchased 2009. <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation Grant / Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
For wedding ceremonies, masi fashioned into sulu (sarongs) and<br />
oro (cummerbunds), often saturated with pigment to achieve a<br />
symbolically powerful golden or brown hue, are worn by both bride<br />
and groom, despite past injunctions against women wearing them. 5<br />
As part of the butu (female gift exchange ceremony), the couple<br />
stand on a pile of mats and masi layered by family members to form<br />
the bridal bed. These layers are arranged according to their level<br />
of importance; the ritual wool-fringed ibe vakabati sits just below<br />
the uppermost butubutu (ritual masi), believed to sanctify both the<br />
bed and the union. In Teitei vou (A new garden), a pair of fabric mats<br />
created from pieces of masi, combined with fragments of wedding<br />
saris, is placed on top, suggesting an Indian–Fijian union. The large<br />
and richly stencilled taunamu (masi screen) forms a backdrop for the<br />
bride and groom as they face family members.<br />
Ideas of love and unity, achieved through the sharing of food often<br />
sweetened with sugar, inspired the work; sugarcane is juxtaposed with<br />
a pattern from the indigenous kumala on the butubutu. The title Teitei<br />
vou, however, is derived from the writings of Bahá’ulláh — the founder of<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Founded in the mid nineteenth century in Iran by Bahá’ulláh, Bahá’í preaches the<br />
spiritual unity of mankind and espouses a vision of world peace.<br />
2 Fiji has had four coups since 1987. See Craig Sherborne, ‘Coup-coup land’, in<br />
The Monthly, October 2008, pp.44–8.<br />
3 Only a selection of textiles from Teitei vou will be on display in APT6, including the<br />
Taunamu, Butubutu, Ibe vakabati and two fabric mats.<br />
4 Robin White, email to Maud Page, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, January 2009.<br />
5 See Rod Ewin’s discussion of masi as male ‘badge of virility’ in Rod Ewin, Staying<br />
Fijian: Vatulele Island Barkcloth and Social Identity, Crawford House Publishing,<br />
Adelaide and University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2009.<br />
6 Bahá’ulláh, The Hidden Words, Bahá’í Publishing Committee, New York, c.1932.<br />
7 The House of the Bab was demolished in September 1979 and in 1981 the site was<br />
made into a road and public square.<br />
188 189
Yang Shaobin<br />
X – Blind Spot<br />
In X – Blind Spot 2008, Yang Shaobin takes the coalmining industry<br />
in China as his subject, exploring its effects on the individuals who<br />
make up its huge labour force. X – Blind Spot was developed as a<br />
collaborative project with the Long March group, and consists of<br />
documents, sculptures, paintings, installation and videos. 1 While the<br />
first part of Yang’s project, 800 metres under, focused on the mine itself<br />
and workers’ lives at the mine site, X – Blind Spot concentrates on the<br />
repercussions of this industry.<br />
Over a four-year period, Yang and members of the Long March visited<br />
the four diverse coalmining districts of Shanxi, Hebei, Inner Mongolia<br />
and Liaoning. 2 They went to the ‘high-tech, super-scale environment of<br />
open-pit mines [as well as] the small, home owned operations’ where<br />
they met with many individuals — from grassroots workers to highlyplaced<br />
officials. 3 Although Yang was born into a coalmining family in<br />
Hebei Province, he found his experience of the contemporary mines to<br />
be very different from his family’s. He felt confronted and depressed by<br />
what he saw:<br />
When I was young, I felt coalmines were very clean and really nice<br />
. . . [when I returned] the whole environment was hard to look at . . .<br />
it was an earthly hell. 4<br />
muscular, planar surfaces suggest heroism, yet its loosely hanging arm<br />
and exposed wires imbue it with an air of melancholy and neglect.<br />
Contrasting with this figure of heroism destroyed is the highly realistic<br />
fibreglass and clay sculpture of a miner dressed in rubber boots,<br />
reclining with his helmet at his side. Complementing these are four<br />
paintings: a portrait in photographic negative style, evoking the ‘X-ray’<br />
of the series title and suggesting the erasure of individuality; and<br />
another, showing a group of faceless miners overshadowed by the<br />
immense machinery surrounding them. Several works were painted<br />
following Yang’s visit to the Qinhuangdao Beidaihe Coal Workers’<br />
Pneumoconiosis and Recovery Centre, a hospital specialising in<br />
treating pulmonary disease and chronic ailments. The blackened<br />
specimens in these paintings represent the diseased lungs of<br />
deceased workers.<br />
A critical aspect of Yang’s project is its contrast with the heroic and<br />
idealised depictions of workers in the art of the Cultural Revolution<br />
era. X – Blind Spot presents the obverse of this revolutionary idealism<br />
— the treatment of workers in a China increasingly motivated by<br />
capitalist principles. While Yang uses the same painterly realism, the<br />
bright colours and superficial surfaces are replaced with a dark and<br />
penetrating vision.<br />
China is the largest producer and consumer of coal in the world, and<br />
its coalmines proportionately have the largest numbers of fatalities.<br />
Recent figures show that approximately 6000 miners are killed every<br />
year, or almost 20 per day. 5 Many are migrant peasants from rural areas<br />
— one of the most vulnerable social groups in China, partially as a result<br />
of the ban on independent worker unions. Lack of regulation, and an<br />
unwillingness to invest in adequate safety equipment, exacerbates the<br />
problems of an already unsafe industry. Many accidents go unreported,<br />
and the long-term effects on the miners’ health are devastating.<br />
While mourning the loss of a short-lived communist ideal, Yang’s<br />
project also attempts to recapture some of the spirit of social<br />
responsibility motivating communism. Through X – Blind Spot, Yang<br />
Shaobin proposes an ambitious new mode of moral engagement for<br />
art, and creates a visual experience which is both thought-provoking<br />
and emotionally powerful.<br />
Abigail Fitzgibbons<br />
For APT6, a select group of six works represents Yang’s X – Blind Spot,<br />
consisting of two sculptures and four oil paintings highlighting the<br />
theme of labour exploitation. The title operates on a numbers of levels:<br />
‘X’ suggests a kind of X-ray vision which Yang uses to great effect in<br />
his phosphorescent paintings, while ‘blind spot’ refers metaphorically<br />
to the public invisibility of the hardships the miners suffer, and to the<br />
dark industrial caverns of the mines themselves. Literally, the title also<br />
relates to a term used for a piece of mining equipment (Komatsu 170),<br />
which allows the miners to see in the impenetrable underground<br />
darkness. Yet, there is a blind spot at either end of the machine’s reach<br />
(over 50 metres in diameter), which represents a real risk to those<br />
working in the mines.<br />
A poignant metaphor for the miners’ status is Yang’s fibreglass<br />
sculpture X – Blind Spot No.16 2008, which replicates a statue<br />
outside the Yanggeleng Village mine in Inner Mongolia. The statue’s<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 The Long March Project is a Beijing-based art-related initiative established in 2002<br />
which uses the Long March (led by Mao Zedong in 1934–35) as a geographic and<br />
discursive framework. Its founder and chief curator is Lu Jie.<br />
2 Long March Writing Group, ‘Excerpts from Yang Shaobin’s notebook: A textual<br />
interpretation of X-blind spot’, Yishu, vol.8, no.1, January–February 2009, p.67.<br />
3 ‘A Long March Project: X-blind spot — Yang Shaobin solo exhibition’, , viewed 30 August<br />
2009.<br />
4 Yang Shaobin and Jin Yujie (interview), ‘The traces of concept: Interview with Yang<br />
Shaobin’, <strong>Art</strong> Map, 13 August 2008, , viewed 30 August 2009.<br />
5 Susan Watts, ‘A coal-dependent future?’, BBC News, 9 March 2005, , viewed 30 August 2009.<br />
Yang Shaobin<br />
China b.1963<br />
X – Blind Spot No. 16 2008<br />
Fibreglass / 250 x 90 x 80cm / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and Long March Space, Beijing<br />
190 191
Yao Jui-chung<br />
Wandering in the lens<br />
Yao Jui-chung<br />
Taiwan b.1969<br />
Everything will fall into ruin (detail) 1990–2009<br />
Black and white digital photograph, AP 1 / 100 x 150cm /<br />
Gift of the artist through the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation 2009 / Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
A star, a grain of sand, a temple or a ruin — everything is just an idea<br />
and a thought that reflects a secret landscape deep in people’s heart. 1<br />
Yao Jui-chung belongs to a generation of contemporary Taiwanese<br />
artists whose work underscores the ideological landscape of postmartial<br />
law Taiwan. 2 Working across photography, performance,<br />
video, sculpture and drawing, Yao explores the complicated terrain of<br />
Taiwanese cultural identity, which was compounded by the country’s<br />
entanglement with Cold War ideology during the martial law period,<br />
its successful embrace of capitalism and democratic reform, and the<br />
effects of corporate multi-nationalism on industry and trade. Yao’s work<br />
simultaneously registers the political implications arising from these<br />
histories and makes evident the irreverent use of political subtexts<br />
in contemporary art, ‘unmask[ing] certain fantastic situations hidden<br />
within the uncontrollable human will’. 3<br />
Since the early 1990s, Yao has traversed Taiwan and its surrounding<br />
islands, compiling hundreds of photographs of places abandoned as<br />
a result of the social and economic development of modern Taiwan.<br />
Everything will fall into ruin 1990–2009 brings together a selection of<br />
48 photographs, grouped into four thematic sets of ‘ruins’ — derelict<br />
sites of industry, abandoned civil dwellings, deserted military and<br />
prison infrastructure, and the refuse of statuary scattered throughout<br />
the countryside. These otherworldly images of destroyed, weathered<br />
and forgotten sites — man-made, yet devoid of human presence — are<br />
salient markers for shifts of power, and collectively reveal an enormous<br />
black hole in Taiwan’s socio-political history.<br />
The detritus of rapid industrialisation is captured in these photographs<br />
of defunct factories and industrial plants. Many once profitable<br />
industries, which aided Taiwan’s economic boom during the late<br />
twentieth century, are now in decline. They have since been supplanted<br />
by global competition, with many businesses relocating to mainland<br />
China, where lower production costs have accommodated highpolluting<br />
industries and reconfigured Taiwan’s export industries.<br />
Residential areas have also been affected by migration patterns and<br />
environmental change, leaving behind ghost towns and dilapidated<br />
housing projects; for instance, homes in mountainous areas have<br />
collapsed as a result of poor design and natural disasters.<br />
Yao’s photographs of military bases on Taiwan’s west coast and<br />
political prisons on its east coast recall the oppressive history of the<br />
Kuomintang Party of China (KMT) and the Taiwan Garrison Command,<br />
a secret police unit whose wide-ranging powers under martial law<br />
allowed the trial of civilians by military courts on charges of sedition.<br />
Offshore island bases that once functioned as Taiwan’s front line of<br />
defence are now left barren as Taiwan and China reach cooperative<br />
agreements in the ongoing process of rapprochement. Abandoned<br />
theme parks littered with sculptures, along with discarded religious<br />
deities, suggest both the reification of religious and commercial<br />
icons and the ravages of contemporary consumption and waste.<br />
The coexistence of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and capitalism<br />
in Taiwanese daily life has produced visual clutter of discarded gods,<br />
and surreal traces of faded hopes and material desire.<br />
Yao provides little detail of the time and location for each image,<br />
allowing the group to be interpreted through broader considerations.<br />
Yao’s photographs — while responding to the complexities underlying<br />
Taiwan’s relationship with China — also function collectively in<br />
characterising ruination as an essential experience within the life cycle<br />
of all things. As Yao describes it, all things ultimately fade:<br />
After the decay and destruction of their physical being, they<br />
reappear in another form and preserve the aura of the original being<br />
as relics . . . Although our brief existence is accompanied by decay,<br />
the silent ruins may be a symbol of the constant birth and death<br />
process in nature. Too much commemoration and reconstruction will<br />
distort the lesson hidden within. If we can understand this, ruins are<br />
no longer just ruins, but are an essential experience in life. 4<br />
As Taiwan’s metropolitan and rural centres witness dramatic social and<br />
physical transformation, and the structural evidence of these changes<br />
continues to be reclaimed by nature, Yao’s photographs capture the<br />
last remaining memories of things past. Once inspired by his discovery<br />
of graffiti in an abandoned building which declared, ‘the world outside<br />
awaits us’, Yao continues his poetic roaming, tracking the spirits hidden<br />
in Taiwan’s ruins and revealing their secret landscapes.<br />
Jose Da Silva<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Yao Jui-chung, email to the author, 2 July 2009.<br />
2 Taiwan’s period of martial law from 1949 to 1987 is considered the longest in<br />
modern history. Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the nationalist Kuomintang Party of<br />
China (KMT), withdrew to Taiwan with two million soldiers following its loss to the<br />
communists during the Chinese civil war. The emergency decrees were lifted 38<br />
years later by his successor and son, President Chiang Ching-kuo.<br />
3 Yao Jui-chung, ‘The historical destiny of humanity has a certain incurable absurdity’,<br />
trans. Eric Chang and Craig D Stevens, in Yao Jui-chung, Garden City Publishing,<br />
Taipei, Taiwan, 2008, p.11.<br />
4 Yao, email to the author.<br />
192 193
Yao Jui-chung<br />
Taiwan b.1969<br />
Everything will fall into ruin (details) 1990–2009<br />
Black and white digital photographs, AP 1 / 48 sheets:<br />
100 x 150cm (each) / Gift of the artist through the<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation 2009 / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
194 195
YNG (Yoshitomo Nara and graf)<br />
Discovering new worlds<br />
Yoshitomo Nara is that rare kind of artist whose works have deeply<br />
infiltrated people’s lives. Across all his productions and activities, there<br />
is an implicit recognition that the elements of visual culture which<br />
resonate with us most strongly tend not to be in museums, but in the<br />
private spaces we inhabit. Accordingly, while Nara has been wellknown<br />
in the international art world for the past decade, he has also<br />
found a place for his creations in the broader public sphere. His books,<br />
T-shirts, toys and other products are strategically mass-marketed,<br />
counterbalancing the high demand for his paintings and drawings.<br />
As a result, Nara’s work is as likely to be found in bedrooms and living<br />
rooms as it is in museums and galleries.<br />
Each YNG hut acts as a platform for collaboration — not only between<br />
Nara and graf, but also with the local installation teams with which they<br />
work. graf founder Hideki Toyoshima visited Brisbane with Nara in<br />
April 2009, and both were fascinated by the ubiquitous ‘<strong>Queensland</strong>er’<br />
house, raised from the ground on stilts and often housing a car<br />
underneath. In the commission for APT6, YNG have constructed a hut<br />
from reclaimed timbers and other found materials, sitting atop a small<br />
van. The hut’s interior, filled with Nara’s drawings and objects, is held<br />
tantalisingly out of reach to <strong>Gallery</strong> visitors — viewers are compelled to<br />
peer in from the top of ladders or to look down through the hut’s open<br />
ceiling from the Pavilion Walk above on the <strong>Gallery</strong>’s third level.<br />
As with most artists, Nara’s art works are created in the private space of<br />
the studio. Here, as part of an intimate environment, they find their first<br />
home alongside myriad other elements populating the space. There<br />
is generally a great shift in ambience from the studio to the exhibition<br />
gallery, and Nara’s collaborations with the design firm graf media gm,<br />
under the acronym YNG, might be understood as proposals for<br />
negotiating this shift. In over 20 collaborative projects in Japan and<br />
internationally, YNG have created exhibition environments with distinct<br />
emotional registers, each responding to its specific locality as well as<br />
creating comfortable homes for Nara’s works. As Nara has explained:<br />
In a text discussing the conceptual origin of his collaborations<br />
with Nara, Toyoshima referred to vacant lots remembered from his<br />
childhood — abandoned spaces where children would congregate for<br />
unsupervised and unstructured play, adapting the space to suit their<br />
needs and creating their own rules for engagement. 2 YNG employ<br />
a similar logic in their approach to the museum. By establishing<br />
an autonomous zone within APT6, YNG have created a complete<br />
exhibition within the exhibition — it is at once a sculpture on display in<br />
the <strong>Gallery</strong>, as well as a portal transporting us back to the artist’s studio.<br />
I believe an environment has an essential impact on how one<br />
creates work. Various factors such as the music playing in the room,<br />
the colour on the wall and surrounding objects all affect my painting.<br />
I want to bring those elements to the exhibition space, which then<br />
becomes a ‘hut’. 1<br />
Prior to the establishment of the YNG collaboration, huts had often<br />
appeared as motifs in Nara’s paintings, and were portrayed in his<br />
trademark shorthand, illustrative style. While not as prevalent as<br />
children or animals, the simplified hut form can be found in works<br />
dating back to the 1980s. The subsequent YNG huts, the first of which<br />
was executed in 2003, have adapted Nara’s basic form, melding it with<br />
other improvised, DIY structures.<br />
Nicholas Chambers<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Yukie Kamiya, ‘Yoshitomo Nara and graf: Happy together’, <strong>Art</strong> Asia Pacific, no.52,<br />
2007, p.83.<br />
2 Hideki Toyoshima, ‘The A to Z of A to Z’, <strong>Art</strong> iT, vol.4, no.3, summer–fall 2006, p.52.<br />
The specific forms of YNG’s constructions are often inspired by<br />
local, and at times unregulated, innovations in the built environment.<br />
One of the earliest examples, Kabul note 2002 2004, was inspired<br />
by Nara’s 2002 trip to Afghanistan where he witnessed dwellings<br />
fabricated from discarded materials found on or close to the site,<br />
which embodied a self-reliant and ecological approach to construction.<br />
In 2004, YNG applied this principle to the museum, constructing<br />
what they described as an ‘Afghan-style shed’ entirely from discarded<br />
crates, construction materials and other elements found in the<br />
museum’s warehouse. Other YNG ‘huts’ have borrowed from mobile<br />
structures such as tents, or taken evolving, additive forms reminiscent<br />
of Brazilian favelas.<br />
YNG<br />
Yoshitomo Nara<br />
Japan b.1959<br />
graf<br />
Japan est. 1993<br />
Guitar Girl/Cheer Up! YOSHINO! (from Y.N.G.M.S. (Y.N.G.’s<br />
Mobile Studio)) 2009<br />
Synthetic polymer paint, colour pencil on paper mounted<br />
on board / 81 x 61cm / Purchased 2009 with funds from<br />
the Bequest of Grace Davies and Nell Davies through<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> / Photograph: Kei Okano<br />
196 197
Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu<br />
People holding flowers<br />
Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu’s collaborative installation People holding<br />
flowers 2007 comprises 400 individual figures made from the same<br />
mould. Their hands, faces and feet are brightly painted, and each<br />
wears an immaculate identical black business suit, white shirt and<br />
red tie. Each figure holds a large pink velvet flower extended on a<br />
green stalk above their heads. Their colourful faces are blank and<br />
expressionless, although a sense of dynamism and movement is<br />
created by this field of figures, all in similar poses holding lush, tactile<br />
flowers to mesmerising effect.<br />
Zhu and Ji have been making ‘soft’ sculptures together since 2003<br />
while maintaining their individual practices. Ji is well-known as a<br />
painter in the style of Political Pop, an artistic movement — along with<br />
Cynical Realism — which arose following the Tiananmen Square protests<br />
of 1989. At this time, many artists turned away from the political and<br />
cultural idealism of the mid to late 1980s Chinese artistic orthodoxy<br />
to make works that were gritty representations of the absurdity and<br />
mundaneness of life. As the Chinese economy continued to expand<br />
and urban development accelerated through the 1990s and 2000s, the<br />
forces of consumerism and individualism became key artistic subjects.<br />
Political Pop had responded to this new climate by appropriating<br />
elements of the mass media imagery that characterises both popular<br />
culture and propaganda art, and socialist realist styles and Cultural<br />
Revolution-era images were merged with the aesthetic of advertising<br />
to create a style embracing ironic, playful and critical attitudes.<br />
to let ‘a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought<br />
contend’, which preceded the bloody purges of the Hundred<br />
Flowers Campaign of 1957. As artists of the post-Cultural Revolution<br />
generation, Ji and Zhu endow these flowers with an additional<br />
significance — that of a carnal and material force. Fleshy, artificial and<br />
seductive, the flowers represent contemporary society’s increasing<br />
consumerism, particularly evident in China’s rapidly growing cities.<br />
The mannequins’ blank faces, however, contrasted with the joyous<br />
and celebratory feel of the flowers, suggest the emptiness and selfperpetuating<br />
nature of this desire.<br />
Through the symbol of the flowers, the homogenising effects of mass<br />
consumption and the subservience of the individual to the state under<br />
communism are implicitly contrasted. With this work, Zhu Weibing<br />
and Ji Wenyu take up the legacies of Cynical Realism and Political<br />
Pop, applying their perceptions to an era of what might be dubbed<br />
‘collective consumerism’.<br />
Abigail Fitzgibbons<br />
Ji’s paintings feature gaudy pastiches of advertising imagery and other<br />
contemporary sources, and comment on issues such as the growing<br />
sex industry, and the materialism and the realities of contemporary<br />
life in urban China. Zhu formally studied art and craft techniques<br />
in Shanghai, and the technical precision required for the delicately<br />
balanced figures in People holding flowers owes much to her training.<br />
In their sculptures, Zhu and Ji combine these influences to create a<br />
contemporary fusion of Pop art with Chinese folk art and other popular<br />
art forms, such as handicrafts sold in the market.<br />
Zhu Weibing<br />
China b.1971<br />
Ji Wenyu<br />
China b.1959<br />
People holding flowers 2007<br />
Synthetic polymer paint on resin; velour, steel wire, dacron,<br />
lodestone and cotton / 400 pieces: 100 x 18 x 8cm (each) /<br />
Installed dimensions variable / The Kenneth and Yasuko<br />
Myer Collection of Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong>. Purchased<br />
2008 with funds from Michael Simcha Baevski through<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Previous soft sculptures by Zhu and Ji include Watch the view 2005,<br />
depicting contemporary apartment living contrasted with the<br />
landscape aesthetic of traditional Chinese art. Others, such as those in<br />
the series ‘Make beautiful’ 2005, are confronting, life-sized and garishly<br />
made-up soft mannequins, wrapped in towels and designed to lounge<br />
on chairs in a gallery space; in Chinese new potted landscape 2006<br />
and the 2005 series ‘In Garden & Out Garden’, Zhu and Ji present<br />
both beautifully made soft landscapes and whole cities nestled inside<br />
porcelain plant pots. Through these works, the artists comment on the<br />
aspirations of a society with growing global purchase.<br />
People holding flowers deploys a particularly potent symbol for<br />
Chinese culture: the flowers inevitably recall Mao Zedong’s dictum<br />
198 199
Building bridges: Ten years of Kids’ APT<br />
Andrew Clark<br />
This year we celebrate a decade of outstanding achievement through the children’s component<br />
of the Asia Pacific Triennial series — Kids’ APT. The inaugural Kids’ APT in 1999 marked a major<br />
breakthrough in children’s programming at the <strong>Gallery</strong>. For the first time, artists were invited to<br />
develop projects and art works especially for children (and the grown-ups who accompanied<br />
them), to be exhibited alongside and within the main exhibition as a hands-on component<br />
of APT. From its inception, the program attracted a great deal of attention — 150 000 people<br />
visited APT3 in 1999. Since then, Kids’ APT has grown exponentially, with each exhibition<br />
engaging the keen and curious interest of many of the exhibiting artists. In total, over 55 APT<br />
artists have been involved in Kids’ APT and the associated Summer Spectacular festival, which<br />
has helped to attract more than 1.1 million visitors to APT since 2002. 1<br />
The first Kids’ APT in 1999 proved a revelation to all of us. The <strong>Gallery</strong> commissioned several<br />
major international artists, such as Xu Bing, to design activities for what was then considered a<br />
‘niche’ audience. In those activities, children worked directly with the artists themselves or with<br />
trained facilitators. Without hesitation, these children committed both to the physical tasks and<br />
the meanings associated with them: they wrote their names with brush and ink in a brand new<br />
language; they relaxed (and communed with goldfish) in a structure meant to replicate the<br />
openness to nature of a Thai pavilion; and they watched one of the <strong>Gallery</strong>’s most expansive<br />
walls as it was gradually taken over by outlines of their own footprints, while they heard stories<br />
about how powerful that simple human image is in the religious lives of millions of people.<br />
Of course, the impulse to be active and involved, to engage firsthand with art works, is not<br />
confined to children. Since the beginning of the APT series in 1993, the appetite and aptitude<br />
of <strong>Gallery</strong> audiences for contemporary art have expanded in a way we welcome, but did not<br />
fully expect. Remarkably, from December 2006 to April 2007, more than 700 000 people<br />
attended APT5. A lot of intellectual, financial and creative resources were mobilised to<br />
achieve that outcome, and to ensure the exhibition was replete with potential for meaningful<br />
interaction. Over the years, we have found that visitors of all ages are fascinated by the<br />
processes underlying and informing an art work, by evidence that its making involves real<br />
labour, and that its production can be affected by all the constraints of a working life.<br />
Underpinning Kids’ APT are two core viewpoints — firstly, that contemporary artists’ ideas<br />
are an authentic and appealing means through which children can learn about art and its<br />
importance in the lives of millions of people around the world; and secondly, and perhaps<br />
most importantly, that the experience a child has in an art museum is as valid as that of any<br />
other visitor. Through Kids’ APT, children engage with the diverse cultures of the Asia Pacific<br />
region, encountering different beliefs and experiencing firsthand the manifold methods artists<br />
employ in art-making.<br />
Delivering a postcard to the top of futon mountain<br />
as part of Tsuyoshi Ozawa’s Everyone likes someone<br />
as you like someone for Kids’ APT 2006 / Photograph:<br />
John Gollings<br />
200
Yayoi Kusama’s The obliteration room, for Kids’ APT 2002,<br />
encouraged children to cover a white room with coloured<br />
dots / Photograph: Richard Stringer<br />
Cai Guo Qiang’s bridge building activity for Kids’ APT 1999<br />
Vibrant and ongoing relationships with leading contemporary artists have been developed<br />
through Kids’ APT. In fact, collaboration is the key component of the program. Working with<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> staff, artists create their interactive projects — a process that enables artists to explore<br />
anew the fundamental ideas and concepts concerning them. In recognition of children’s varying<br />
interests and abilities, Kids’ APT comprises a range of media, from drawing activities to largescale<br />
multimedia projects.<br />
Internationally acclaimed artist Cai Guo Qiang, whose retrospective was held at the Guggenheim<br />
Museum in 2008, developed one of the first interactives for Kids’ APT in 1999. Designed<br />
to complement his major work in APT3, Blue dragon and bridge crossing — a large-scale<br />
installation encompassing a 30-metre-long bamboo suspension bridge constructed over the<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>’s Watermall — Cai extended an invitation to children to design and construct a bridge<br />
using the simplest of materials: tape and cane. To provide children with inspiration, the artist<br />
sketched 76 line drawings of various bridges, revealing varied approaches, some fanciful,<br />
others basic and fundamental. Over the course of the exhibition, children visiting with parents<br />
and carers engaged with the artist’s ideas through the engineering of their own bridge models.<br />
As part of Kids’ APT in 2002, senior Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama worked with the <strong>Gallery</strong> to<br />
develop The obliteration room, referencing the obsessive repetition of dots that Kusama has<br />
incorporated into her work since the 1950s. Kusama’s space for children was fashioned in<br />
the style of a typical Australian living room, furnished with ordinary household items. Though<br />
the entire room and its contents were initially painted stark white, children ‘obliterated’ the<br />
environment by covering every surface with multicoloured dot stickers of various sizes. By<br />
the close of the exhibition five months later, the space had been transformed from a pristine<br />
interior into a spectacularly colourful and accreted environment.<br />
Contrasting with the spectacular, many Kids’ APT artist projects have also involved children<br />
engaged in quiet contemplation. Chinese artist Song Dong’s Writing with water 2002<br />
featured an installation of large rocks upon which children could write their thoughts or draw<br />
pictures with water and traditional calligraphy brushes. While evoking the revered art form of<br />
calligraphy, Writing with water also related to a performative aspect of the artist’s practice and<br />
his ongoing investigations into the passing of time.<br />
Launched in 2006 with the opening of the <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong>, Kids’ APT5 featured 14<br />
commissioned interactives. <strong>Art</strong>ist Khadim Ali travelled from Pakistan to his home region of<br />
Bamiyan in Afghanistan — where the Taliban destroyed the colossal ancient Buddha sculptures<br />
in 2001 — to undertake workshops with the local school children. The Bamiyan drawing project<br />
202 203
displayed the children’s drawings in the <strong>Gallery</strong>’s newly opened Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre, offering<br />
young visitors insights into the very different lives of Afghan children. During the Summer<br />
Spectacular festival in January 2007, local children had the opportunity to make drawings with<br />
Khadim Ali, and send images of their home environment to the Bamiyan children.<br />
For APT6, 17 artist projects (the largest number to date) are featured both in the dedicated<br />
spaces of the Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre, and throughout the exhibition across both sites of the<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>. The Summer Spectacular festival, held in conjunction with APT, further engages<br />
audiences with the work of Asia Pacific artists, through artist-run workshops, performances and<br />
specially developed projects.<br />
With Kids’ APT, children and their families will continue to take part in the making and<br />
transformation of the work of contemporary Asian and Pacific artists. In doing so, they will<br />
build their knowledge of the art of the region as being some of the most exciting and relevant<br />
work being made in contemporary art practice today. In APT6, a wonderful example of this<br />
occurs with Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s project Patterns of infinity 2009, a touchscreen<br />
that engages with the intricacies of the geometric patterns and processes inherent in the<br />
artist’s work, which uses mirror mosaic and reverse-glass painting techniques. In this activity —<br />
conceived in Iran, realised in Australia, born of an immensely complex history and given new<br />
life through twenty-first century technology — multiple worlds will coalesce.<br />
Endnote<br />
1 Summer Spectacular festivals are held over the course of two weeks during the <strong>Queensland</strong> summer school<br />
holidays in association with Kids’ APT. Kids’ APT Summer Spectacular was first presented as part of APT2002.<br />
Summer Spectacular activities were staged for the first time in regional <strong>Queensland</strong> centres on 13 January 2007,<br />
coinciding with the Kids’ APT5 Summer Spectacular festival in Brisbane.<br />
Khadim Ali and the making of The Bamiyan drawing<br />
project 2006 for Kids’ APT in APT5 / Photograph:<br />
Barat Ali Batoor<br />
The young performers who featured in the APT5<br />
performance of Kin, by Stephen Page. Clockwise from<br />
left: Curtis Walsh-Jarden, Sean Page, Ryan Jarden,<br />
Hunter Page-Lochard, Samson Page, Isileli Jarden and<br />
Josiah Page / Photograph: Natasha Harth<br />
204 205
Kids’ APT artist projects<br />
Minam Apang<br />
Scribbling with script 2009<br />
There are a couple of things I wanted to address and lead the children to<br />
explore . . . to reflect on the geo-cultural diversity of the Asia Pacific region . . .<br />
to examine the forms of unfamiliar scripts like Chinese pictograms, the flowing<br />
curves of Farsi, [and] also something more familiar, like English, and look at them<br />
not as alphabets or words (‘A for apple’) but simply as forms. Amongst others,<br />
the two stylistic techniques I have used most significantly . . . are the use of text<br />
as visual texture (layered to resemble choppy waters or the creases of a rugged<br />
mountain-scape) and the use of accidental ink spills/markings to ‘carve out’<br />
creatures and micro-narratives that people the larger image . . . The participants<br />
are invited to look upon alphabets and unfamiliar scripts simply as form, neutral<br />
of meaning (as I would the accidental markings) and by animating them, ascribe<br />
new meaning to them . . . I hope this exercise succeeds in demonstrating how<br />
delightful and full of potential the transformative nature of this process can be.<br />
— Minam Apang<br />
Minam Apang’s drawing activity for children reflects the artist’s interest in<br />
calligraphy, storytelling and exploring language in unexpected ways. Apang’s<br />
selection of words and characters is sourced from scripts from across Asia<br />
and the Pacific, triggering children’s imaginations and encouraging them to<br />
look at text from a different point of view. Engaging with ideas about visual<br />
perception, every child’s response to the scripts tells a different story.<br />
KR<br />
Minam Apang<br />
India b.1980<br />
Childrens’ workshop, Scribbling with script 2009,<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong><br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist /<br />
Photograph: Katie Bennett<br />
Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan<br />
In-flight (Project: Another Country) 2009<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ist statement<br />
Using a large number of aeroplanes made from found materials, everyday<br />
articles, recycled materials, discarded ‘things’ and personal objects, a giant<br />
swarm of planes is suspended from the ceiling of the <strong>Gallery</strong> in In-flight. While<br />
conveying a sense of great multitude, each small plane retains its individuality.<br />
These planes have been collected by us and the <strong>Gallery</strong> over a series of<br />
spring holiday workshops conducted with visitors, as well as an extensive<br />
schools project, which involved students from primary and secondary schools<br />
throughout the greater Brisbane area.<br />
In-flight also includes a space for visitors to make their own aeroplanes<br />
from found and recycled materials. Through the act of making, participants<br />
will interact and foster connections, partaking in and sharing personal<br />
experiences and, in effect, constructing an environment of exchange. The<br />
essence of the work is not only focused on the objects being made or the<br />
objects in the installation, but also creates a place in the <strong>Gallery</strong> for interaction<br />
and exchange forged in the workshops.<br />
Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan<br />
Maria Isabel Guadinez-Aquilizan<br />
Philippines/Australia b.1965<br />
Alfredo Juan Aquilizan<br />
Philippines/Australia b.1962<br />
Childrens’ aeroplane-making workshop, In-flight<br />
(Project: Another Country) 2009, <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong><br />
Site-specific work for APT6 / Courtesy: The artists /<br />
Photograph: Katie Bennett<br />
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian<br />
Patterns of infinity 2009<br />
Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian is inspired by Islamic<br />
architecture and the visual language of Islamic geometric patterns. Over her<br />
distinguished career of more than 50 years, Farmanfarmaian has developed<br />
a distinctive aesthetic, combining traditional mirror mosaic and reverse-glass<br />
painting techniques. Patterns of infinity invites participants to explore and<br />
learn about geometric patterns by creating their own colourful designs via a<br />
touchscreen multimedia activity.<br />
Free-flowing game play illustrates the way in which Farmanfarmaian’s mirror<br />
mosaics and installations draw inspiration from traditional Islamic design<br />
principles. By selecting different shapes and altering certain determinants,<br />
such as scale, line, colour and texture, participants discover the infinite variety<br />
that geometric pattern offers. Participants can email an animated version<br />
of their designs to themselves or others. Designs can also be printed and<br />
transformed into a three-dimensional object, recalling the sculptural aspect<br />
of the artist’s practice.<br />
ZDL<br />
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian<br />
Iran b.1924<br />
Patterns of infinity (detail) 2009<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist<br />
206 207
Gonkar Gyatso<br />
Funky Buddhas 2009<br />
Tibetan artist Gonkar Gyatso’s Funky Buddhas is a large-scale installation<br />
featuring a display of cast white seated Buddha sculptures. Set in a semicircle,<br />
the arrangement of the Buddhas recalls the environment of temple sculpture<br />
and highlights Gyatso’s interest in Buddhist iconography.<br />
Children are invited by the artist to apply a set of readymade ‘puffy’ stickers<br />
to the white surfaces of the Buddha sculptures. The ubiquitous sticker is a<br />
signature feature of Gyatso’s practice. The sticker designs — as specified by the<br />
artist — feature a range of popular and familiar subjects for children, ranging<br />
from toys and symbols of love and happiness to milkshakes, fruits and pets.<br />
Over the course of the exhibition, the stickers will eventually cover the<br />
sculptures’ surfaces, highlighting the visual interplay of the Buddhas with the<br />
bright, colourful imagery of the stickers, and referencing the artist’s interest<br />
in the ways that contemporary culture continually absorbs new images and<br />
commodifies ideas.<br />
Ho Tzu Nyen<br />
H the Happy Robot 2009<br />
H is a happy robot who was born in a cardboard factory. We follow the journey<br />
of his life as he undergoes education and discovers the meaning of life, death<br />
and life after death. All that remains is a disk containing his memories — which<br />
are in the form of a film. Perhaps all that remains is art.<br />
— Ho Tzu Nyen<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ist and filmmaker Ho Tzu Nyen premieres his new film H the Happy Robot<br />
in Kids’ APT. The film is a modern fable about the nature of technology,<br />
and is centred on the life story of a cardboard robot called H, who lives in<br />
an imaginary Singapore. The film is screened in a theatre resembling an<br />
oversized cardboard box, inviting children to join H in his world.<br />
RS<br />
KR<br />
Gonkar Gyatso<br />
Tibet/United Kingdom b.1961<br />
Childrens’ workshop, Funky Buddhas 2009, <strong>Gallery</strong> of<br />
Modern <strong>Art</strong><br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist /<br />
Photograph: Katie Bennett<br />
Ho Tzu Nyen<br />
Singapore b.1976<br />
H the Happy Robot (stills) 2009<br />
High-definition digital video, single channel, colour,<br />
sound, 6:42 minutes, ed. of 3 / Commissioned for APT6 /<br />
Supported by the National <strong>Art</strong>s Council and Singapore Film<br />
Commission / Images courtesy: The artist and Tzulogical Films<br />
208 209
Runa Islam<br />
Make believe 2009<br />
Ayaz Jokhio<br />
99 Self portraits 2009<br />
Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio<br />
The Fairy of the Kumgang Mountains 2009<br />
The Mekong / Rich Streitmatter-Tran<br />
My River, My Future: A Children’s Drawing Project 2009<br />
London-based artist Runa Islam produces poetic films that explore the act<br />
of seeing, and ideas of truth and fiction through the vocabulary of cinema<br />
and its history. In Make believe, the artist invites children to discover some<br />
of the fundamental concepts behind moving images by making their own<br />
thaumatrope, also known as a ‘turning wonder’.<br />
Invented in the 1820s, the thaumatrope was one of a number of popular<br />
optical toys in the Victorian period and, today, it is appreciated as an<br />
important forerunner of cinematography and animation. Comprised of a disc<br />
or card with a picture on each side — such as a bird and cage — the disc is then<br />
attached to two pieces of string, or to a stick. The illusory effect is created<br />
when the object is twirled quickly with the hands, relying on the scientific<br />
phenomenon called ‘persistence of vision’ and short-term visual memory,<br />
which allows the two images to merge and become one.<br />
KR<br />
In his work 99 Self portraits 2008, Ayaz Jokhio distributed an identical image<br />
of his face to 99 friends and colleagues, who each added hair and other<br />
features; the images were then returned to the artist and exhibited together.<br />
The work carries art historical references — such as Marcel Duchamp’s LHOOQ<br />
1919, in which Duchamp put a moustache on da Vinci’s portrait of the Mona<br />
Lisa. It also carries allusions to multiple identities and highlights Jokhio’s<br />
interest in what he describes as ‘similarities and differences occurring at the<br />
same time within the same thing.’<br />
For Kids’ APT, the 99 Self portraits activity revolves around the artist’s selfportrait,<br />
wearing boxer shorts and vest, and a series of beautifully detailed,<br />
hand-drawn outfits, which have been made into magnets for dressing the<br />
figures. Mixing traditional costumes from all over the world with quirkier<br />
pieces inspired by popular culture, the combinations of outfits are potentially<br />
endless. Each clothed figure becomes an alternative identity for Jokhio,<br />
providing him with a new personality controlled by the participant. Over<br />
the course of APT6, the series of portraits will be an ever-changing display,<br />
epitomising the variety of Jokhio's practice.<br />
RS<br />
The traditional Korean children’s story The Fairy of the Kumgang Mountains is<br />
brought to life in this large-scale mural installation. Spanning the length of the<br />
Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre corridor in the <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong>, young visitors can<br />
experience this treasured tale in six themed ‘chapter’ rooms, each featuring<br />
detailed paintings by artists from the Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio.<br />
The story revolves around Bau, a woodsman who rescues a wounded deer<br />
and is rewarded when the deer tells him of eight pools deep in the Kumgang<br />
Mountains where fairies from heaven swim. After stealing a fairy’s winged<br />
dress, Bau convinces the fairy Unbyol to become his wife. Bau and Unbyol<br />
have three children and live happily together, until Unbyol tries on her old<br />
winged dress and is swept back up to heaven with her three children. Bau<br />
waits for the full moon at the fairy pools when a giant silver scoop comes down<br />
from heaven to collect water. Bau ascends to heaven, convincing his wife and<br />
children to return to earth to live happily as a hardworking, prosperous family.<br />
Accompanied by narration in Korean, The Fairy of the Kumgang Mountains<br />
takes young visitors on a fantastical journey through evocative scenery drawn<br />
from the folklore of North Korea (DPRK).<br />
TW<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ist statement<br />
The wellbeing of a community requires a pro-active investment in the future.<br />
Perhaps most intimately the short-term rewards of a good investment can be<br />
seen in the health of children and local water sources on which life depends.<br />
This project aims to link children from four communities with their local rivers<br />
in a reflective drawing project visualising their special relationship to the<br />
river. For children in the Greater Mekong Subregion, information about the<br />
Mekong River will be discussed with local rivers such as the Saigon River,<br />
the Sangker and the Irrawaddy. For children in Australia, the focus will be on<br />
issues relating to the Brisbane River.<br />
The project was facilitated in each of the four communities (Ho Chi Minh<br />
City, Vietnam; Battambang, Cambodia; Yangon, Myanmar; and Brisbane)<br />
by an experienced local leader working with children and art. The aim is<br />
to engage at least 20 children in each location, from which a selection of<br />
drawings will be exhibited at the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> . . . in conjunction<br />
with APT6. Drawings from one community not selected for exhibition will be<br />
distributed and shared with the children from the other communities, offering<br />
a comparative view into the lives and rivers of others.<br />
Runa Islam<br />
Bangladesh/United Kingdom b.1970<br />
Childrens’ workshop, Make believe 2009, <strong>Gallery</strong> of<br />
Modern <strong>Art</strong><br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist /<br />
Photograph: Katie Bennett<br />
Ayaz Jokhio<br />
Pakistan b.1978<br />
99 Self portraits (detail) 2009<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist<br />
Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio<br />
North Korea (DPRK) est.1959<br />
The Fairy of the Kumgang Mountains (detail) 2009<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artists<br />
Children's workshop, My River, My Future: A Children’s<br />
Drawing Project 2009, Han Bridge School, Ho Chi Minh<br />
City, Vietnam<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Image courtesy:<br />
Rich Streitmatter-Tran<br />
210 211
Pacific Reggae / Marcel Meltherorong aka Mars Melto<br />
Singsing with Marcel 2009<br />
Wit Pimkanchanapong<br />
I, you, we 2009<br />
Hiraki Sawa<br />
Every Little Thing Moving 2009<br />
Shirana Shahbazi<br />
Still life: Coconut and other things 2009<br />
I see my music as a tool — a way of teaching my children and future generations<br />
about holding on to Vanuatu culture, our customs and our traditions at a<br />
time when Western influence is changing our way of life. Many people are<br />
concerned about our country and our children’s place in it — where do they<br />
fit in with these two different cultures? And how do they hold on to their own<br />
culture when Western influences, in cities like Port Vila, are so flashy and shiny?<br />
We are questioning ourselves. I remember an old fella told me that if we can<br />
marry Western knowledge with our traditional knowledge that would make our<br />
children ‘twice wise’.<br />
— Marcel Meltherorong<br />
Marcel Meltherorong — reggae musician, and singer and songwriter for<br />
XX Squad — invites everyone to join him and ‘singsing’, which means to sing<br />
loud in Bislama, one of the many languages spoken across the archipelago<br />
of Vanuatu. In this multimedia activity, children are introduced to Marcel,<br />
his country and reggae music before stepping into the karaoke-style booth<br />
to sing and dance to his popular reggae track ‘Children’s day’. Children’s<br />
performances are recorded and played back on the big screen in video clip<br />
format for everyone to watch and enjoy.<br />
KR<br />
Speaking Thai is not about playing a time travelling game, but more about a role<br />
playing game. Yes, it is very similar to how you choose your ‘avatar’ character in a<br />
video game. Thai language allows you to change your ‘self’ [in] every sentence,<br />
depending on the situation. There are more than ten versions of ‘I’ available to<br />
choose from, and ‘you’ will change accordingly. There is the ‘formal I’, ‘polite I’,<br />
‘friendly I’, ‘arrogant I’, ‘small I’, ‘very small I’, ‘feminine I’, ‘masculine I’, and a lot<br />
more. It is about social hierarchy in a culture where the language is more aware<br />
of who we are, whom we are talking to, and what situation we are in now. I, you,<br />
we interprets this assumption . . . to make it direct and straightforward, to let<br />
‘(small) you’ understand ‘(big) me’ when I speak English.<br />
— Wit Pimkanchanapong<br />
Wit Pimkanchanapong’s I, you, we is a multimedia activity where the<br />
participants become the subject. Images of two people’s faces are first<br />
captured on camera in the activity space. With a little technical magic, their<br />
facial features are fragmented and recombined to form a new portrait, with<br />
surprising results. Posters of the collaborative portrait I, you, we can then be<br />
emailed home or to a friend as a memento of a visit to Kids’ APT.<br />
KR<br />
In his film elsewhere 2003, Hiraki Sawa has created a film set within his London<br />
apartment and filled it with intricate, homemade animations. Everyday objects<br />
come to life, growing legs and wandering between scenes filmed in the artist’s<br />
kitchen, bathroom, home office and other rooms. For Kids’ APT, Sawa presents<br />
Every Little Thing Moving, a multimedia activity which enables young visitors to<br />
join in and play with the imagery in elsewhere. By moving three-dimensional<br />
objects over an image-sensitive tabletop, participants interact with and<br />
contribute to the film. Sound effects play in tandem with the movements,<br />
enabling children to create their own version of the artist’s original film,<br />
including a rich and unexpected soundtrack.<br />
Sawa’s film elsewhere 2003 screens in the space, as well as trail 2005, a later<br />
film featuring the silhouettes of animals moving on the edge of shadows cast in<br />
the artist’s apartment as day becomes night. A caravan of camels treks silently<br />
around the plughole of the kitchen sink, and an elephant moves dreamily<br />
across gloomy windows, while the silhouette of a Ferris wheel turns silently.<br />
TW<br />
To create Shirana Shahbazi’s painting for Kids’ APT, a workshop was<br />
conducted at the Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre with a group of local Brisbane<br />
children. Discussions introduced the painting project, the artist and her work,<br />
as well as a brief history of the still-life genre, inspiring the participants to<br />
compose their own still-life arrangements. The subject of the arrangements<br />
was a range of tropical fruits, flowers and vegetation readily available in<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong>. The resulting compositions of coconuts, hibiscus, foliage and<br />
fruits were professionally photographed and sent to Shahbazi, who is based<br />
in Zurich, Switzerland. The artist then selected an image and prepared it for<br />
the next stage — the image was transformed into an immense painting by<br />
billboard painters in Iran. After passing through many hands across the globe,<br />
the end result is a collaborative painting on display in the Children’s <strong>Art</strong><br />
Centre for APT6.<br />
KR<br />
Marcel Meltherorong aka Mars Melto<br />
New Caledonia/Vanuatu b.1975<br />
Singsing with Marcel (stills) 2009<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist<br />
Wit Pimkanchanapong<br />
Thailand b.1976<br />
Test image for I, you, we 2009<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist<br />
Hiraki Sawa<br />
Japan/United Kingdom b.1977<br />
elsewhere (still) 2003<br />
Digital video, black and white, silent, 7:40 minutes<br />
Image courtesy: The artist, Ota Fine <strong>Art</strong>s, Tokyo;<br />
James Cohan <strong>Gallery</strong>, New York<br />
Shirana Shahbazi<br />
Iran/Switzerland b.1974<br />
Children’s workshop, Still life: Coconut and other things<br />
2009, <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong><br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist /<br />
Photographs: Natasha Harth<br />
212 213
Thukral and Tagra<br />
Hi! I am India 2009<br />
Charwei Tsai<br />
Water Project 2009<br />
YNG (Yoshitomo Nara and graf)<br />
The Play House 2009<br />
Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu<br />
The Hidden Garden 2009<br />
Thukral and Tagra have been working collaboratively since 2000. Their<br />
multimedia practice reflects the dynamism and ambition of India’s rapidly<br />
growing economy, while commenting on consumer culture and social<br />
aspirations. The work of these versatile artists is characterised by exuberant<br />
colour, elaborate imagery and wicked humour, blurring the boundaries<br />
between advertising, retail and art.<br />
For Kids’ APT, Thukral and Tagra have designed a do-it-yourself activity and<br />
accompanying space for the Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre. Hi! I am India introduces<br />
young visitors to the visual culture of India, inviting them to create their own<br />
scenes by layering custom-made stickers onto framed backgrounds designed<br />
by the artists. Images of contemporary India, like the mass-produced Tata<br />
Nano, a small fuel-efficient car marketed as ‘the people’s car’, are offered next<br />
to more traditional icons like the buffalo and cart, and the ever-dependable<br />
auto rickshaw. Drawing on themes of people, the street, transportation and<br />
architecture, the framed sticker collages in Hi! I am India bring to life the rich<br />
imagery of India as a dynamic contemporary centre interlaced with symbols<br />
of the country’s past.<br />
Imagine where the water that you are cleaning your hands with is coming from.<br />
Could it be the sky where the rain falls from? Or the ocean the octopus is living<br />
in? Imagine all the places that the water has travelled through and all the people<br />
who helped the water to reach you. And imagine all the animals and plants<br />
who we are sharing the water with. Could it be the little frog who is sitting in<br />
the rainforest? Or the hippo family who is swimming by? Now imagine how the<br />
water flows through and connects us all.<br />
— Charwei Tsai<br />
Charwei Tsai’s film for children complements the artist’s video projection<br />
Hand washing project 2009. Designed to evoke the sensation of touch, this<br />
interactive is a sequence of projected images over the handbasins in the<br />
Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre bathrooms. Footage of animals interacting with water<br />
becomes intermingled with children’s hands as they wash them, offering a<br />
new experience of an everyday activity.<br />
KR<br />
The Japanese collaborative team of artist Yoshitomo Nara and design firm<br />
graf have built a small cubby house environment especially for young visitors<br />
to APT6. Responding to the idea that a bedroom is a child’s first creative<br />
space, and that our surrounds affect the way we think and feel, this small<br />
room is designed to stimulate children’s creativity and to be a site to display<br />
creative contributions, creating a cosy atmosphere for the young.<br />
Constructed with recycled materials and filled with second hand furnishings,<br />
the interior of the little house is decorated with children’s mementos. A<br />
growing display of keepsakes placed higgledy-piggledy on the shelves,<br />
and in little cabinets for children to explore, is the result of YNG’s request to<br />
visitors to leave a small object behind when they visit. The artists also invite<br />
children to take a seat at one of the tables and contribute a drawing to the<br />
collaborative sketchbooks, based on themes selected by the artists, such as<br />
pups and naughty children. Over time, the cubby house reflects the collective<br />
creativity of children visiting Kids’ APT.<br />
KR<br />
Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu have created a soft sculpture installation built<br />
in the style of a traditional Chinese walled garden for Kids’ APT. Foremost<br />
in the design process has been the guiding principles of feng shui. This<br />
traditional practice was applied to determine the spatial dimensions of<br />
the floor plan, as well as the placement and the relationships of the garden<br />
and architectural features.<br />
The artists invite young children to enter the low-walled fabric garden<br />
of understated beauty to admire the tranquil surrounds and take part in<br />
gardening activities, while parents and carers watch from the outside, looking<br />
over the tiled walls. Acknowledging the recurring subject of nature and the<br />
yearly seasons in the history of Chinese art, children can tend to fallen autumn<br />
leaves, arrange spring flowers in garden beds, attach or remove leaves from<br />
vines, or play with goldfish and frogs in the small padded pond — all made<br />
from colourful felts and fabrics.<br />
KR<br />
RS<br />
Thukral and Tagra<br />
Jiten Thukral<br />
India b.1976<br />
Sumir Tagra<br />
India b.1979<br />
Working design for Hi! I am India 2009<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artists<br />
Charwei Tsai<br />
Taiwan b.1980<br />
Test run for Water Project 2009, <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong><br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist /<br />
Photograph: Natasha Harth<br />
YNG<br />
Yoshitomo Nara<br />
Japan b.1959<br />
graf<br />
Japan est.1993<br />
California orange covered wagon (detail) 2008<br />
Blum & Poe, Los Angeles 2008<br />
Image courtesy: The artists and Tomio Koyama <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
Tokyo / Photograph: Hako Hosokawa<br />
This work is not in APT6 or Kids’ APT<br />
Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu<br />
Zhu Weibing<br />
China b.1971<br />
Ji Wenyu<br />
China b.1959<br />
The Hidden Garden (details) 2009<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artists /<br />
Photographs: Natasha Harth<br />
214 215
Local children participating in the Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre<br />
workshop in Brisbane (left page); the billboard painter<br />
in Iran creating the children’s still-life arrangement (right<br />
page, top); and unpacking the work at the <strong>Gallery</strong> of<br />
Modern <strong>Art</strong> in Brisbane prior to installation (right page).<br />
Shirana Shahbazi<br />
Iran/Switzerland b.1974<br />
In collaboration with Sirous Shaghaghi, Iran<br />
Still life: Coconut and other things 2009<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist /<br />
Photographs: Roozbeh Tazhibi and Natasha Harth<br />
216 217
Catalogue of works<br />
Minam Apang<br />
India b.1980<br />
He wore them like talismans all<br />
over his body 2008<br />
Ink, synthetic polymer paint and tea<br />
on fabriano cold-pressed paper /<br />
138.5 x 184cm / The Lekha and<br />
Anupam Poddar Collection<br />
The sleeping army may stir 2008<br />
Ink and synthetic polymer paint on<br />
fabriano cold-pressed paper /<br />
70 x 240cm / Collection: Isabelle<br />
Levy and Geraldine Galateau, Paris<br />
Nothing of him doth fade 2009<br />
Thread, glue, synthetic polymer<br />
paint and ink on archival paper /<br />
67.3 x 157.15cm / Courtesy: The<br />
artist and Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai<br />
Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan<br />
Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan<br />
Philippines/Australia b.1965<br />
Alfredo Juan Aquilizan<br />
Philippines/Australia b.1962<br />
In-flight (Project: Another Country)<br />
2009<br />
Mixed media / Site-specific work<br />
for APT6 / Courtesy: The artists<br />
Chen Chieh-jen<br />
Taiwan b.1960<br />
On Going 2006<br />
35mm film transferred to DVD, single<br />
channel, continuous loop, colour,<br />
silent, 20:22 minutes, ed. 4/5 /<br />
Courtesy: The artist<br />
Chen Qiulin<br />
China b.1975<br />
Garden 2007<br />
Digital video, single channel,<br />
continuous loop, colour, sound,<br />
14:45 minutes, ed. 4/5 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist and Max Protetch <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
New York<br />
Xinsheng Town 275-277 2009<br />
Wood, brick, roof tile, mortar and<br />
mixed media / Installed dimensions:<br />
1313 x 650 x 614cm / Courtesy: The<br />
artist and Long March Project, Beijing<br />
Cheo Chai-Hiang<br />
Singapore b.1946<br />
Cash Converter 2009<br />
Nin Hao 2000<br />
Spade, neon / 45 x 177 x 16cm<br />
Duo Wu Dou, Shao Liang Li 2007<br />
Suitcase, stainless steel, neon /<br />
97 x 38.5 x 26.5cm<br />
Fei Chang Ku 2007<br />
Stainless steel, perspex, neon /<br />
3 parts: 53 x 55 x 13cm (each)<br />
Ling Xiu 2007<br />
Wood, cotton shirt, chalk, neon /<br />
85 x 80 x 21cm<br />
Dang Dang (Mirror Effect) 2009<br />
Stainless steel, perspex / Two<br />
parts: 106.7 x 91.5 x 13cm (each)<br />
Ju 2009<br />
Wood, neon / 40 X 40 X 21cm<br />
Site-specific work for APT6 /<br />
Courtesy: The artist<br />
DAMP<br />
est.1995, Australia<br />
Dan Cass b.1970<br />
Rob Creedon b.1969<br />
Narelle Desmond b.1970<br />
Sam George b.1987<br />
Sharon Goodwin b.1973<br />
Ry Haskings b.1977<br />
Deb Kunda b.1972<br />
James Lynch b.1974<br />
Dan Moynihan b.1974<br />
Lisa Radford b.1976<br />
Nat Thomas b.1967<br />
Kylie Wilkinson b.1971<br />
Meeting note 2009<br />
Felt-tipped marker on paper /<br />
80 x 64cm (irreg.) / Courtesy:<br />
The artists and Uplands <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
Melbourne<br />
Untitled 2009<br />
Mixed media / Installed dimensions<br />
variable / Site-specific work for<br />
APT6 / Courtesy: The artists and<br />
Uplands <strong>Gallery</strong>, Melbourne<br />
Solomon Enos<br />
Hawai’i, United States b.1976<br />
Kuu era: Polyfantastica the beginning<br />
2006<br />
Gouache and synthetic polymer<br />
paint on paper / 53 sheets: 38 x 29cm<br />
(each) / Courtesy: The artist<br />
Monir Shahroudy<br />
Farmanfarmaian<br />
Iran b.1924<br />
Untitled 2005<br />
Mirror mosaic, reverse glass painting<br />
and coloured plaster on wood /<br />
75 x 130cm / Courtesy: The artist<br />
and The Third Line, Dubai<br />
Lightning for Neda 2009<br />
Mirror mosaic, reverse glass<br />
painting, plaster on wood / 6 panels:<br />
300 x 200cm (each) / Commissioned<br />
for APT6 and the <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Collection. The artist<br />
dedicates this work to the loving<br />
memory of her late husband<br />
Dr Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian.<br />
Purchased 2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Subodh Gupta<br />
India b.1964<br />
The other thing 2005–06<br />
Steel structure, plastic, stainless steel<br />
tongs / 206 x 211 x 63.5cm / The<br />
Lekha and Anupam Poddar Collection<br />
Bullet 2006–07<br />
Cast brass and chrome plated brass<br />
milk pails / 112 x 230 x 112cm /<br />
Tapi Collection, India<br />
Line of Control (1) 2008<br />
Stainless steel and steel<br />
structure, brass and copper utensils /<br />
500 x 500 x 500cm / Courtesy: The<br />
artist and Arario <strong>Gallery</strong>, Beijing<br />
Gonkar Gyatso<br />
Tibet/United Kingdom b.1961<br />
Angel 2007<br />
Stickers and pencil on treated paper /<br />
152.5 x 122cm / The Kenneth<br />
and Yasuko Myer Collection of<br />
Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong>. Purchased<br />
2008 with funds from Michael<br />
Simcha Baevski through the<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Cosmic Buddhas 2008<br />
Colour offset wallpaper / Courtesy:<br />
The artist and Rossi & Rossi <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
London<br />
Reclining Buddha – Shanghai to<br />
Lhasa Express 2009<br />
Stickers, pencil, collage, screen print<br />
on treated paper; 20 Tibetan prayerwheels<br />
/ 10 panels: 216 x 90cm (each) /<br />
Courtesy: The artist and Rossi & Rossi<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, London<br />
Spring 2008 2009<br />
Pencil, ink, stickers on treated paper /<br />
154 x 220cm / Courtesy: The artist<br />
and Rossi & Rossi <strong>Gallery</strong>, London<br />
Kyungah Ham<br />
South Korea b.1966<br />
Nagasaki Mushroom Cloud,<br />
Hiroshima Mushroom Cloud 2008<br />
Hand embroidery on silk / Diptych:<br />
(a) 120 x 150cm; (b) 120 x 150cm /<br />
Sigg Collection, Switzerland<br />
Some Diorama 2008<br />
Hand embroidery on silk /<br />
151 x 198cm / Collection: Kukje<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, South Korea<br />
Ho Tzu Nyen<br />
Singapore b.1976<br />
Zarathustra: A Film for Everyone<br />
and No One 2009<br />
High-definition digital video, single<br />
channel, colour, sound, 24:30 minutes,<br />
ed. of 3 / Commissioned for APT6 /<br />
Supported by Osage <strong>Gallery</strong>, The<br />
Puttnam School of Film and the<br />
Institute of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>s<br />
Singapore, LASALLE College of the<br />
<strong>Art</strong>s / An initiative of the National <strong>Art</strong>s<br />
Council’s <strong>Art</strong>s Creation Fund / Courtesy:<br />
The artist and Tzulogical Films<br />
Emre Hüner<br />
Turkey b.1977<br />
Panoptikon 2005<br />
Digital hand-drawn animation,<br />
single channel, continuous loop,<br />
colour, sound, 11:18 minutes,<br />
ed. of 5 / Courtesy: The artist and<br />
Rodeo, Istanbul<br />
Raafat Ishak<br />
Egypt/Australia b.1967<br />
Untitled (from ‘Emergencies,<br />
Accidents and Congratulations’<br />
series) 2009<br />
Synthetic polymer paint on MDF /<br />
20 panels: 60 x 42cm (each) /<br />
Courtesy: The artist<br />
Untitled 2009<br />
Applied vinyl / 390 x 293.5cm /<br />
Site-specific work for APT6 /<br />
Courtesy: The artist<br />
Runa Islam<br />
Bangladesh/United Kingdom b.1970<br />
The Restless Subject 2008<br />
16mm film and CD wild tracks,<br />
colour, sound, 6:42 minutes<br />
and<br />
Tobias Putrih<br />
Slovenia, b.1972<br />
For The Restless Subject 2008<br />
Plywood / 343 x 350 x 460cm /<br />
Courtesy: The artists and White<br />
Cube, London<br />
First Day of Spring 2005<br />
16mm film, colour, sound,<br />
7:00 minutes / Courtesy: The artist<br />
and White Cube, London<br />
Ayaz Jokhio<br />
Pakistan b.1978<br />
a thousand doors and windows too…<br />
2009<br />
MDF, wood, aluminium, paint /<br />
600 x 600 x 600cm / Site-specific<br />
work for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist<br />
Takeshi Kitano<br />
Japan b.1947<br />
Sono Otoko, Kyobo ni Tsuki<br />
(Violent Cop) 1989<br />
35mm, colour, mono, 103 minutes,<br />
Japan, Japanese (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Takeshi Kitano / Script:<br />
Hisashi Nozawa, Takeshi Kitano /<br />
Cinematographer: Yasushi<br />
Sasakibara / Editor: Nobutake<br />
Kamiya / Print source: Japan<br />
Foundation / Rights: Shochiku<br />
3-4 x Jugatsu (Boiling Point) 1990<br />
35mm, colour, mono, 96 minutes,<br />
Japan, Japanese (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Takeshi Kitano /<br />
Cinematographer: Katsumi<br />
Yanagishima / Editor: Toshio<br />
Taniguchi / Print source: Japan<br />
Foundation / Rights: Shochiku<br />
Ano Natsu, Ichiban Shizukana Umi<br />
(A Scene at the Sea) 1991<br />
35mm, colour, mono, 101 minutes,<br />
Japan, Japanese (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script/Editor: Takeshi<br />
Kitano / Cinematographer: Katsumi<br />
Yanagishima / Print source/rights:<br />
Celluloid Dreams<br />
Sonachine (Sonatine) 1993<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 94 minutes,<br />
Japan, Japanese (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script/Editor: Takeshi<br />
Kitano / Cinematographer: Katsumi<br />
Yanagishima / Print source: Japan<br />
Foundation / Rights: Shochiku<br />
Minnâ-yatteruka (Getting Any?) 1995<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 108 minutes,<br />
Japan, Japanese (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Takeshi Kitano /<br />
Cinematographer: Katsumi<br />
Yanagishima / Editors: Takeshi<br />
Kitano, Yoshinori Oota / Print<br />
source/rights: Celluloid Dreams<br />
Kizzu Ritan (Kids Return) 1996<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 107 minutes,<br />
Japan, Japanese (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script/Editor: Takeshi<br />
Kitano / Cinematographer: Katsumi<br />
Yanagishima / Print source/rights:<br />
Celluloid Dreams<br />
Hana-bi (Fireworks) 1997<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 103<br />
minutes, Japan, Japanese (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Takeshi<br />
Kitano / Cinematographer: Hideo<br />
Yamamoto / Editors: Takeshi Kitano,<br />
Yoshinori Oota / Print source/rights:<br />
Celluloid Dreams<br />
Kikujiro no Natsu (Kikujiro) 1999<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 121 minutes,<br />
Japan, Japanese (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Takeshi Kitano /<br />
Cinematographer: Katsumi<br />
Yanagishima / Editors: Takeshi<br />
Kitano, Yoshinori Oota / Print source:<br />
Celluloid Dreams / Rights: Sony<br />
Pictures<br />
Brother 2000<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 114<br />
minutes, USA/UK/Japan, English/<br />
Japanese/Italian/Spanish (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Takeshi<br />
Kitano / Cinematographer: Katsumi<br />
Yanagishima / Editors: Takeshi<br />
Kitano, Yoshinori Oota / Print<br />
source/rights: Hopscotch Films<br />
Dooruzu (Dolls) 2002<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 114<br />
minutes, Japan, Japanese (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script/Editor:<br />
Takeshi Kitano / Cinematographer:<br />
Katsumi Yanagishima / Print source/<br />
rights: Celluloid Dreams<br />
Zatôichi (Zatoichi) 2003<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 116<br />
minutes, Japan, Japanese (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Takeshi<br />
Kitano / Based on the story by Kan<br />
Shimosawa / Cinematographer:<br />
Katsumi Yanagishima / Editors:<br />
Takeshi Kitano, Yoshinori Oota /<br />
Print source/rights: Buena Vista<br />
International<br />
Takeshis’ 2005<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 108<br />
minutes, Japan, Japanese (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Takeshi<br />
Kitano / Cinematographer: Katsumi<br />
Yanagishima / Editors: Takeshi<br />
Kitano, Yoshinori Oota / Print source:<br />
Celluloid Dreams / Rights: Madman<br />
Entertainment<br />
Kantoku: Banzai! (Glory to the<br />
Filmmaker!) 2007<br />
35mm, colour and black and white,<br />
Dolby Digital, 108 minutes, Japan,<br />
Japanese (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Takeshi Kitano /<br />
Cinematographer: Katsumi<br />
Yanagishima / Editors: Takeshi<br />
Kitano, Yoshinori Oota / Print<br />
source/rights: Celluloid Dreams<br />
Akiresu to Kame (Achilles and the<br />
Tortoise) 2008<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 119<br />
minutes, Japan, Japanese (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script/Editor:<br />
Takeshi Kitano / Cinematographer:<br />
Katsumi Yanagishima / Print source/<br />
rights: Celluloid Dreams<br />
Ang Lee<br />
Taiwan/United States b.1954<br />
Xi Yan (The Wedding Banquet) 1993<br />
35mm, colour, mono, 106 minutes,<br />
Taiwan/USA, Mandarin/English<br />
(English subtitles) / Director: Ang<br />
Lee / Script: Ang Lee, Neil Peng,<br />
James Schamus / Cinematographer:<br />
Jong Lin / Editor: Tim Squyres / Print<br />
source: Chinese Taipei Film Archive /<br />
Rights: Central Motion Picture<br />
Corporation<br />
Yin Shi Nan Nu (Eat Drink Man<br />
Woman) 1994<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 123 minutes,<br />
Taiwan/USA, Mandarin (English<br />
subtitles) / Director: Ang Lee / Script:<br />
Ang Lee, James Schamus, Hui-Ling<br />
Wang / Cinematographer: Jong Lin /<br />
Editor: Tim Squyres / Print source:<br />
Chinese Taipei Film Archive / Rights:<br />
Central Motion Picture Corporation<br />
Sense and Sensibility 1995<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby SR, 136<br />
minutes, USA/UK, English/French<br />
(English subtitles) / Director: Ang<br />
Lee / Script: Emma Thompson /<br />
Based on the story by Jane Austen /<br />
Cinematographer: Michael Coulter /<br />
Editor: Tim Squyres / Print source/<br />
rights: Amalgamated Films<br />
The Ice Storm 1997<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 112<br />
minutes, USA, English / Director:<br />
Ang Lee / Script: James Schamus /<br />
Based on the story by Rick Moody /<br />
Cinematographer: Frederick Elmes /<br />
Editor: Tim Squyres / Print source:<br />
Tamasa Distribution / Rights:<br />
Roadshow Films<br />
Wo Hu Cang Long (Crouching Tiger,<br />
Hidden Dragon) 2000<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 120<br />
minutes, Taiwan/Hong Kong/USA/<br />
China, Mandarin (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Ang Lee / Script: Hui-Ling<br />
Wang, James Schamus, Kuo Jung<br />
Tsai / Based on the story by Du Lu<br />
Wang / Cinematographer: Peter<br />
Pau / Editor: Tim Squyres / Print<br />
source/rights: Amalgamated Films<br />
Brokeback Mountain 2005<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 134<br />
minutes, Canada/USA, English /<br />
Director: Ang Lee / Script: Larry<br />
McMurtry, Diana Ossana / Based<br />
on the story by Annie Proulx /<br />
Cinematographer: Rodrigo Prieto /<br />
Editors: Geraldine Peroni, Dylan<br />
Tichenor / Print source/rights:<br />
Roadshow Films<br />
218 219
Se, Jie (Lust, Caution) 2007<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 157<br />
minutes, USA/China/Taiwan/Hong<br />
Kong, Mandarin/Japanese/English/<br />
Hindi/Shanghainese/Cantonese<br />
(English subtitles) / Director: Ang<br />
Lee / Script: James Schamus, Hui-<br />
Ling Wang / Based on the story by<br />
Eileen Chang / Cinematographer:<br />
Rodrigo Prieto / Editor: Tim Squyres /<br />
Print source/rights: Universal Pictures<br />
Taking Woodstock 2009<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 110<br />
minutes, USA, English / Director: Ang<br />
Lee / Script: James Schamus / Based<br />
on the story by Elliot Tiber and Tom<br />
Monte / Cinematographer: Eric<br />
Gautier / Editor: Tim Squyres / Print<br />
source/rights: Universal Pictures<br />
Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio<br />
North Korea/Democratic People’s<br />
Republic of Korea (DPRK)<br />
est. 1959<br />
A project for APT6 co-curated by<br />
Nicholas Bonner and Suhanya Raffel<br />
Ink paintings<br />
Choe Chang Ho<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1960<br />
Foundry interior 2009<br />
Ink on paper (Chosunhua)<br />
200 x 200cm<br />
Choe Chang Ho<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1970<br />
First days of retirement 2009<br />
Ink on paper (Chosunhua) /<br />
200 x 200cm<br />
Im Hyok<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1965<br />
Breaktime 2009<br />
Ink on paper (Chosunhua) /<br />
200 x 200cm<br />
Jang Hue Ro<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1954<br />
Worker’s home 2009<br />
Ink on paper (Chosunhua) /<br />
200 x 200cm<br />
Rim Ho Chol<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1954<br />
On the way to work 2009<br />
Ink on paper (Chosunhua) /<br />
200 x 200cm<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Collection:<br />
Nicholas Bonner, Beijing / Courtesy:<br />
The artists and Nicholas Bonner<br />
Oil paintings<br />
Han Guang Hun<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1976<br />
In the face of the flames (study for<br />
In the face of the flames) 2009<br />
Oil on canvas / 51 x 71cm<br />
Hong Jin Son<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1977<br />
Steel fighters (study for In the face<br />
of the flames) 2009<br />
Oil on canvas / 39 x 44cm<br />
Kim Yong IL<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1971<br />
Studies for In the face of the<br />
flames 2009<br />
Oil on canvas / 5 sheets:<br />
54 x 63cm (each)<br />
Kim Yong Myong<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1977<br />
In front of the furnace (study for<br />
In the face of the flames) 2009<br />
Oil on canvas / 42.5 x 67.5<br />
Ma Yong Chol<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1977<br />
Release time (study for In the face<br />
of the flames) 2009<br />
Oil on canvas / 50 x 60.5cm<br />
O Sung Gyu<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1969<br />
In the face of the flames 2009<br />
Oil on canvas / 200 x 600cm<br />
Pak Guang IL<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1973<br />
1st Steel Factory (study for<br />
In the face of the flames) 2009<br />
Oil on canvas / 70 x 55.5cm<br />
Ryu Guon Chol<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1975<br />
Stirring workplace (study for<br />
In the face of the flames) 2009<br />
Oil on canvas / 33 x 44.5cm<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Collection:<br />
Nicholas Bonner, Beijing / Courtesy:<br />
The artists and Nicholas Bonner<br />
Mosaic<br />
Kim Hung IL<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1965<br />
Kang Yong Sam<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1956<br />
Work team contest 2009<br />
Glass tile, paper and board /<br />
350 x 570cm / Commissioned for<br />
APT6 and the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Collection with assistance<br />
from Nicholas Bonner, Beiijing.<br />
Purchased 2009. <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation Grant /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Other works from North Korea /<br />
Democratic People’s Republic of<br />
Korea (DPRK)<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ist unknown<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b. unknown<br />
Female driver undated<br />
Linocut on paper / 59 x 43cm<br />
Cho Dong Gun<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.unknown<br />
Painting of Ri Jong Ryong from<br />
Ok Gye worksite 1971<br />
Oil on canvas / 41 x 29.5cm<br />
Choe Yong Sun<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1958<br />
The bus conductor 2000<br />
Linocut on paper / 54 x 78.5cm<br />
The construction site 2005<br />
Linocut on paper / 65.5 x 52.5cm<br />
Dong Ha Do<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1947<br />
Morning 1999<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 4/8 /<br />
48.5 x 74.5cm<br />
Han Song Ho<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1973<br />
News 2002<br />
Linocut on paper / 42 x 33cm<br />
Hwang Chol Ho<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1975<br />
The miners 1990<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 5/6 /<br />
45 x 69cm<br />
Hwang In Jae (attrib.)<br />
North Korea (DPRK)/China b.1943<br />
Potato flower smell in the<br />
Daehongdan Highland 1999<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 1/5 /<br />
41 x 80cm<br />
Hwang In Jae<br />
North Korea (DPRK)/China b.1943<br />
We look forward to seeing the<br />
general 2004<br />
Linocut on paper / 50.5 x 100cm<br />
Jae Yong<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.unknown<br />
Untitled 1964<br />
Watercolour on paper / 26 x 19cm<br />
Jang Jin Su<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.unknown<br />
Full moon, January 15, 2007 2007<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 1/2 /<br />
54 x 71cm<br />
Jang Song Min<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.unknown<br />
Female soldier 1985<br />
Oil on canvas / 37.5 x 29.5cm<br />
Jon Chol Nam<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1975<br />
The daily newspaper 2006<br />
Linocut on paper / 58 x 42cm<br />
Jong Gwan Chol<br />
North Korea (DPRK) 1916–83<br />
Untitled 1957<br />
Oil on paper / 28 x 23cm<br />
Portrait of merited worker 1969<br />
Oil on canvas / 36 x 21cm<br />
Jong IL Son<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1972<br />
Summer pasture 1999<br />
Linocut on paper / 38 x 59.5cm<br />
Kang IL<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1959<br />
The breathing of the factory<br />
undated<br />
Linocut on paper / 83cm x 55.2cm<br />
Kang Jae Won<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1947<br />
Going to work undated<br />
Linocut on paper / 43.5 x 81cm<br />
Kim Chang Gil<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1943<br />
Portrait of merited artist<br />
Hong Bu Un 1980<br />
Oil on canvas / 35.5 x 25.4cm<br />
Untitled 1979<br />
Oil on canvas / 32.5 x 27cm<br />
Untitled 1996<br />
Oil on canvas / 30 x 25cm<br />
Kim Gi Chol<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1959<br />
The Songchun River Clothing<br />
Factory team arrives 1999<br />
Ink on paper / 135.5 x 250cm<br />
Kim Guk Bo<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1957<br />
The Pyongyang Grand Theatre<br />
at night undated<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 3/6 /<br />
35 x 53.5cm<br />
Kim Gyong Hun<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1976<br />
Open the way 2007<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 1/2 /<br />
32 x 27.5cm<br />
Kim Hyon<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1956<br />
Lights along the Jangja River 2007<br />
Linocut on paper / 47.5 x 79.5cm<br />
Kim Myong Gil<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1949<br />
The construction site 1989<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 2/3 /<br />
38 x 77.5cm<br />
Kim Won Chol<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1966<br />
The railway construction site<br />
at night 1996<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 3/9 /<br />
44.5 x 64cm<br />
Kim Yon Bong<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1975<br />
The power station at Taechong<br />
River undated<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 1/4 /<br />
31 x 55cm<br />
Kim Yong<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1958<br />
Evening at Kangson 1991<br />
Linocut on paper / 24.5 x 34.5cm<br />
Kim Yong Gang<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1980<br />
Smelter undated<br />
Linocut on paper / 53 x 41cm<br />
Kyong Sik<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.unknown<br />
The high-speed construction unit<br />
1988<br />
Linocut on paper / 59.5cm x 72cm<br />
Li Kon Yong<br />
b. unknown d.1980s<br />
Untitled 1956<br />
Ink on paper / 37 x 29cm<br />
Min Song Sik<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.unknown<br />
Iron worker 2009<br />
Linocut on paper / 62.5 x 46cm<br />
Om Do Man<br />
North Korea (DPRK) 1915–71<br />
Untitled 1959<br />
Oil on canvas / 22 x 17.5cm<br />
Pak Chang Nam<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1971<br />
Pleasant working place 1997<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 2/3 /<br />
43.5 x 73.5cm<br />
Pak Yong Chol<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.unknown<br />
Night on Tongil Street 1992<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 3/7 /<br />
45 x 68.5cm<br />
Pak Yong Ho<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1964<br />
Marshalling yard 2002<br />
Woodcut on paper, ed. 5/10 /<br />
10 x 43cm<br />
Pak Yong IL<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1966<br />
The lighthouse 1995<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 6/6 /<br />
49.5 x 77cm<br />
Ri Guk Chol<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1973<br />
The news of innovators 2001<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 2/7 /<br />
37 x 55.5cm<br />
Ri Gyong Chol<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1977<br />
Chongbong Revolutionary Site in<br />
summer 1999<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 5/10 /<br />
44.5 x 29.5cm<br />
Sim Won Sok<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.1977<br />
The dawn 2001<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 4/10 /<br />
41 x 57.5cm<br />
Song Bom<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.unknown<br />
The Potong River in summer 2007<br />
Linocut on paper, ed. 3/6 /<br />
56 x 44cm<br />
Won Song Ryong<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.unknown<br />
Figure of harmony 1981<br />
Oil on canvas / 58.5 x 42.5cm<br />
Jon Hye Ok student 1980<br />
Oil on canvas / 30 x 41.5cm<br />
Yun Hyong Ryol<br />
North Korea (DPRK) b.unknown<br />
Railroad telephone operator 1969<br />
Oil on canvas / 25.5 x 17cm<br />
Collection: Nicholas Bonner, Beijing<br />
Rudi Mantofani<br />
Indonesia b.1973<br />
Nada yang hilang (The lost note)<br />
2006–07<br />
Wood, metal, leather and oil /<br />
9 pieces: 260 x 45 x 9cm (each) /<br />
Collection: Dr Oei Hong Djien<br />
Nada yang hilang (The lost note)<br />
2008<br />
Wood, metal, leather and oil /<br />
120 x 150 x 40cm / Courtesy: The<br />
artist and Gajah <strong>Gallery</strong>, Singapore<br />
Nada yang hilang (The lost note)<br />
2008<br />
Wood, metal, leather and oil /<br />
30 x 122 x 14cm / Courtesy: The<br />
artist and Gajah <strong>Gallery</strong>, Singapore<br />
Nada yang hilang (The lost note)<br />
2008<br />
Wood, metal, leather and oil /<br />
120 x 119 x 80cm / Courtesy: The<br />
artist and Gajah <strong>Gallery</strong>, Singapore<br />
Mataso Printmakers<br />
A series of print workshops initiated<br />
2004, Port Vila, Vanuatu<br />
Patrik Abel<br />
Vanuatu b.unknown<br />
The boxer 2006<br />
Screenprint on arches paper /<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Eddy Baul<br />
Vanuatu b.1981<br />
Flying fox (from ’Bebellic’<br />
portfolio) 2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani paper<br />
ed.1/45 / 76 x 56cm / Purchased<br />
2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Stanley Firiam<br />
Vanuatu b.unknown<br />
Pig tusk 2005<br />
Screenprint on arches paper /<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Batta flae 2005–06<br />
Screenprint on arches paper,<br />
ed 1/20 / 76 x 56cm / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Pig tusk 2006<br />
Screenprint on arches paper /<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Saires Kalo<br />
Vanuatu 1983–2009<br />
Kavaman (from ’Bebellic’<br />
portfolio) 2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani paper<br />
ed. 1/45 / 76 x 56cm / Purchased<br />
2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Mataso kavaman (from ’Bebellic’<br />
portfolio) 2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani paper<br />
ed. 1/45 / 76 x 56cm / Purchased<br />
2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Sep sep (from ’Bebellic’ portfolio)<br />
2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani<br />
paper ed. 1/45 / 76 x 56.5cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
David Kolin<br />
Vanuatu b.1983<br />
FHIS (fish) 2005<br />
Synthetic polymer paint, gesso<br />
and pencil on masonite board /<br />
50 x 60cm / Collection: Newell<br />
Harry, Sydney<br />
220 221
Mi laekem kae kaeman 2006<br />
Screenprint on arches paper<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Tomatto 2006<br />
Oil on paper / 33 x 25cm /<br />
Purchased 2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Weetbix-boy 2006<br />
Screenprint on arches paper /<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Butterfly (from ‘Bebellic’ portfolio)<br />
2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani paper<br />
ed. 1/45 / 76 x 56cm / Purchased<br />
2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Herveline Lité<br />
Vanuatu b.1980<br />
Davina.s (pigeon) 2005<br />
Screenprint on arches paper,<br />
ed.1/20 / 76 x 56cm / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Le Pigeon d’Ambrim 2005<br />
Synthetic polymer paint, crayon<br />
and gesso on cardboard /<br />
41.5 x 32cm / Collection:<br />
Newell Harry, Sydney<br />
Mastim Pecheur Cocorico 2005<br />
Synthetic polymer paint and<br />
gesso on cardboard / 44 x 44cm /<br />
Collection: Newell Harry, Sydney<br />
Le pigeon de Mataso (from<br />
‘Bebellic’ portfolio) 2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani paper<br />
ed. 1/45 / 76 x 56cm / Purchased<br />
2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Apia Najos<br />
Vanuatu b.unknown<br />
Untitled 2005<br />
Permanent marker, pencil,<br />
synthetic polymer paint and<br />
gesso and masking tape<br />
on cardboard / 68 x 46cm /<br />
Collection: Newell Harry, Sydney<br />
Stringband 2006<br />
Screenprint on arches paper /<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Sepa Seule<br />
Vanuatu b.1983<br />
Breadfruit 2004–05<br />
Screenprint on arches paper /<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Pepellie flae a wee 2005<br />
Synthetic polymer paint, pencil,<br />
masking tape and gesso on<br />
cardboard / 41.5 x 32cm /<br />
Collection: Newell Harry, Sydney<br />
Wota melon (Watermelon) 2006<br />
Screenprint on arches paper /<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Popo (from ‘Bebellic’ portfolio)<br />
2007 / Screenprint on magnani<br />
paper ed. 1/45 / 56 x 76cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Afokka and mango (Avocado<br />
and mango) 2008<br />
Screenprint on arches paper /<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Simeon Simix<br />
Vanuatu b.1981<br />
Flae-man (Fly-man) 2006<br />
Screenprint on arches paper /<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Paw paw/breadfruit (from<br />
‘Bebellic’ portfolio) 2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani paper<br />
ed. 1/45 / 76 x 56cm / Purchased<br />
2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Paw paw/coconut (from ‘Bebellic’<br />
portfolio) 2007<br />
Screenprint on magnani paper<br />
ed. 1/45 / 76 x 56cm / Purchased<br />
2008. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Mataso coconut-man, Port Vila,<br />
2008<br />
Screenprint on arches paper /<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Turtle-man 2008<br />
Screenprint on arches paper /<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Priscilla Thomas<br />
Vanuatu b.unknown<br />
Kava bowl 2006<br />
Screenprint on arches paper /<br />
76 x 56cm / Purchased 2009.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
The Mekong<br />
A project for APT6 co-curated by Rich<br />
Streitmatter-Tran and Russell Storer<br />
Bùi Công Khánh<br />
Vietnam b.1972<br />
A contemporary story 1 2008<br />
Porcelain, hand-painted /<br />
58 x 20 x 20cm / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation Grant / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
A contemporary story 2 2008<br />
Porcelain, hand-painted /<br />
58 x 20 x 20cm / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation Grant / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
The culture quarter 2008<br />
Porcelain, hand-painted /<br />
44 x 20 x 20cm / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation Grant / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
The harmless crowd 2008<br />
Porcelain, hand-painted /<br />
58 x 20 x 20cm / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation Grant / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Keep dry! 2008<br />
Porcelain, hand-painted /<br />
52 x 15 x 15cm / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation Grant / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
No silly drawing! 2008<br />
Porcelain, hand-painted /<br />
52 x 15 x 15cm / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation Grant / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
The orchestra 2008<br />
Porcelain, hand-painted /<br />
41.5 x 15 x 15cm / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation Grant / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Dragon and dollar 2009<br />
Porcelain, hand-painted /<br />
126 x 36 x 36cm / Collection:<br />
Lenzi-Morisot Foundation,<br />
Singapore/France<br />
One more dollar baby 2009<br />
Porcelain, hand-painted /<br />
126 x 36 x 36cm / Collection:<br />
Lenzi-Morisot Foundation,<br />
Singapore/France<br />
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba<br />
Japan/United States/Vietnam<br />
b.1968<br />
The Ground, the Root, and the<br />
Air: The Passing of the Bodhi Tree<br />
2004–07<br />
High-definition digital video, single<br />
channel, colour, sound, 14:30<br />
minutes / Courtesy: The artist and<br />
Mizuma <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Tokyo<br />
Sopheap Pich<br />
Cambodia b.1971<br />
From ‘1979’ series 2009<br />
Binoculars<br />
Bamboo, rattan, plywood,<br />
paint, wire / 2 pieces:<br />
171 x 61 x 61cm (each)<br />
Bomb<br />
Bamboo, rattan, wire, copper<br />
wire, plywood / 233 x 44 x 44cm<br />
Bomb core<br />
Bamboo, rattan, wire, copper<br />
wire / 251 x 37 x 37cm<br />
Bottle<br />
Bamboo, rattan, plywood,<br />
wire, copper wire, burlap, dye,<br />
varnish / 58 x 37 x 19cm<br />
Buddha<br />
Rattan, wire, dye / Installed<br />
dimensions 220 x 110 x 30cm<br />
Buffaloes<br />
Wood, varnish / 5 pieces:<br />
21 x 28 x 9.5cm (each)<br />
Containers<br />
Bamboo, rattan, wire, copper<br />
wire, burlap, dye / 4 pieces:<br />
52 x 21.5 x 21.5cm (each)<br />
Land mines<br />
Bamboo, rattan, plywood,<br />
wire, burlap, dye, paint /<br />
2 pieces: 21.5 x 21.5 x 10.5cm;<br />
23 x 23 x 13cm<br />
Machine<br />
Bamboo, rattan, wire,<br />
copper wire, burlap, dye /<br />
243 x 108 x 108cm<br />
Project for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Manit Sriwanichpoom<br />
Thailand b.1961<br />
‘Waiting for the King (standing)’<br />
series 2006<br />
Gelatin silver prints, ed. 1/9 /<br />
14 sheets: 50 x 49.5cm (each) /<br />
Purchased 2008 with funds<br />
derived from the Bequest of<br />
Grace Davies and Nell Davies<br />
through the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Svay Ken<br />
Cambodia 1933–2008<br />
From ‘Sharing knowledge’ series<br />
2008<br />
Advice of a father<br />
Oil on canvas / 79.5 x 99.5cm<br />
Leaving the meat and chewing<br />
the bone leads one to ruin<br />
Oil on canvas / 80 x 100.2cm<br />
One who feeds and looks after<br />
one’s parents so well that they<br />
do not have any problems will<br />
be prosperous in this world<br />
and the next world<br />
Oil on canvas / 80 x 99.5cm<br />
One who is proud of his social<br />
status, who does not care for<br />
his relatives and friends and<br />
even looks down on them is<br />
subject to ruin<br />
Oil on canvas / 79.8 x 99.8cm<br />
One who is rich and has<br />
abundant food but hides<br />
delicious food for himself is<br />
subject to ruin<br />
Oil on canvas / 79.5 x 99.8cm<br />
One who is rich but neither<br />
feeds nor looks after one’s<br />
parents is subject to ruin<br />
Oil on canvas / 80 x 100.2cm<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Old rice flour mill 2007<br />
Oil on canvas / 59.8 x 79.6cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Tandem bicycle 2008<br />
Oil on canvas / 60.5 x 80cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Tun Win Aung<br />
Myanmar b.1975<br />
Wah Nu<br />
Myanmar b.1977<br />
Blurring the Boundaries #1<br />
2007–09<br />
Blurring the Boundaries #2<br />
2007–09<br />
Blurring the Boundaries #3 2009<br />
Blurring the Boundaries #4 2009<br />
Blurring the Boundaries #5 2009<br />
Blurring the Boundaries #6 2009<br />
Blurring the Boundaries #7 2009<br />
Digital prints / 7 sheets: 42 x 59cm<br />
(each) / Courtesy: The artists<br />
Vandy Rattana<br />
Cambodia b.1980<br />
‘Fire of the year’ series 2008<br />
Digital prints / 4 sheets:<br />
63.5 x 105.5cm (each); 5 sheets:<br />
105.5 x 63.5cm (each) / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Tracey Moffatt<br />
Australia/United States b.1960<br />
Gary Hillberg<br />
Australia b.1952<br />
OTHER 2009<br />
DVD transferred to Digital Betacam,<br />
single channel projection, continuous<br />
loop, colour, sound, 7.00 minutes,<br />
ed. 1/150 / Courtesy: The artists<br />
From ‘Plantation’ series 2009<br />
Diptych no.1<br />
Diptych no.2<br />
Diptych no.3<br />
Diptych no.4<br />
Diptych no.5<br />
Diptych no.6<br />
Diptych no 7<br />
Diptych no.8<br />
Diptych no.9<br />
Diptych no.10<br />
Diptych no.11<br />
Diptych no.12<br />
Digital prints with archival pigments,<br />
InkAid, watercolour paint and<br />
archival glue on handmade Chautara<br />
Lokta paper / 45.5 x 50cm (each) /<br />
Courtesy: The artist and Roslyn<br />
Oxley9 <strong>Gallery</strong>, Sydney<br />
Farhad Moshiri<br />
Iran<br />
Mobile Talker 2007<br />
Oil, synthetic polymer paint and<br />
glitter on canvas / 170 x 140cm /<br />
Private collection, Dubai / Courtesy:<br />
The artist and The Third Line, Dubai<br />
Soldier 2007<br />
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas /<br />
170 x 140cm / Private collection<br />
of Mr and Mrs Shehab Gargash /<br />
Courtesy: The artist and The Third<br />
Line, Dubai<br />
Magic White Horse with Gold Saddle<br />
2008<br />
Synthetic polymer paint, crystal,<br />
goldleaf, glitter mounted on board /<br />
180 x 180cm / The MAC Collection,<br />
Dubai<br />
Kohei Nawa<br />
Japan b.1975<br />
PixCell-Elk#2 2009<br />
Taxidermied elk, glass, acrylic,<br />
crystal beads / 240 x 249.5 x 198cm /<br />
Work created with the support of<br />
the Fondation d’enterprise Hermés /<br />
Courtesy: The artist and SCAI, Tokyo<br />
Shinji Ohmaki<br />
Japan b.1971<br />
Liminal Air – descend – 2007–09<br />
Nylon string, mirror, fluorescent<br />
lights, Japanese paper panels /<br />
Installed dimensions:<br />
270 x 1080 x 600cm / Courtesy:<br />
The artist and Tokyo <strong>Gallery</strong> + BTAP<br />
Memorial rebirth 2008<br />
50 plastic bubble machines,<br />
glycerine, demineralised water,<br />
detergent / Bubble machines:<br />
40 x 50 x 30cm (each) / Installed<br />
dimensions variable / Courtesy:<br />
The artist and Tokyo <strong>Gallery</strong> + BTAP<br />
The One Year Drawing Project<br />
Muhanned Cader<br />
Sri Lanka b.1966<br />
Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan<br />
Sri Lanka b.1969<br />
Chandraguptha Thenuwara<br />
Sri Lanka b.1960<br />
Jagath Weerasinghe<br />
Sri Lanka b.1954<br />
The One Year Drawing Project May<br />
2005–October 2007<br />
Pencil, synthetic polymer paint,<br />
pen and gouache on paper / 187<br />
sheets: 29 x 21cm (each) / 21 sheets:<br />
21 x 29cm (each) / The Lekha and<br />
Anupam Poddar Collection<br />
Pacific Reggae:<br />
Roots Beyond the Reef<br />
A project for APT6 co-curated by<br />
Brent Clough and Maud Page,<br />
comprising: music video clips<br />
shown as single channel projection,<br />
continuous loop, approx 60:00<br />
minutes; music video clips shown<br />
on video monitors, approx 90:00<br />
minutes; documentary and interview<br />
footage shown as single channel<br />
projection, continuous loop; audio<br />
booths with five playlists; compilation<br />
CD included in exhibition catalogue;<br />
live performance ‘Pacific Reggae<br />
Sounds’ at APT6, 5 December 2009.<br />
Anstine Energy<br />
Solomon Islands<br />
‘Me wari’ 2008<br />
Courtesy: Third World<br />
Productions Solomon Islands<br />
Anslom featuring Sharzy<br />
Papua New Guinea and Solomon<br />
Islands<br />
‘Where stap love’ 2007<br />
Courtesy: CHM Supersound,<br />
Papua New Guinea<br />
222 223
Apprentice<br />
Solomon Islands<br />
‘She loves’ 2005<br />
Courtesy: Mangrove Productions,<br />
New Caledonia<br />
Chief Ragga featuring O-shen<br />
Hawai’i and Hawai’i/Papua New<br />
Guinea<br />
‘Down in da kompaun’ 2002<br />
Courtesy: CHM Supersound,<br />
Papua New Guinea<br />
Dubmarine<br />
Australia<br />
‘Point the bone’<br />
Recorded live at The Dreaming<br />
Festival, Woodford 2009<br />
Courtesy: The artists<br />
Paula Fuga<br />
Hawai’i<br />
‘Stir it up’ (written by Bob Marley)<br />
Recorded live at Kokua Festival,<br />
Honolulu, Hawai’i 2006<br />
Courtesy: America Online<br />
‘Loloiwi’<br />
Recorded at Mulligans on the<br />
Blue, Wailea, Hawai’i, 2008<br />
Courtesy: Pakipika Productions<br />
LLC, Hawai’i<br />
Huarere<br />
Vanuatu<br />
‘Namdei’ 2003<br />
Courtesy: Mangrove Productions<br />
Jero, Bernard and Beeman<br />
New Caledonia/Vanuatu<br />
‘Good governance’ 2008<br />
Courtesy: Bistaveos Productions,<br />
Vanuatu<br />
JVDK<br />
New Caledonia<br />
‘Alan lion’ 2005<br />
‘Attention à la nature’ 2001<br />
Courtesy: Edition Holiday Music,<br />
New Caledonia<br />
Katchafire<br />
New Zealand<br />
‘Frisk me down’ 2006<br />
Courtesy: Logan Bell,<br />
New Zealand<br />
Mexem<br />
New Caledonia<br />
‘I fira rose’ 2003<br />
Courtesy: Mangrove Productions,<br />
New Caledonia<br />
O-shen<br />
Papua New Guinea/Hawai’i<br />
‘Turangu’ 2005<br />
Courtesy: CHM Supersound,<br />
Papua New Guinea<br />
Recorded live in Tahiti and at the<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Brisbane,<br />
2009<br />
One Tox<br />
Solomon Islands<br />
‘Ramukanzi’ 2008<br />
Courtesy: Shefram Sound<br />
Production, Solomon Islands<br />
Jack Rasini<br />
Solomon Islands<br />
‘Rara ai’ 2007<br />
Courtesy: Roi Roa Productions,<br />
Solomon Islands<br />
Sharzy<br />
Solomon Islands<br />
‘Mi nao’ 2005<br />
Courtesy: Mangrove Productions,<br />
New Caledonia<br />
Sunshiners<br />
France/Vanuatu<br />
‘She drives me crazy’ 2006 (Written<br />
by Roland Gift/David Steele (Fine<br />
Young Cannibals). Published by<br />
EMI VIRGIN MUSIC Inc., from<br />
the CD Sunshiners. Produced by<br />
La Chimiz Productions, France/<br />
Vanuatu, 2006) / ‘Back in black’<br />
2007 (Written by Brian Leslie<br />
Johnson, Malcolm Mitchell Young,<br />
Angus McKinnon Young. Published<br />
by Albert J Son Pty Publ Ltd<br />
from the CD Welkam Bak Long<br />
Vanuatu. Produced by La Chimiz<br />
Productions, France/Vanuatu, 2007)<br />
Courtesy: La Chimiz Productions,<br />
France/Vanuatu<br />
Straky<br />
Papua New Guinea<br />
‘Soldier boy’ 2005<br />
Courtesy: CHM Supersound,<br />
Papua New Guinea<br />
Tiki Taane<br />
New Zealand<br />
‘Tangaroa’ 2007<br />
Courtesy: Tikidub Productions,<br />
New Zealand<br />
Tune Zion Songsters<br />
Vanuatu<br />
‘3rd March 2007’<br />
Courtesy: Bistaveos Productions,<br />
Vanuatu<br />
26 Roots<br />
Vanuatu<br />
‘26 Street’<br />
Recorded live at Fest’Napuan<br />
2008, Vanuatu<br />
Courtesy: Australia Network<br />
Upper Hutt Posse<br />
Aotearoa<br />
‘Mā te wā ‘2001<br />
Courtesy: Te Kupu, Aotearoa<br />
Vanlal<br />
Vanuatu<br />
Recorded live at Fest’Napuan<br />
2006, Vanuatu<br />
Courtesy: Television Blong<br />
Vanuatu (TBV)<br />
XX Squad<br />
Vanuatu<br />
‘Wan gud wan’ 2004<br />
Courtesy: Mangrove Productions,<br />
New Caledonia and Further <strong>Art</strong>s,<br />
Vanuatu<br />
Zennith<br />
Australia<br />
‘I like it’<br />
Recorded live at Kuranda Roots<br />
Festival, Australia, 2007<br />
Courtesy: The artists<br />
Documentaries and interviews<br />
Interview with O-shen (Papua New<br />
Guinea/Hawai’i)<br />
Promotional video compilation<br />
Courtesy: CHM Supersound, Papua<br />
New Guinea<br />
Documentary O-shen 2009<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Documentary 26 Roots (Vanuatu)<br />
2008<br />
Courtesy: Australia Network<br />
Documentary O-shen From Street<br />
to Sky 2008<br />
Unity Pacific (New Zealand)<br />
Courtesy: Bryn Evans and Moving<br />
Productions<br />
Interview with Marcel Meltherorong<br />
(aka Mars Melto, XX Squad and<br />
Kulja Riddim Klan) (New Caledonia/<br />
Vanuatu) at the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, 2009<br />
Interview with Richard Shing (Kulja<br />
Riddim Klan), Willy Alfred (Nauten<br />
Band) and Ralph Regenvanu<br />
(Fest’Napuan) (Vanuatu) 2008<br />
Courtesy: Australia Network<br />
Playlists<br />
Playlists by Brent Clough (ABC Radio<br />
National, Sydney); Namila Benson<br />
(3RRRFM Radio, Melbourne); Mickie<br />
Sellton, Reggaetown Festival, Cairns;<br />
Vir Asan, (4ZZZFM Radio, Brisbane);<br />
Tuff Tumas, DJ/Producer Australia/<br />
Vanuatu<br />
Live performance<br />
On the evening of 5 December 2009,<br />
O-shen headlined the performance<br />
event ‘Pacific Reggae Sounds’ at the<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong>, Brisbane.<br />
Rithy Panh<br />
Cambodia/France b.1964<br />
Site 2 aux Abords des Frontières (Site<br />
2 Around the Borders) 1989<br />
16mm, colour, stereo, 92 minutes,<br />
France/Germany, Khmer (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Rithy<br />
Panh / Cinematographer: Jacques<br />
Bouquin / Editor: Andrée Davanture /<br />
Print source/rights: CulturesFrance<br />
Neak Sre (Rice People aka Les Gens<br />
de la Rizière) 1994<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 125 minutes,<br />
Cambodia/France/Switzerland/<br />
Germany, Khmer (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Rithy Panh / Script: Rithy Panh,<br />
Ève Deboise / Based on the story by<br />
Shahnon Ahmad / Cinematographer:<br />
Jacques Bouquin / Editors: Andrée<br />
Davanture, Marie-Christine Rougerie /<br />
Print source/rights: CulturesFrance<br />
Bophana: Une Tragédie<br />
Cambodgienne (Bophana: A<br />
Cambodian Tragedy) 1996<br />
Betacam SP, colour, stereo, 60 minutes,<br />
France/Cambodia, Khmer (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Rithy Panh /<br />
Cinematographer: Jacques Pamart /<br />
Editor: Marie-Christine Rougerie /<br />
Print source/rights: CulturesFrance<br />
Un Soir Après la Guerre (One<br />
Evening After the War) 1998<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital,<br />
108 minutes, France/Cambodia,<br />
Khmer (English subtitles) / Director:<br />
Rithy Panh / Script: Rithy Panh,<br />
Ève Deboise / Cinematographer:<br />
Christophe Pollock / Editor: Marie-<br />
Christine Rougerie / Print source/<br />
rights: JBA Productions<br />
La Terre des Âmes Errantes (The Land<br />
of the Wandering Souls) 1999<br />
Betacam SP, colour, stereo, 100<br />
minutes, France, Khmer (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Rithy<br />
Panh / Cinematographer: Prum<br />
Mésar / Editors: Isabelle Roudy,<br />
Marie-Christine Rougerie / Print<br />
source/rights: CulturesFrance<br />
Les Gens d’Angkor (The People of<br />
Angkor) 2003<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 90 minutes,<br />
France, Khmer (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Rithy Panh /<br />
Cinematographer: Prum Mésar /<br />
Editors: Isabelle Roudy, Marie-<br />
Christine Rougerie / Print source:<br />
Institut National de l’Audiovisuel /<br />
Rights: Catherine Dussart<br />
Productions / Screening format:<br />
Betacam SP<br />
S-21, la Machine de mort Khmère<br />
Rouge (S-21: The Khmer Rouge<br />
Killing Machine) 2003<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 101 minutes,<br />
Cambodia/France, Khmer/<br />
Vietnamese (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Rithy Panh /<br />
Cinematographers: Rithy Panh, Prum<br />
Mésar / Editors: Isabelle Roudy,<br />
Marie-Christine Rougerie / Print<br />
source/rights: CulturesFrance<br />
Les <strong>Art</strong>istes du Théâtre Brûlé (The<br />
Burnt Theatre) 2005<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 82<br />
minutes, Cambodia/France, Khmer/<br />
French (English subtitles) / Director:<br />
Rithy Panh / Script: Rithy Panh, Agnès<br />
Sénémaud / Cinematographer:<br />
Prum Mésar / Editor: Marie-Christine<br />
Rougerie / Print source: Institut<br />
National de l’Audiovisuel / Rights:<br />
Catherine Dussart Productions /<br />
Screening format : Betacam SP<br />
Le Papier ne Peut pas Envelopper la<br />
Braise (Paper Cannot Wrap Ember)<br />
2007<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 90 minutes,<br />
France, Khmer (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Rithy Panh /<br />
Cinematographer: Prum Mésar /<br />
Editor: Marie-Christine Rougerie /<br />
Print source/rights: CulturesFrance /<br />
Screening format: Betacam SP<br />
Un Barrage Contre le Pacifique (The<br />
Sea Wall) 2008<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 115 minutes,<br />
France/Cambodia/Belgium,<br />
French (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Rithy Panh / Script: Rithy<br />
Panh, Michel Fessler / Based on<br />
the story by Marguerite Duras /<br />
Cinematographer: Pierre Milon /<br />
Editor: Marie-Christine Rougerie /<br />
Print source/rights: Film Distribution<br />
Reuben Paterson<br />
New Zealand b.1973<br />
Whakapapa: get down upon your<br />
knees 2009<br />
Glitter and synthetic polymer paint on<br />
canvas / 16 canvases: 200 x 200cm<br />
(each) / Courtesy: The artist and Gow<br />
Langsford <strong>Gallery</strong>, Auckland<br />
Campbell Patterson<br />
United Kingdom/New Zealand b.1983<br />
Glue balls 2004<br />
Digital Betacam transferred from<br />
digital video, single channel, colour,<br />
sound , 56:14 minutes, ed. 3/3<br />
Chewing brothers 2005<br />
Digital Betacam transferred from<br />
digital video, single channel, colour,<br />
sound, 2:59 minutes, ed. 2/3<br />
Tickle 2005<br />
Digital Betacam transferred from<br />
digital video, single channel, colour,<br />
sound, 2:47 minutes, ed. 1/3<br />
Lifting my mother for as long<br />
as I can 2007<br />
Digital Betacam transferred from<br />
digital video, single channel, colour,<br />
sound, 3:03 minutes, ed. 2/3<br />
Soda diary 2007<br />
Digital Betacam transferred from<br />
digital video, single channel, colour,<br />
sound, 3:28 minutes, ed. 1/3<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Soap stealer 2004<br />
Digital video, single channel,<br />
continuous loop, colour,<br />
10:54 minutes, ed. of 3<br />
Sandwich 2008<br />
Digital video, single channel,<br />
continuous loop, colour,<br />
sound,18:08 minutes, ed. of 3<br />
Chip mountain 2009<br />
Digital video, single channel,<br />
continuous loop, colour, sound,<br />
11:58 minutes, ed. of 3<br />
Old clothes 2009<br />
High definition digital video,<br />
single channel, continuous loop,<br />
colour, 4:28 minutes, ed. of 3<br />
Shampoo disaster 2009<br />
Digital video, single channel,<br />
continuous loop, colour,<br />
2:13 minutes, ed. of 3<br />
Courtesy: The artist and Michael Lett,<br />
Auckland<br />
Wit Pimkanchanapong<br />
Thailand b.1976<br />
Fruits 2007–09<br />
Paper, glue, wood, cardboard /<br />
Installed dimensions: 300 x 800 x<br />
240cm / Courtesy: The artist<br />
Cloud 2009<br />
6000 A3 paper sheets, bulldog clips,<br />
plastic stoppers, wire / Installed<br />
dimensions variable / Site-specific<br />
work for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist<br />
Qiu Anxiong<br />
China b.1972<br />
The new book of mountains and seas<br />
(part 1) 2006<br />
Digital hand-painted animation,<br />
AVI file, 3 channel projection,<br />
continuous loop exhibited from PC,<br />
4:1, black and white, sound,<br />
30:15 minutes, ed. 1/10 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist and Hanart TZ <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
The new book of mountains and seas<br />
(part 2) 2006–09<br />
Digital hand-painted animation,<br />
AVI file, 3 channel projection,<br />
continuous loop exhibited from PC,<br />
4:1, black and white, sound,<br />
29:30 minutes, ed. 1/10 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist and Hanart TZ <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Kibong Rhee<br />
South Korea b.1957<br />
There is no place – Shallow cuts 2008<br />
Glass, fog machine, artificial leaves,<br />
wood, steel, sand, motor, timer /<br />
Installed dimensions: 350 x 730 x<br />
700cm / Courtesy: The artist and<br />
Kukje <strong>Gallery</strong>, Seoul<br />
Hiraki Sawa<br />
Japan/United Kingdom b.1977<br />
elsewhere 2003<br />
Digital video on DVD, single channel,<br />
continuous loop, black and white,<br />
sound, 7:40 minutes / Courtesy:<br />
The artist, Ota Fine <strong>Art</strong>s, Tokyo, and<br />
James Cohan <strong>Gallery</strong>, New York<br />
trail 2005<br />
Digital video, black and white,<br />
sound, 14:00 minutes / Music: Dale<br />
Berning / Courtesy: The artist, Ota<br />
Fine <strong>Art</strong>s, Tokyo, and James Cohan<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, New York<br />
O 2009<br />
3-channel video projection, 10<br />
short films on monitors, 5-channel<br />
sound by Dale Berning on spinning<br />
speakers, colour and black and<br />
white, 8.00 minutes / Commissioned<br />
for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist, Ota<br />
Fine <strong>Art</strong>s, Tokyo, and James Cohan<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, New York<br />
Shirana Shahbazi<br />
Iran/Switzerland b.1974<br />
From ‘Flowers, fruits & portraits’<br />
series, 2003–ongoing, printed 2009<br />
[Stilleben-22-2008]<br />
Type C photograph, ed. of 5<br />
(+ 1 AP) / 150 x 120cm<br />
[Schmetterling-34-2009]<br />
Type C photograph, ed. of 5<br />
(+ 1 AP) / 120 x 150cm<br />
[Tulpe-01-2009]<br />
Gelatin silver print, ed. of 5<br />
(+ 1 AP) / 90 x 70cm<br />
[Schaedel-01-2007]<br />
Type C photograph, ed. of 5<br />
(+ 1 AP) / 90 x 70cm<br />
[Voegel-08-2009]<br />
Type C photograph, ed. of 5<br />
(+ 1 AP) / 90 x 70cm<br />
[KingsCanyon-01-2008]<br />
Gelatin silver print, ed. of 5<br />
(+ 1 AP) / 70 x 90cm<br />
[Stilleben-31-2009]<br />
Type C photograph, ed. of 5<br />
(+ 1 AP) / 70 x 90cm<br />
[Monochrome-03-2008]<br />
Type C photograph, ed. of 5<br />
(+ 1 AP) / 90 x 70cm<br />
[Mineral-05-2007]<br />
Type C photograph, ed. of 5<br />
(+ 1 AP) / 90 x 70cm<br />
Courtesy: The artist and Bob van<br />
Orsouw <strong>Gallery</strong>, Zurich<br />
Shirana Shahbazi<br />
Iran b.1974<br />
In collaboration with Sirous<br />
Shaghaghi, Iran<br />
From ‘Flowers, fruits & portraits’,<br />
series 2003–ongoing, painted 2009<br />
[Stilleben-28-Painting-2008]<br />
Synthetic polymer paint on<br />
canvas, ed. of 3 (+ 1 AP) /<br />
600 x 1000cm<br />
[Schaedel-03-Painting-2008]<br />
Synthetic polymer paint on<br />
canvas, ed. of 3 (+ 1 AP) /<br />
600 x 1000cm<br />
Commissioned for APT6<br />
Courtesy: The artist and Bob van<br />
Orsouw <strong>Gallery</strong>, Zurich<br />
Shooshie Sulaiman<br />
Malaysia b.1973<br />
Miss + communication 2007<br />
Poppy petal, ink, old photograph /<br />
13.5 x 10cm / Private collection,<br />
Vienna<br />
Darkroom 2007–09<br />
A man with two wives 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, oil paint,<br />
paper, frame / 53 x 62cm<br />
224 225
Aminah baba 2009<br />
Bee, PVA glue, hibiscus petal,<br />
wild flower, old photograph,<br />
frame / 84 x 69cm<br />
Beetle + flower (Diagram 2) 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, old<br />
photograph, frame / 34.5 x 39cm<br />
Beetle + flower (Diagram 3.2) 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, old<br />
photographs, frame /<br />
32.5 x 26.5cm<br />
Beetle + flower (Diagram 4) 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, old<br />
photograph, frame / 29 x 33.5cm<br />
Beetle + flower (Diagram 5) 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, old<br />
photograph, frame / 27.2 x 35.5cm<br />
Beetle + flower (Diagram 6) 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, old<br />
photograph, frame / 24 x 29cm<br />
Bibir = lips 2009<br />
Paper, ink, old photographs,<br />
frame / 25.8 x 32.3cm<br />
Che Besar Latifah Bok 2009<br />
Graphite, tulip petal, old<br />
photograph, frame / 84 x 69cm<br />
Chinese, Malay and Dutch 2009<br />
Graphite, old photographs,<br />
frame / 26.2 x 32.4cm<br />
Crown prince 1 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, old<br />
photograph, frame / 25.5 x 20cm<br />
Crown prince 2 2009<br />
Kesidang, graphite, old<br />
photograph, frame / 50.2 x 28.8cm<br />
Emperor 2009<br />
Potato plant petal, old<br />
photograph, frame / 55 x 47cm<br />
Equal component 2009<br />
Ink, old photographs, frame /<br />
31.5 x 26.5cm<br />
Equation of equipment 2009<br />
Paper, ink, old photographs,<br />
frame / 32.5 x 26.5cm<br />
Father + daughter + love 2009<br />
Ink, old photograph, frame /<br />
35.5 x 43cm<br />
Fond 2009<br />
Paper, ink, old photographs,<br />
frame / 29 x 24.2cm<br />
Happy couple: A man and a<br />
woman 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, synthetic polymer<br />
paint, ink, old photographs,<br />
frame / 22.8 x 27.8cm<br />
Indian father + Indian mother =<br />
Chinese daughter 2009<br />
Lily petal, ink, old photograph,<br />
frame / 35.5 x 29.3cm<br />
Indian wedding 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, old<br />
photograph, frame / 48.5 x 41cm<br />
Look at the eyes, nose and teeth<br />
2009<br />
Ink, old photograph, frame /<br />
33 x 26.7cm<br />
Look at the lips 2009<br />
Ink, old photograph, frame /<br />
26 x 33.5cm<br />
Look at the nose, eyes and<br />
eyebrows 2009<br />
Ink, old photograph, frame /<br />
35 x 26cm<br />
Lotus, kesidang, tulips 2009<br />
Tulip petal, lotus, kesidang /<br />
45 x 52.3cm<br />
Maharani 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, old<br />
photograph, frame / 54 x 42.8cm<br />
Malay + inverted Chinese =<br />
Indian 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, paper, old<br />
photographs, frame / 27.5 x 33cm<br />
Malay men 2009<br />
Graphite, old photograph,<br />
frame / 26 x 20.8cm<br />
The Malays who listen 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, old<br />
photograph, frame / 37 x 45cm<br />
The Malays who must be heard<br />
2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, oil paint, old<br />
photograph, frame / 49.8 x 54.2cm<br />
Man, 4 wives 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, ink, old<br />
photographs, frame /<br />
28.8 x 35.5cm<br />
Man and woman unite 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, synthetic polymer<br />
paint, ink, old photographs,<br />
frame / 22.7 x 28.2cm<br />
Masculine beauty 2009<br />
Oil paint, paper, old photograph,<br />
frame / 42 x 34.5cm<br />
Masculine blind 2009<br />
Oil paint, paper, old photograph /<br />
34 x 27.8cm<br />
Masculine butterfly’s neck 2009<br />
Paper, oil paint, old photograph,<br />
frame / 33.5 x 27cm<br />
Masculine cheek 2009<br />
Paper, ink, old photograph,<br />
frame / 36.6 x 30.4cm<br />
Masculine eyes 2009<br />
Oil paint, paper, old photograph,<br />
frame / 32.2 x 26cm<br />
Masculine mask 2009<br />
Oil paint, paper, old photograph,<br />
frame / 42 x 34.5cm<br />
Masculine moth’s eye 2009<br />
Paper, oil paint, photograph,<br />
frame / 25.3 x 18cm<br />
Masculine mouth 2009<br />
Oil paint, paper, old photograph,<br />
frame / 33.7 x 28cm<br />
Masculine nose 2009<br />
Oil paint, paper, old photograph,<br />
frame / 32.2 x 26cm<br />
Masculine stroke 2009<br />
Oil paint, paper, old photograph,<br />
frame / 42 x 34.5cm<br />
Menstruation: Look at the mouth<br />
2009<br />
Oil paint, ink, old photograph,<br />
frame / 27.5 x 20cm<br />
Menstruation: Look at the mouth<br />
2009<br />
Oil paint, ink, old photograph,<br />
frame / 26 x 33.5cm<br />
Menstruation: Look at the teeth<br />
and nose 2009<br />
Oil, paint, ink, old photograph,<br />
frame / 33.5 x 26cm<br />
Menstruation: Look everywhere<br />
2009<br />
Oil paint, ink, old photograph,<br />
frame / 26 x 33.5cm<br />
Mr & Mrs 2009<br />
Paper, old photograph, frame /<br />
27.7 x 34.3cm<br />
Mrs Hubby & Mr Flower 2009<br />
Hibiscus petal, paper, old<br />
photograph, frame / 24 x 28cm<br />
Paper + pencil attraction 2009<br />
Paper, old photographs, frame /<br />
24 x 29.3cm<br />
Soul 2009<br />
Lily petal, ink, paper, old<br />
photograph, frame / 32.5 x 26cm<br />
The suspect 2009<br />
Ink, old photograph, frame /<br />
35.9 x 43.5cm<br />
Project for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist<br />
Thukral and Tagra<br />
Jiten Thukral<br />
India b.1976<br />
Sumir Tagra<br />
India b.1979<br />
Escape! For a dream land 2009<br />
Mixed-media installation including:<br />
Dominus Aeris – The Great,<br />
Grand Mirage 2009<br />
Synthetic polymer paint and<br />
oil on canvas / Triptych:<br />
213.5 x 213.5cm (each)<br />
Windows of opportunity 2009<br />
Oil on wood / 24 parts: 43 x 28cm<br />
(each) / Installed dimensions<br />
variable<br />
Project for APT6<br />
Courtesy: The artists and <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Nature Morte, New Delhi<br />
Charwei Tsai<br />
Taiwan b.1980<br />
Circle 2009<br />
Digital video projection, single<br />
channel, Quicktime, continuous<br />
loop, 4:3, colour, sound, 40 seconds,<br />
open edition / Commissioned by<br />
Fondation Cartier, Paris / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Hand washing project 2009<br />
Digital video projection, single<br />
channel, continuous loop, colour,<br />
silent / Project for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Mushroom mantra 2009<br />
Black ink on mushrooms / Installed<br />
dimensions variable / Site-specific<br />
installation for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Sky mantra 2009<br />
Performance for APT6<br />
Vanuatu Sculptors<br />
Freddy Bule<br />
Vanuatu b.1967<br />
Atingting rom (slit drum) 2005<br />
Carved breadfruit tree with<br />
synthetic polymer paint /<br />
256 x 24 x 26cm / Gift of David<br />
Baker through the <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation 2008 /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Atingting (slit drum) 2005<br />
Carved breadfruit tree with<br />
synthetic polymer paint /<br />
230 x 35 x 31cm / Gift of David<br />
Baker through the <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation 2008 /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Bongnaim Frederick<br />
Vanuatu b.c.1957<br />
Mague sagran kon (ranking black<br />
palm) grade 4 (second time<br />
around) c.1985<br />
Carved black palm /<br />
239 x 38 x 45cm / Purchased 2008.<br />
The <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Government</strong>’s<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions<br />
Fund / Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Chief Joachin Kilfan<br />
Vanuatu b.c.1963<br />
Mague ne wurwur (ranking black<br />
palm) grade 7 c.1990<br />
Carved black palm with synthetic<br />
polymer paint / 355 x 48 x 54cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Mansak Family<br />
Vanuatu b.unknown<br />
Temar ne ari (ancestor spirit)<br />
c.1995<br />
Natural fibres, clay, synthetic<br />
polymer paint, pig’s tusks,<br />
coconut shells, bamboo<br />
and sticks / 94 x 45 x 50cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Temar ne ari (ancestor spirit)<br />
c.1995<br />
Natural fibres, clay, synthetic<br />
polymer paint, ochres, coconut<br />
shells, bamboo and sticks /<br />
145 x 50 x 25cm / Purchased<br />
2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Temar ne ari (ancestor spirit)<br />
c.1995<br />
Natural fibres, clay, synthetic<br />
polymer paint, ochres, pig’s tusks,<br />
bamboo and sticks /<br />
130 x 36 x 15cm / Purchased<br />
2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Temar ne ari (ancestor spirit)<br />
c.1995<br />
Natural fibres, clay, synthetic<br />
polymer paint, ochres, pig’s<br />
tusks, coconut shells, bamboo<br />
and sticks / 94 x 34 x 13cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Temar ne ari (ancestor spirit)<br />
c.1995<br />
Natural fibres, clay, synthetic<br />
polymer paint, coconut shells,<br />
bamboo and sticks /<br />
120 x 48 x 24cm / Purchased<br />
2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Guardian of tabou house figure<br />
2005–06<br />
Carved coconut wood with<br />
natural dyes / 95 x 30 x 18cm /<br />
Gift of David Baker through<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation 2009. Donated<br />
through the Australian<br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s Cultural<br />
Gifts Program / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Guardian of tabou house figure<br />
painted 2005–06<br />
Carved coconut wood with<br />
natural dyes / 102 x 22 x 19cm /<br />
Gift of David Baker through<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation 2009. Donated<br />
through the Australian<br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s Cultural<br />
Gifts Program / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Guardian of tabou house figure<br />
2005–06<br />
Carved coconut wood with<br />
natural dyes / 95 x 30 x 18cm /<br />
Gift of David Baker through<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation 2009. Donated<br />
through the Australian<br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s Cultural<br />
Gifts Program / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Guardian of tabou house figure<br />
2005–06<br />
Carved coconut wood with<br />
natural dyes / 121 x 20 x 20cm /<br />
Gift of David Baker through<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation 2009. Donated<br />
through the Australian<br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s Cultural<br />
Gifts Program / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Guardian of tabou house figure<br />
2005–06<br />
Carved coconut wood with<br />
natural dyes / 128 x 22 x 25cm /<br />
Gift of David Baker through<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation 2009. Donated<br />
through the Australian<br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s Cultural<br />
Gifts Program / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Chief Michel Marakon<br />
Vanuatu b.c.1950<br />
Mague ne hiwir (ranking black<br />
palm) grade 9 c.1980<br />
Carved black palm with synthetic<br />
polymer paint / 257 x 44 x 50cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Michel Rangie<br />
Vanuatu b.c.1981<br />
Mague ne hiwir (ranking black<br />
palm) grade 9 painted c.2005<br />
Carved black palm with synthetic<br />
polymer paint / 255 x 35 x 45cm /<br />
Gift of David Baker through<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation 2008 / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Mague ne sagran (ranking black<br />
palm) grade 4 painted c.2005<br />
Carved black palm with synthetic<br />
polymer paint / 250 x 38 x 50cm /<br />
Gift of David Baker through<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation 2008 / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Mague ne sagran (ranking black<br />
palm) grade 4 painted c.2005<br />
Carved black palm with synthetic<br />
polymer paint / 235 x 36 x 45cm /<br />
Gift of David Baker through<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation 2008 / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Mague ne sagran (ranking black<br />
palm) grade 4 painted c.2005<br />
Carved black palm with synthetic<br />
polymer paint / 250 x 38 x 50cm /<br />
Gift of David Baker through<br />
the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation 2008 / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Chief Louis Wunbae<br />
Vanuatu b.c.1951<br />
Mague ne wurwur (ranking black<br />
palm) grade 7 c.1985<br />
Black palm with synthetic<br />
polymer paint / 280 x 46 x 55cm /<br />
Purchased 2008. The <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Government</strong>’s <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Acquisitions Fund / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Rohan Wealleans<br />
New Zealand b.1977<br />
Friendship lies in the outer reaches of<br />
space 2009<br />
Mixed media / 177 x 120cm /<br />
Courtesy: The artist and Hamish<br />
McKay <strong>Gallery</strong>, Wellington<br />
Paikea decoy, seed collector 2009<br />
Synthetic polymer paint on<br />
fibreglass / 27 x 62 x 440cm /<br />
Courtesy: The artist and Hamish<br />
McKay <strong>Gallery</strong>, Wellington<br />
Paint ritual 2009<br />
Synthetic polymer paint, plastic on<br />
wall / 150 x 100cm / Courtesy: The<br />
artist and Hamish McKay <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
Wellington<br />
Paint ritual 2009<br />
Performance for APT6<br />
The road to tomorrow 2009<br />
Mixed media / 177 x 120cm /<br />
Courtesy: The artist and Hamish<br />
McKay <strong>Gallery</strong>, Wellington<br />
Robin White, Leba Toki<br />
and Bale Jione<br />
Robin White<br />
New Zealand b.1946<br />
Leba Toki<br />
Fiji b.1951<br />
Bale Jione<br />
Fiji b.1952<br />
Teitei vou (A new garden) 2009<br />
Natural dyes on barkcloth, woven<br />
pandanus, commercial wool, woven<br />
barkcloth, sari fabric mats / 9<br />
components: taunamu 390 x 240cm;<br />
butubutu 150 x 240cm; ibe vakabati<br />
180 x 240cm; 2 sulu 79 x 242cm<br />
(each); 2 oro 30 x 240cm (each);<br />
2 woven mats 67 x 46cm (each).<br />
Installed size variable / Purchased<br />
2009. <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation Grant / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
226 227
Yao Jui-chung<br />
Taiwan b.1969<br />
Everything will fall into ruin 1990–<br />
2009<br />
Black and white digital photographs,<br />
AP 1 / 48 sheets: 100 x 150cm<br />
(each) / Gift of the artist through the<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation<br />
2009 / Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Yang Shaobin<br />
China b.1963<br />
X – Blind Spot No. 1 2008<br />
Oil on canvas / 354 x 240cm<br />
X – Blind Spot No. 4 2008<br />
Oil on canvas / 354 x 240cm<br />
X – Blind Spot No. 7 2008<br />
Oil on canvas / 194 x 357cm<br />
X – Blind Spot No. 8 2008<br />
Oil on canvas / 280 x 210cm<br />
X – Blind Spot No. 16 2008<br />
Fibreglass / 250 x 90 x 80cm<br />
X – Blind Spot No. 18 2008<br />
Fibreglass, clay / 61 x 74 x 108cm<br />
Courtesy: The artist and Long March<br />
Space, Beijing<br />
YNG<br />
(Yoshitomo Nara and graf)<br />
Yoshitomo Nara<br />
Japan b.1959<br />
Hideki Toyoshima<br />
Japan b.1971<br />
Ryo Aoyanagi<br />
Japan b.1974<br />
Yasumasa Konishi<br />
Japan b.1974<br />
Y.N.G.M.S. (Y.N.G.’s Mobile Studio)<br />
2009<br />
Mixed media / Installed dimensions:<br />
530 x 370 x 270cm / Commissioned<br />
for APT6 and the <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Collection with assistance<br />
from Tomio Koyama <strong>Gallery</strong>, Tokyo.<br />
Purchased 2009 with funds from the<br />
Bequest of Grace Davies and Nell<br />
Davies through the <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation / Collection:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu<br />
Zhu Weibing<br />
China b.1971<br />
Ji Wenyu<br />
China b.1959<br />
People holding flowers 2007<br />
Synthetic polymer paint on<br />
resin; velour, steel wire, dacron,<br />
lodestone and cotton / 400 pieces:<br />
100 x 18 x 8cm (each) / Installed<br />
dimensions variable / The Kenneth<br />
and Yasuko Myer Collection of<br />
Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong>. Purchased<br />
2008 with funds from Michael<br />
Simcha Baevski through the<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation /<br />
Collection: <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Kids’ APT<br />
Minam Apang<br />
India b.1980<br />
Scribbling with script 2009<br />
A drawing activity for children which<br />
reflects the artist’s interest in script,<br />
storytelling and exploring language<br />
in unexpected ways.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan<br />
Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan<br />
Philippines/Australia b.1965<br />
Alfredo Juan Aquilizan<br />
Philippines/Australia b.1962<br />
In-flight (Project: Another Country)<br />
2009<br />
Mixed media / Site-specific work<br />
for APT6 / Courtesy: The artists<br />
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian<br />
Iran b.1924<br />
Patterns of infinity 2009<br />
A computer touchscreen interactive<br />
in which participants can create<br />
colourful geometric designs.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Gonkar Gyatso<br />
Tibet/United Kingdom b.1961<br />
Funky Buddhas 2009<br />
Sculptural installation consisting<br />
of 17 seated Buddha statues and<br />
coloured stickers. / Commissioned<br />
for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist<br />
Ho Tzu Nyen<br />
Singapore b.1976<br />
H the Happy Robot 2009<br />
High-definition digital video,<br />
single channel, colour, sound, 6:42<br />
minutes, ed. of 3 / Commissioned for<br />
APT6 / Supported by the National<br />
<strong>Art</strong>s Council and Singapore Film<br />
Commission / Courtesy: The artist<br />
Runa Islam<br />
Bangladesh/United Kingdom b.1970<br />
Make believe 2009<br />
Children are invited to make their<br />
own thaumatrope, also known as<br />
a ‘turning wonder’. Invented in the<br />
1820s, the thaumatrope used to be<br />
a popular optical toy which relies on<br />
the viewer’s persistence of vision and<br />
short-term memory to allow images<br />
to merge and become one.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Ayaz Jokhio<br />
Pakistan b.1978<br />
99 Self portraits 2009<br />
A mix-and-match activity based on<br />
Ayaz Jokhio’s drawing series ‘99 Self<br />
portraits’.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio<br />
North Korea/Democratic People’s<br />
Republic of Korea (DPRK)<br />
est.1959<br />
The Fairy of the Kumgang Mountains<br />
2009<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artists<br />
The Mekong<br />
Rich Streitmatter-Tran<br />
Vietnam b.1972<br />
My River, My Future: A Children’s<br />
Drawing Project 2009<br />
A project in two stages, which<br />
features drawing workshops in<br />
countries of the Mekong River<br />
region — Cambodia, Vietnam and<br />
Myanmar — and Brisbane, looking at<br />
connections children have with their<br />
local river.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Pacific Reggae: Roots Beyond<br />
the Reef<br />
Marcel Meltherorong aka Mars<br />
Melto<br />
New Caledonia/Vanuatu b.1975<br />
Singsing with Marcel 2009<br />
A multimedia interactive with<br />
interview of performer Marcel<br />
Meltherorong (aka Mars Melto),<br />
providing the opportunity to create<br />
a music video clip with him.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Wit Pimkanchanapong<br />
Thailand b.1976<br />
I, you, we 2009<br />
A multimedia interactive in which<br />
participants’ facial features are<br />
fragmented and recombined into<br />
those of others to form a new portrait.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Hiraki Sawa<br />
Japan/United Kingdom b.1977<br />
Every Little Thing Moving 2009<br />
A multimedia interactive which<br />
enables young visitors to interact with<br />
the imagery in Sawa’s films elsewhere<br />
2003 and trail 2005 by moving<br />
three-dimensional objects over an<br />
image-sensitive tabletop to make<br />
their own contribution to the films.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Shirana Shahbazi<br />
Iran/Switzerland b.1974<br />
Still life: Coconut and other things<br />
2009<br />
Brisbane children composed a series<br />
of their own still life arrangements<br />
which included tropical fruits<br />
and flowers readily available in<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong>. From this workshop<br />
Shirana Shahbazi worked with<br />
billboard painter Sirous Shaghaghi in<br />
Iran to create an immense canvas for<br />
the Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
Thukral and Tagra<br />
Jiten Thukral<br />
India b.1976<br />
Sumir Tagra<br />
India b.1979<br />
Hi! I am India 2009<br />
A project in which children are<br />
invited to make scenes of daily<br />
Indian life from an array of custommade<br />
stickers. The imagery is<br />
designed to introduce children<br />
to the richness of Indian visual<br />
culture, from the historical to the<br />
contemporary, which exist side-byside<br />
in India today.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artists<br />
Charwei Tsai<br />
Taiwan b.1980<br />
Water Project 2009<br />
A film for children designed to evoke<br />
the sensation of touch.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artist<br />
YNG (Yoshitomo Nara and graf)<br />
Yoshitomo Nara<br />
Japan b.1959<br />
Hideki Toyoshima<br />
Japan b.1971<br />
Ryo Aoyanagi<br />
Japan b.1974<br />
Yasumasa Konishi<br />
Japan b.1974<br />
The Play House 2009<br />
A small cubbyhouse environment<br />
designed by YNG will attract curious<br />
young visitors to pay a visit and stay<br />
a while.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artists<br />
Zhu Weibing<br />
China b.1971<br />
Ji Wenyu<br />
China b.1959<br />
The Hidden Garden 2009<br />
Children can find a place to play in<br />
Ji Wenyu and Zhu Weibing’s fabric<br />
environment, designed in the style of<br />
a traditional Chinese walled garden.<br />
Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy:<br />
The artists<br />
228 229
<strong>Art</strong>ist biographies<br />
Minam Apang<br />
b.1980 Naharlagun, Arunachal Pradesh, India<br />
Lives and works in Bangalore, India<br />
Minam Apang's drawings reference the imagery of<br />
India’s cities, as well as the mythology of her native<br />
Arunachal Pradesh in India’s far north-east, located<br />
between China, Bhutan and Myanmar. Trained in<br />
traditional Buddhist thangka (scroll) painting, as<br />
well as contemporary Western practices, Apang<br />
investigates the forms, methods and languages<br />
of drawing, while reflecting a culture that is<br />
interconnected and rich in narrative. She studied<br />
for a Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong> at Elmhurst College,<br />
United States, and the University of Leeds, United<br />
Kingdom, as part of an exchange program in 2001.<br />
She initiated the art collaborative Lazy Rebels while<br />
studying for her Masters in Mumbai in 2004.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai, India,<br />
2008, 2007. Exhibitions (group): ‘Present/Future’,<br />
National <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong>, Mumbai, 2005.<br />
Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan<br />
Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan<br />
b.1965 Manila, the Philippines<br />
Alfredo Juan Aquilizan<br />
b.1962 Cagayan Valley, the Philippines<br />
Live and work in Brisbane, Australia<br />
The husband-and-wife team of Isabel and Alfredo<br />
Aquilizan creates works that use the processes<br />
of collecting, collaborating and educating to<br />
express ideas of migration, family and memory.<br />
Often working with local communities, the<br />
Aquilizans compose elaborate, formal installations<br />
reflecting individual experiences of dislocation<br />
and change. Having migrated from the Philippines<br />
to Australia, the Aquilizans’ work reflects personal<br />
experience, while conveying points of exchange<br />
and communication that extend beyond borders.<br />
Alfredo Aquilizan received a Bachelor of Fine<br />
<strong>Art</strong>s from the Philippine Women’s University<br />
and a Masters of <strong>Art</strong>s in Fine <strong>Art</strong>s from Anglia<br />
Polytechnic University, Norwich School of <strong>Art</strong>s<br />
and Design, United Kingdom, also undertaking<br />
Education units in Teaching at the University of the<br />
Philippines. Isabel Aquilizan received a Bachelor<br />
of Communication, majoring in Theatre <strong>Art</strong>s<br />
Production, from Assumption College, Makati City,<br />
the Philippines.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Logan <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Brisbane,<br />
2008; The Drawing Room, Manila, 2006.<br />
Exhibitions (group): Singapore Biennale, 2008;<br />
Adelaide Biennial, Australia, 2008; 15th Biennale<br />
of Sydney, 2006; Gwangju Biennale, South Korea,<br />
2004; 50th Biennale of Venice, 2003.<br />
Chen Chieh-jen<br />
b.1960 Taoyuan, Taiwan<br />
Lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan<br />
Chen Chieh-jen has been a significant figure in<br />
the development of Taiwanese conceptual art<br />
since the early 1980s. A self-taught artist, he was<br />
a prominent and controversial figure during<br />
Taiwan’s martial law period (1949–87), and<br />
his practice — photography, installation and<br />
performance — directly reflects on the historical<br />
events through which he has lived. Chen’s first<br />
film was completed in 2001.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Museo Nacional Centro de<br />
<strong>Art</strong>e Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2008; Asia Society<br />
Museum, New York, 2007. Exhibitions (group):<br />
53rd Biennale of Venice, 2009; 10th Istanbul<br />
Biennial, 2007; 15th Biennale of Sydney, 2006;<br />
51st Biennale of Venice, 2005.<br />
Chen Qiulin<br />
b.1975 Hubei, China<br />
Lives and works in Chengdu, China<br />
Chen Qiulin creates evocative works that comment<br />
on the scale and pace of change in contemporary<br />
China, and includes concern for the people<br />
living along the Yangtze River. Thousands of<br />
communities have been displaced by the Three<br />
Gorges Dam hydro-electric project, including<br />
those of Chen’s hometown in Wanzhou. Chen<br />
studied printmaking at the Sichuan Fine <strong>Art</strong>s<br />
Institute, China, and graduated in 2000. Her<br />
work has since included photography, sculpture,<br />
performance and installation.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): University <strong>Art</strong> Museum, Albany,<br />
New York, 2007; Long March Space, Beijing, 2006.<br />
Exhibitions (group): Gwangju Biennale, South<br />
Korea, 2008; ‘China Power Station Part 2’, Astrup<br />
Fearnley Museum of Modern <strong>Art</strong>, Oslo, Norway,<br />
2008; ‘The Wall’, China Millennium <strong>Art</strong> Museum,<br />
Beijing, 2005, toured to Albright-Knox <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
Buffalo, United States, 2005.<br />
Cheo Chai-Hiang<br />
b.1946 Singapore<br />
Lives and works in Singapore<br />
Cheo Chai-Hiang is one of Singapore’s pioneering<br />
contemporary artists; his instruction pieces from<br />
the early 1970s are generally regarded as the first<br />
conceptual art works made in the country. Cheo<br />
initially eschewed formal art instruction in favour<br />
of self-education. He left Singapore for the United<br />
Kingdom, however, in 1971 to pursue formal art<br />
training, and graduated with a Bachelor of <strong>Art</strong>s<br />
(Hons) in Fine <strong>Art</strong> from Brighton Polytechnic in<br />
1975, and a Master of <strong>Art</strong> from the Royal College<br />
of <strong>Art</strong> in London in 1978.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Osage <strong>Gallery</strong>, Hong Kong,<br />
2009; Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2005; Casula<br />
Powerhouse, Sydney, 2000. Exhibitions (group):<br />
Singapore Biennale, 2008; ‘Telah Terbit (Out<br />
Now)’, Singapore <strong>Art</strong> Museum, 2006.<br />
DAMP<br />
Dan Cass<br />
b.1970 Melbourne, Australia<br />
Rob Creedon<br />
b.1969 Melbourne<br />
Narelle Desmond<br />
b.1970 Melbourne<br />
Ry Haskings<br />
b.1977 Melbourne<br />
Sam George<br />
b.1987 Melbourne<br />
Sharon Goodwin<br />
b.1973 Melbourne<br />
Deb Kunda<br />
b.1972 Melbourne<br />
James Lynch<br />
b.1974 Melbourne<br />
Dan Moynihan<br />
b.1974 Melbourne<br />
Lisa Radford<br />
b.1976 Melbourne<br />
Nat Thomas<br />
b.1967 Brisbane, Australia<br />
Kylie Wilkinson<br />
b.1971 Melbourne<br />
est.1995 Melbourne<br />
DAMP is an artist group with 12 current members.<br />
Membership has been fluid over the years, with<br />
an alumnus numbering over 70, though not all<br />
members identify themselves as artists. Many of<br />
DAMP’s projects involve audience participation,<br />
inviting them into the group or diffusing DAMP<br />
members into the audience, deliberately confusing<br />
the two. DAMP does not have a particular identity<br />
beyond being simply a group, and is consequently<br />
open to change and external influence.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Heide Museum of Modern <strong>Art</strong>,<br />
Melbourne, 2008; Uplands <strong>Gallery</strong>, Melbourne,<br />
2007; Experimental <strong>Art</strong> Foundation, Adelaide,<br />
2001; 200 Gertrude Street, Melbourne, 1999.<br />
Exhibitions (group): ‘2004: Australian Culture Now’,<br />
National <strong>Gallery</strong> of Victoria, Melbourne, 2004;<br />
‘Charley’, PS1, New York, 2002; ‘Octopus 2’,<br />
200 Gertrude Street, Melbourne, 2001.<br />
Solomon Enos<br />
b. 1976 Wai’anae, Hawai’i, United States<br />
Lives and works in Kalihi, Hawai’i<br />
Born and raised in Wai’anae, Solomon Enos is<br />
a native Hawaiian painter, teacher and activist.<br />
Dedicated to preserving and communicating<br />
his Maoli culture through art, Enos has garnered<br />
respect for his paintings, children’s book<br />
illustrations and major mural commissions. Between<br />
2006 and 2007, he published Polyfantastica, an<br />
epic 40 000-year backstory to Hawaiian culture<br />
in a weekly comic in the Honolulu Advertiser<br />
newspaper. Enos, with his family, also acts as<br />
caretaker of the Kalihi Valley Nature Park in Hawai’i.<br />
Exhibitions (group): Hawai‘i State <strong>Art</strong> Museum,<br />
Honolulu, 2009; ‘Nä Akua Wahine: Celebrating<br />
the Female Gods of Hawai‘i Nei’, Bishop Museum,<br />
Honolulu, 2005; ‘Right to Know: Multimedia<br />
Installation on the World of Information’, The<br />
<strong>Art</strong>s at Marks Garage, Manoa, Hawai’i, 2005.<br />
Publications: Ka Mo’olelo O Hi’iakaikapoliopele<br />
(The Epic Tale of Hi’iakaikapoliopele), text and<br />
translations by Puakea Nogelmeier, illustrations by<br />
Solomon Enos, Awaiaulu Inc., Honululu, Hawai’i,<br />
2006; Akua Hawai’i: Hawaiian Gods and their<br />
Stories, text by Kimo Armitage, illustrations by<br />
Solomon Enos, Kamahoi Press, Bishop Museum,<br />
Honolulu, Hawai’i, 2005.<br />
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian<br />
b.1924 Qazvin, Iran<br />
Lives and works in Tehran, Iran<br />
With a distinguished career spanning over<br />
50 years, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian<br />
is a senior figure in contemporary Iranian art.<br />
Farmanfarmaian spent many years living in New<br />
York as an art student and, later, as a fashion<br />
illustrator at department store Bonwit Teller, where<br />
she worked alongside Andy Warhol. She returned<br />
to Iran in 1957 and established herself as an<br />
artist, holding major exhibitions in Tehran, Paris,<br />
Venice and New York. After the Islamic Revolution<br />
of 1979, she took refuge in New York, returning<br />
permanently to Tehran in 2000.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Leighton House Museum,<br />
London, 2008; The Third Line, Dubai, United Arab<br />
Emirates, 2007; Victoria and Albert Museum,<br />
London, 2006. Exhibitions (group): ‘East-West<br />
Divan’, 53rd Biennale of Venice, 2009; ‘The Power<br />
of the Ornament’, Belvedere, Vienna, Austria, 2008;<br />
Biennale of Venice, 1964 and 1958.<br />
Subodh Gupta<br />
b.1964 Khagaul, Bihar, India<br />
Lives and works in Gurgaon, Haryana, India<br />
One of India’s most prominent contemporary<br />
artists, Subodh Gupta works in a wide range<br />
of mediums, including painting, installation,<br />
photography, video and performance. He is<br />
perhaps best known for his large sculptures<br />
constructed from dozens of stainless steel and<br />
copper utensils, which translate the conceptual art<br />
format of the readymade into a rich exploration<br />
of everyday life in India, including the shifting<br />
notions of artistic and economic value. Born in<br />
the predominantly rural state of Bihar in central<br />
India, Gupta studied for a Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong><br />
(Painting) at the College of <strong>Art</strong>s and Crafts, Patna,<br />
India, between 1983 and 1988. He has lived in<br />
New Delhi since 1990, and currently resides in the<br />
rapidly growing satellite city of Gurgaon.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Hauser & Wirth, London, 2009;<br />
Arario <strong>Gallery</strong>, Beijing, 2008; BALTIC Centre for<br />
Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>, Gateshead, United Kingdom,<br />
2007. Exhibitions (group): ‘Altermodern’, Tate<br />
Triennial, Tate Britain, London, 2009; ‘Indian<br />
Highway’, Serpentine <strong>Gallery</strong>, London, 2008;<br />
51st Biennale of Venice, 2005.<br />
Gonkar Gyatso<br />
b.1961 Lhasa, Tibet<br />
Lives and works in London, United Kingdom<br />
Gonkar Gyatso grew up during the period of<br />
the Cultural Revolution in China, when much<br />
art and culture was destroyed, and traditional<br />
Tibetan art forms — most of which were tied<br />
to religion — were forbidden. While studying<br />
Chinese calligraphy in Beijing, Gyatso became<br />
aware of the distinctiveness of his heritage and,<br />
after graduating, moved to Dharamsala, India,<br />
where he studied traditional Tibetan thangka<br />
(scroll) painting before moving to London. Gyatso<br />
founded the Sweet Tea House there in 1985,<br />
which became the first Tibetan avant-garde artists’<br />
association. Since his move to London, his works<br />
have aimed to map the shifts in identity and<br />
belonging caused by continual migration. His<br />
current practice combines traditional calligraphy<br />
and the iconography of Buddhist thangka with<br />
collages of colourful stickers, cut-out text and<br />
mass-media imagery, subverting typecast<br />
notions of Tibetan culture and considering the<br />
popularisation of Buddhism in the West.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): ‘Tibetan Word: <strong>Art</strong> of<br />
Communication’, Sweet Tea House, London,<br />
2004. Exhibitions (group): 53rd Biennale of<br />
Venice, 2009; ‘A Question of Evidence’, Thyssen-<br />
Bornemisza <strong>Art</strong> Contemporary, Vienna, Austria,<br />
2008; ‘Thermocline of <strong>Art</strong>: New Asian Waves’,<br />
ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2007.<br />
Kyungah Ham<br />
b.1966 Seoul, South Korea<br />
Lives and works in Seoul<br />
Kyungah Ham works in installation, video,<br />
performance and traditional art and craft. Her<br />
seemingly absurd actions — like replacing<br />
cappuccino cups in France with those ‘stolen’ from<br />
a Korean cafe, or filming the journeys of people<br />
wearing yellow in several Asian cities — result in<br />
arrestingly deadpan yet disturbing works. In 1989,<br />
she received a Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s from the<br />
Seoul National University, Korea, and undertook<br />
the Graduate Program in Painting at the Pratt<br />
Institute, New York, in 1992. She was awarded a<br />
Master of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s from the School of Visual <strong>Art</strong>s,<br />
New York, in 1995. Recent works include blueand-white<br />
porcelain sculptures of weaponry and<br />
Persian carpets traced in oil, critically exploring the<br />
dynamics of war.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): SSamzie Space, Seoul, 2008.<br />
Exhibitions (group): Prague Biennial, Czech<br />
Republic, 2009; ‘Correspondence’, <strong>Art</strong>sonje<br />
Center, Seoul, 2008; Gwangju Biennale, South<br />
Korea, 2006; Yokohama Triennale, Japan, 2001.<br />
Ho Tzu Nyen<br />
b.1976 Singapore<br />
Lives and works in Singapore<br />
Ho Tzu Nyen’s practice includes filmmaking,<br />
painting, performance and writing, and<br />
investigates the forms, methods and languages<br />
of art; the relationship between the still, the<br />
painted and the moving image; and the<br />
constructed nature of history. Between 1999<br />
and 2002, he undertook a Bachelor of Creative<br />
<strong>Art</strong>s (Dean’s Award) at the Victorian College<br />
of the <strong>Art</strong>s, University of Melbourne, and from<br />
2003 undertook a Master of <strong>Art</strong> (Research) at the<br />
Southeast Asian Studies Programme, National<br />
University of Singapore. In May 2009, Ho Tzu Nyen<br />
presented his first feature film, HERE, at the 41st<br />
Directors’ Fortnight, at the Cannes International<br />
Film Festival, France.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): The Substation, Singapore,<br />
2003. Exhibitions (group): Singapore Biennale,<br />
2006; 3rd Fukuoka Asian <strong>Art</strong> Triennale, Japan,<br />
2005; 26th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil, 2004. Film<br />
festivals: Cannes International Film Festival, 2009;<br />
230 231
Venice Film Festival, 2009; Hong Kong<br />
International Film Festival, 2006.<br />
Emre Hüner<br />
b.1977 Istanbul, Turkey<br />
Lives and works in Istanbul<br />
Emre Hüner works in various media, including<br />
drawing, video, animation and site-specific<br />
installation. He studied at the Mimar Sinan Fine<br />
<strong>Art</strong>s University, Istanbul, and the Brera Academy of<br />
Fine <strong>Art</strong>s, Milan, where he spent eight years before<br />
returning to Istanbul in 2007. Hüner crafts intricate<br />
and luminous drawings which are rendered with<br />
the colour and precision of miniature paintings.<br />
Interested in the intersection between systems of<br />
control and social structures, his work draws on<br />
historical and aesthetic sources, including classic<br />
European cinema, literature, scientific journals,<br />
medieval bestiaries, warfare, technology, medical<br />
practices and ideological regimes.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Rodeo <strong>Gallery</strong>, Istanbul, 2009;<br />
BAS, Istanbul, 2007. Exhibitions (group): ‘The<br />
Generational: Younger than Jesus’, New Museum<br />
of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>, New York, 2009; Manifesta 7,<br />
Trentino, Italy, 2008; 10th Istanbul Biennale, 2007.<br />
Raafat Ishak<br />
b.1967 Cairo, Egypt<br />
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia<br />
Raafat Ishak’s practice is informed by his studies in<br />
architecture, his cultural heritage, and a beautifully<br />
muted graphic style. He roams freely among art<br />
historical antecedents, across centuries, cultures<br />
and within his own community for inspiration<br />
and consolidation. In 1990, he graduated with a<br />
Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong> (Painting), Victorian College<br />
of the <strong>Art</strong>s, Melbourne, and in 2004 received a<br />
Graduate Diploma in Architecture (History and<br />
Conservation Practice), from the University of<br />
Melbourne.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Sutton <strong>Gallery</strong>, Melbourne,<br />
2009; Ocular Lab, Melbourne, 2007; Conical<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, Melbourne, 2003. Exhibitions (group):<br />
TarraWarra Biennial, Yarra Valley, Australia,<br />
2006; Adelaide Biennial, Australia, 2006; ‘2004:<br />
Australian Culture Now’, National <strong>Gallery</strong> of<br />
Victoria, Melbourne, 2004.<br />
Runa Islam<br />
b.1970 Dhaka, Bangladesh<br />
Lives and works in London, United Kingdom<br />
Runa Islam’s lyrical films reference the history<br />
and vocabulary of cinema. Working with Super-8<br />
and 16mm film, Islam examines the mechanics<br />
of vision through installations which reveal the<br />
production context of filmmaking as a means of<br />
looking beyond the frame, and also highlighting<br />
the inherently illusory and magical nature of the<br />
medium. Between 2002 and 2004, she studied for<br />
a Master of Philosophy at the Royal College of <strong>Art</strong>,<br />
London. In 2008, she was a finalist in the Turner<br />
Prize at the Tate Britain, London.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Shugo <strong>Art</strong>s, Tokyo, 2008;<br />
Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland, 2008; Serpentine<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, London, 2006. Exhibitions (group): ‘The<br />
Cinema Effect’, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture<br />
Garden, Washington DC, United States, 2008;<br />
Manifesta 7, Trentino, Italy, 2008; ‘Brave New<br />
Worlds’, Walker <strong>Art</strong> Centre, Minneapolis, United<br />
States, 2007.<br />
Ayaz Jokhio<br />
b.1978 Mehrabpur, Sindh, Pakistan<br />
Lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan<br />
Ayaz Jokhio’s meticulously produced paintings,<br />
drawings and installations use ironic humour<br />
and the relation between images and text as a<br />
means to question the definition of art and its<br />
role in the contemporary world. Beginning his<br />
career as a poet and cartoonist, Jokhio has also<br />
worked in film and documentary, and received<br />
his Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong> from the National College<br />
of <strong>Art</strong>s, Lahore, in 2001. His works often involve a<br />
form of conceptual play with art history and the<br />
conventions of painting, such as inverting the<br />
hierarchy between art works and their labels on<br />
the gallery wall, or making large paintings of the<br />
backs of snapshot photographs.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Grey Noise <strong>Gallery</strong>, Lahore,<br />
2008, and 2009. Exhibitions (group): ‘Hanging<br />
Fire: Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> from Pakistan’, Asia<br />
Society, New York, 2009; ‘Drawn From Line’, Green<br />
Cardamom, London, 2008; National <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
Islamabad, Pakistan, 2007.<br />
Takeshi Kitano<br />
b.1947 Tokyo, Japan<br />
Lives and works in Tokyo<br />
Director, actor, author, comedian, artist and cult<br />
television personality, Takeshi Kitano has forged<br />
an original and idiosyncratic film practice unique<br />
in contemporary cinema. Drawing on genre<br />
cinema and Japanese consumer culture, Kitano’s<br />
yakuza (Japanese mafia) films and self-reflexive<br />
comedies blend action cinema with a strong sense<br />
of the absurd in contemporary life. Beginning<br />
his career as a comic presenter on Japanese TV,<br />
his legendary alter ego, Beat Takeshi, is one of<br />
the most identifiable pop culture icons in Japan,<br />
and Kitano continues to appear on long-running<br />
television shows.<br />
Ang Lee<br />
b.1954 Pingtung, Taiwan<br />
Lives and works in Larchmont, United States<br />
Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Ang Lee has<br />
constructed a remarkably diverse filmography,<br />
ranging from period dramas and literary<br />
adaptations to martial arts epics and human<br />
dramas. Following his graduation from New York<br />
University, Lee’s first two films, Pushing Hands 1992<br />
and The Wedding Banquet 1993, were based on<br />
the Chinese–American experience. Their success<br />
led to his return to Taiwan to make Eat Drink Man<br />
Woman 1995, and he has worked in both the<br />
United States and Asia ever since. The narratives<br />
of his deeply humanist films are characterised<br />
by notions of marginalisation and transformation<br />
in characters exploring their gender, sexual and<br />
cultural identity, and their filial and social duties.<br />
Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio<br />
est.1959 Pyongyang, North Korea/Democratic<br />
People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)<br />
Co-organised By Nicholas Bonner (China/United<br />
Kingdom) and Suhanya Raffel (Curatorial Manager,<br />
Asian and Pacific <strong>Art</strong>, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>)<br />
Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio artists commissioned<br />
for APT6:<br />
Choe Chang Ho<br />
b.1960 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Choe Chang Ho<br />
b.1970 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Han Guang Hun<br />
b.1976 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Hong Jin Son<br />
b.1977 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Im Hyok<br />
b.1965 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Jang Hue Ro<br />
b.1954 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Kang Yong Sam<br />
b.1956 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Kim Hung IL<br />
b.1965 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Kim Yong IL<br />
b.1971 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Kim Yong Myong<br />
b.1977 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Ma Yong Chol<br />
b.1977 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
O Sung Gyu<br />
b.1969 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Pak Guang IL<br />
b.1973 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Rim Ho Chol<br />
b.1954 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
Ryu Guon Chol<br />
b.1975 North Korea (DPRK)<br />
The Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio is an official artist studio<br />
(changjaksa) in Pyongyang, Democratic People’s<br />
Republic of Korea (DPRK), which employs over<br />
1000 artists in the disciplines of painting, drawing,<br />
embroidery and mosaic. <strong>Art</strong>istic themes vary, and<br />
may be revolutionary, social, political and historical<br />
in content, or purely aesthetic, and are expressed<br />
in media such as sculpture, poster art, ceramics<br />
and painting. Installed in streets, schools, cinemas<br />
and official buildings, they function as a form of<br />
public art, and are created with virtuosic technical<br />
skill by groups of artists, reflecting the state’s<br />
collective ethos.<br />
Nicholas Bonner is a British-born filmmaker and<br />
landscape architect based in Beijing. He first<br />
visited North Korea (DPRK) in 1992, and soon<br />
after established Koryo Tours (with Josh Green),<br />
to organise trips to North Korea (DPRK) and<br />
promote cultural exchange. Bonner and director<br />
Daniel Gordon’s award-winning documentary films<br />
include The Game of their Lives 2002, which traces<br />
the North Korean soccer team that qualified for<br />
the 1966 World Cup quarter finals; A State of Mind<br />
2004, which follows the daily lives of gymnasts<br />
training for the Mass Games in Pyongyang; and<br />
Crossing the Line 2008, which looks at American<br />
military defectors.<br />
Rudi Mantofani<br />
b.1973 Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia<br />
Lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia<br />
Rudi Mantofani is a sculptor and painter whose<br />
work takes ordinary objects and landscapes and<br />
transforms them into strange or absurd ‘visual<br />
parables’. In 1993, Mantofani helped form the<br />
Jendela <strong>Art</strong> Group, a collective of five west<br />
Sumatran artists who studied together at the<br />
Indonesia Institute of the <strong>Art</strong>s in Yogyakarta and<br />
continue to exhibit together today. With a focus<br />
on the mundane and everyday, rather than the<br />
largely figurative and stridently political works that<br />
dominated Indonesian art in the 1990s, Mantofani<br />
and the Jendela artists avoid ideological positions,<br />
preferring a more ambivalent and metaphorical<br />
approach to art and politics.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): CP <strong>Art</strong>space, Jakarta, Indonesia,<br />
2006. Exhibitions (group): Jakarta Biennale, 2009;<br />
‘Jendela: A Play of the Ordinary’, NUS Museum,<br />
Singapore, 2009; CP Open Biennale, National<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, Jakarta, 2003.<br />
Mataso Printmakers<br />
Patrik Abel<br />
b.unknown Vanuatu<br />
Eddy Baul<br />
b.1981 Vanuatu<br />
Stanley Firiam<br />
b.unknown Vanuatu<br />
Priscilla Thomas<br />
b.unknown Vanuatu<br />
Saires Kalo<br />
1983–2009 Vanuatu<br />
David Kolin<br />
b.1983 Vanuatu<br />
Herveline Lité<br />
b.1980 Vanuatu<br />
Apia Najos<br />
b.unknown Vanuatu<br />
Sepa Seule<br />
b.1983 Vanuatu<br />
Simeon Simix<br />
b.1981 Vanuatu<br />
Live and work in Ohlen Village, Port Vila, Vanuatu<br />
The Mataso Printmakers originally came together<br />
in 2004 for a series of workshops developed by<br />
Carl Amneus, Jack Siviu Martau and Australian<br />
artist Newell Harry. Most of them come from the<br />
island of Mataso, which is situated 50 kilometres<br />
off the capital island of Efate. Due to economic<br />
circumstances, Mataso islanders have relocated<br />
to the satellite village of Ohlen in Port Vila, and<br />
have grown up exposed to outside influences<br />
like television, advertising, bars, reggae and soul<br />
music. The prints reflect the changes that have<br />
occurred since independence in 1980, while also<br />
drawing on stylistic forms derived from kastom<br />
lore and cultural practices such as sand-drawing.<br />
The Mekong<br />
Bùi Công Khánh, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba,<br />
Sopheap Pich, Manit Sriwanichpoom, Svay Ken,<br />
Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu, Vandy Rattana<br />
Co-organised by Rich Streitmatter-Tran (Vietnam)<br />
and Russell Storer (Curator, Contemporary Asian<br />
<strong>Art</strong>, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>)<br />
The Mekong River is one of the longest rivers in<br />
Asia, running from its source in China through the<br />
countries of Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand,<br />
Cambodia and Vietnam. Difficult to navigate, the<br />
Mekong has historically formed connections, as<br />
well as a border, between the peoples who live<br />
along its course. The Mekong platform within<br />
APT6 presents a vivid, multi-layered view of a<br />
complex and rapidly transforming region — a place<br />
that is becoming increasingly prominent culturally,<br />
politically and economically. Key themes include<br />
changing societies and cultures, such as tensions<br />
between tradition and modernity, and between<br />
Buddhist teachings and Western values.<br />
Rich Streitmatter-Tran is an artist based in Ho Chi<br />
Minh City, Vietnam, who works in performance,<br />
photography, video and installation, often in<br />
collaboration with others. He has written widely<br />
on the art of South-East Asia, and in 2005–06<br />
he conducted the research project ‘Mediating<br />
the Mekong’ with the support of a Martell<br />
Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong> Research Grant and<br />
the Asia <strong>Art</strong> Archive, Hong Kong.<br />
Bùi Công Khánh<br />
b.1972 Da Nang, Vietnam<br />
Lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam<br />
Bùi Công Khánh’s paintings, performances,<br />
sculptures and ceramics address history and<br />
contemporary society in Vietnam. He graduated<br />
with a Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong> in painting from the<br />
University of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.<br />
His paintings and drawings are often figurative<br />
and deeply personal, drawing on Buddhist and<br />
Taoist philosophy as well as addressing the<br />
influences of Western culture and consumerism<br />
on Vietnamese daily life.<br />
Exhibitions (group): ‘Intersection VietNam’,<br />
Valentine Willie Fine <strong>Art</strong>, Singapore, 2009; ‘Time<br />
Ligaments’, 10 Chancery Lane <strong>Gallery</strong>, Hong Kong,<br />
2009; ‘Who Do You Think We Are?’, Bui <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
Hanoi, Vietnam, 2009, ‘Reflow’, Java Cafe and<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, Phnom Penh, 2006; Nippon International<br />
Performance <strong>Art</strong> Festival, Japan, 2004.<br />
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba<br />
b.1968 Tokyo, Japan<br />
Lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam<br />
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba often employs allegorical<br />
imagery to explore the influence of war, mass<br />
migration and social change on Vietnam and the<br />
world over the past few decades. He completed<br />
a Master of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s at the Maryland Institute<br />
College of <strong>Art</strong>, United States, in 1994, after<br />
receiving his Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s from the School<br />
of the <strong>Art</strong> Institute of Chicago, in 1992. He moved<br />
to Ho Chi Minh City in the late 1990s, and has<br />
become renowned for a series of video works<br />
filmed underwater, conceived as memorials to<br />
people lost and displaced by war and conflict.<br />
232 233
Exhibitions (solo): Mizuma <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Tokyo, 2008;<br />
The Asia Society, New York, 2008; Kunstmuseum<br />
Luzern, Switzerland, 2007. Exhibitions (group):<br />
Gwangju Biennale, Korea, 2006; 51st Biennale of<br />
Venice, 2005; Biennale of Sydney, 2002.<br />
Sopheap Pich<br />
b.1971 Battambang, Cambodia<br />
Lives and works in Phnom Penh, Cambodia<br />
Working with the ubiquitous Cambodian materials<br />
of rattan and bamboo, Sopheap Pich’s poetic and<br />
tightly realised works connect to traditional craft and<br />
avant-garde sculpture, reflecting Pich’s upbringing<br />
and current experience in Cambodia, as well as his<br />
years living and studying in the United States. He<br />
completed a Masters of Fine <strong>Art</strong> in painting at the<br />
School of the <strong>Art</strong> Institute of Chicago in 1999, after<br />
being awarded a Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong> (Painting)<br />
in 1995 from the University of Massachusetts. He<br />
returned to live and work in Phnom Penh in 2003,<br />
when he established the Saklapel artist group with<br />
Leang Seckon and Chat Piersath.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Tyler Rollins Fine <strong>Art</strong>, New York,<br />
2009; <strong>Gallery</strong> H, Bangkok, 2007; Sala <strong>Art</strong> Space,<br />
Phnom Penh, 2007. Exhibitions (group): The 4th<br />
Fukuoka Asian <strong>Art</strong> Triennale, Japan, 2009; ‘Forever<br />
Until Now’, 10 Chancery Lane, Hong Kong, 2009;<br />
‘Strategies from Within’, Ke Center, Shanghai, 2008.<br />
Manit Sriwanichpoom<br />
b.1961 Bangkok, Thailand<br />
Lives and works in Bangkok<br />
Manit Sriwanichpoom’s photographs are<br />
renowned for their witty and provocative<br />
commentary on Thai life and culture. He received<br />
a Bachelor of <strong>Art</strong> (Visual <strong>Art</strong>) from Srinakharinvirot<br />
University, Bangkok, in 1984, and has also worked<br />
as a commercial photographer and social activist,<br />
producing the political documentary Citizen<br />
Juling 2008 with Ing K and Kraisak Choonhavan.<br />
Ongoing strands of Sriwanichpoom’s work include<br />
street photography and portraiture, as well as<br />
his ‘Pink Man’ series, depicting an archetypal,<br />
alienated consumer travelling the globe.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Place M, Tokyo, 2008; Centre<br />
for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 2008.<br />
Exhibitions (group): ‘Thermocline of <strong>Art</strong>: New<br />
Asian Waves’, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2007;<br />
Gwangju Biennale, Korea, 2006; Thai Pavilion,<br />
50th Biennale of Venice, 2003.<br />
Svay Ken<br />
1933–2008 Takeo Province/Phnom Penh, Cambodia<br />
Svay Ken is considered a senior figure in<br />
Cambodian contemporary art, and his paintings<br />
provide a unique and detailed document of<br />
Cambodian society and its transformations over<br />
the past 60 years. Svay took up painting to support<br />
his family in 1993, just prior to retiring from his job<br />
as a porter at the Hotel Le Royal in Phnom Penh.<br />
He later set up his own gallery near Wat Phnom in<br />
the centre of the city, painting every day until his<br />
death in 2008.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Bophana Audiovisual Resource<br />
Centre, Phnom Penh, 2008; Reyum Institute of<br />
<strong>Art</strong> and Culture, Phnom Penh, 2001. Exhibitions<br />
(group): ‘Forever Until Now: Contemporary <strong>Art</strong><br />
from Cambodia’, 10 Chancery Lane, Hong Kong,<br />
2009; 1st Fukuoka Asian <strong>Art</strong> Triennial, Japan, 1999.<br />
Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu<br />
Tun Win Aung<br />
b.1975 Yalutt, Myanmar<br />
Wah Nu<br />
b.1977 Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar<br />
Live and work in Yangon<br />
Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu are an artist couple<br />
who maintain a studio in Yangon, Myanmar. Both<br />
work in a range of media, including painting,<br />
installation, performance and video. Tun Win<br />
Aung’s multimedia installations and performances<br />
are often produced specifically for outdoor sites,<br />
responding to local histories and environments,<br />
while Wah Nu’s paintings and video works use<br />
colour and symbolism to create dreamlike, wistful<br />
impressions of her surroundings. They both<br />
graduated from the University of Culture, Yangon,<br />
Myanmar, in 1994 — Wah Nu with a Bachelor of<br />
<strong>Art</strong> (Music), and Tun Win Aung a Bachelor of <strong>Art</strong><br />
(Sculpture).<br />
Tun Win Aung: Exhibitions (solo): Lokanat <strong>Art</strong><br />
Galleries, Yangon, 2001, 1999. Exhibitions (group):<br />
‘Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> from Myanmar’, <strong>Gallery</strong> Old<br />
Firehouse, Bad Aibling, Germany, 2009; ‘Off the<br />
Record #2’, Shimbashi Station, Tokyo, 2007; 11th<br />
Asian <strong>Art</strong> Biennale, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2004; 2nd<br />
Fukuoka Asian <strong>Art</strong> Triennale, Japan, 2002.<br />
Wah Nu: Exhibitions (solo): <strong>Art</strong> U-Room, Tokyo,<br />
2008, 2005; Lokanat <strong>Art</strong> Galleries, Yangon, 2004.<br />
Exhibitions (group): ‘Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> from<br />
Myanmar’, <strong>Gallery</strong> Old Firehouse, Bad Aibling,<br />
Germany, 2009; ‘Off the Record #2’, Shimbashi<br />
Station, Tokyo, 2007; 3rd Fukuoka Asian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Triennale, Japan, 2005; 11th Asian <strong>Art</strong> Biennale,<br />
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2004.<br />
Vandy Rattana<br />
b.1980 Phnom Penh, Cambodia<br />
Lives and works in Phnom Penh<br />
Vandy Rattana participated in foundation education<br />
at the Pannasastra University of Cambodia, and is a<br />
self-taught photographer who has also worked as a<br />
photojournalist. He is active in the development of<br />
contemporary art and photography in Cambodia,<br />
and is one of the five founders of Stiev Selepak,<br />
which set up Sa Sa <strong>Gallery</strong> in Phnom Penh in 2008,<br />
the country’s first artist-run space. Vandy’s choice<br />
of subject matter reflects his daily experience,<br />
and his photographs are known for their strong<br />
composition, compelling narrative, and subtle<br />
commentary on Cambodian life and culture.<br />
Exhibitions (group): ‘Forever Until Now:<br />
Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> from Cambodia’, 10 Chancery<br />
Lane, Hong Kong, 2009; ‘Strategies from Within’,<br />
Ke Center, Shanghai, 2008; ‘Another Asia’,<br />
13th Noorderlicht International Photofestival,<br />
Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, 2006.<br />
Tracey Moffatt<br />
b.1960 Brisbane, Australia<br />
Lives and works in New York, United States;<br />
and the Sunshine Coast, Australia<br />
One of Australia’s most prominent artists, Tracey<br />
Moffatt works in photography, video and film.<br />
She graduated from the <strong>Queensland</strong> College of<br />
<strong>Art</strong>’s Film and Video course in 1982 and, since<br />
her first solo exhibition in 1989, has maintained<br />
a high profile as one of the key Australian artists<br />
exploring issues of identity and gender, especially<br />
in relation to Aboriginal Australia.<br />
Exhibitions: (solo): Roslyn Oxley9 <strong>Gallery</strong>, Sydney,<br />
2008; Location One, New York, 2008; Stills <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
Edinburgh, United Kingdom, 2006; Montreal<br />
Museum of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s, Canada, 2005; Museum of<br />
Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>, Sydney, 2003–04. Exhibitions:<br />
(group): Biennale of Sydney, 2008; Brooklyn<br />
Museum of <strong>Art</strong>, New York, 2008; Liverpool Biennial,<br />
United Kingdom, 2008; Solomon R Guggenheim<br />
Museum, New York, 2007; Sharjah Biennial, United<br />
Arab Emirates, 2005.<br />
Farhad Moshiri<br />
Shiraz, Iran<br />
Lives and works in Tehran, Iran<br />
Farhad Moshiri is one of Iran’s most internationally<br />
visible artists, due in part to his deft, humorous<br />
and visually seductive examinations of popular<br />
culture and the modern world. From 1981, he<br />
studied art and film at the California Institute of<br />
the <strong>Art</strong>s, United States, and was awarded a Master<br />
of Fine <strong>Art</strong> in 1984. Returning to Iran, his works<br />
after this time focused on painting and mixed-<br />
media work. Using a refined pop aesthetic, Moshiri<br />
conjures candy-hued visions of commoditydriven<br />
contemporary society, displacing common<br />
representations of Iran as a place of austerity and<br />
violence. Ambivalence, parody and play are part<br />
and parcel of Moshiri’s visual language, which,<br />
while drawing heavily on the vernacular imagery of<br />
modern Iran, is also steeped in the visual traditions<br />
of Persian culture. Moshiri also works as a curator.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): The Third Line, Dubai, United<br />
Arab Emirates, 2009; Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin,<br />
Paris, 2008; Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels,<br />
Belgium, 2008; Daneyal Mahmood <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
New York, 2007. Exhibitions (group): Singapore<br />
Biennale, 2008; Sharjah Biennial, United Arab<br />
Emirates, 2003; ‘Iranian Pool’, Rooseum Center for<br />
Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>, Malmö, Sweden, 2003.<br />
Kohei Nawa<br />
b.1975 Osaka, Japan<br />
Lives and works in Kyoto, Japan<br />
As a sculptor, Kohei Nawa is concerned with forms<br />
and surfaces and how they interact to become<br />
objects. Between 1994 and 1998, Nawa undertook<br />
a Bachelor of <strong>Art</strong>s (Fine <strong>Art</strong> Sculpture) at the Kyoto<br />
City University of <strong>Art</strong>, Japan, and participated in<br />
an exchange program studying sculpture at the<br />
Royal College of <strong>Art</strong>, London, from 1998 to 1999.<br />
He completed a Master of <strong>Art</strong>s (Fine <strong>Art</strong> Sculpture)<br />
at Kyoto City University of <strong>Art</strong>, and in 2003 earned<br />
his PhD. Nawa’s sculptures often exploit the tactile<br />
nature of surfaces, as in his ‘PixCell’ series (started<br />
in 2002), in which he covers the surfaces of objects<br />
with glass beads of various sizes. The outer layer<br />
suggests a molecular structure or the pixels of the<br />
computer screen.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Galerie Vera Munro, Hamburg,<br />
Germany, 2009; Miro Foundation, Barcelona,<br />
2008; Ierimonti <strong>Gallery</strong>, Milan, 2007; SCAI The<br />
Bathhouse, Tokyo, 2006. Exhibitions (group):<br />
‘Parallel Worlds’, Museum of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>,<br />
Tokyo, 2008; ‘Great New Wave: Contemporary<br />
<strong>Art</strong> from Japan’, <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> of Hamilton, Canada,<br />
2008; ‘Roppongi Crossing’, Mori <strong>Art</strong> Museum,<br />
Tokyo, 2007; Biennial of Valencia, Spain, 2005.<br />
Shinji Ohmaki<br />
b.1971 Gifu, Japan<br />
Lives and works in Tokyo, Japan<br />
Shinji Ohmaki’s installations create absorbing<br />
and labyrinthine environments through a skilful<br />
deployment of repetition and scale, and the use of<br />
everyday materials such as flour, correction fluid<br />
and thread. Often working with the architecture of<br />
the gallery, he transforms spaces so that boundaries<br />
between the interior and exterior become blurred.<br />
The formal aesthetic structures of Japanese<br />
architecture and Zen gardens are important points<br />
of departure for Ohmaki, as is their function as<br />
spaces for meditation and contemplation. Ohmaki<br />
graduated from the Department of Sculpture, Tokyo<br />
National University of <strong>Art</strong>s and Music, in 1995, and<br />
completed his Master of <strong>Art</strong>s in Sculpture in 1997.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): 21st Century Museum of<br />
Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>, Kanazawa, Japan, 2007;<br />
Shiseido <strong>Gallery</strong>, Tokyo, 2005. Exhibitions (group):<br />
Yokohama Triennale, Japan, 2008; ‘Global Players’,<br />
Ludwig Forum Aachen, Germany, 2006.<br />
The One Year Drawing Project<br />
Muhanned Cader, Thamotharampillai<br />
Shanaathanan, Chandraguptha Thenuwara,<br />
Jagath Weerasinghe<br />
The One Year Drawing Project is a drawing<br />
exchange involving four of Sri Lanka's most<br />
acclaimed contemporary artists. Organised by<br />
curator Sharmini Pereira and originally published<br />
as an artists’ book by the imprint Raking Leaves,<br />
the project ran between May 2005 and October<br />
2007, when each artist simultaneously exchanged<br />
unique drawings between their respective studios<br />
around Sri Lanka.<br />
Muhanned Cader<br />
b.1966 Colombo, Sri Lanka<br />
Lives and works in Sri Lanka and Pakistan<br />
Muhanned Cader left high school at the age of<br />
16 to pursue the visual arts through a job in the<br />
advertising industry. In 1989, he received an<br />
International scholarship and undertook study at<br />
the Kendall College of <strong>Art</strong> and Design, Michigan,<br />
United States, and studied painting (Master of<br />
Fine <strong>Art</strong>s) at the <strong>Art</strong> Institute of Chicago in the<br />
early 1990s. Returning to Colombo, he has taught<br />
painting and drawing at the Vibhavi Institute of<br />
Fine <strong>Art</strong>s. His work has been exhibited widely<br />
including in Sri Lanka, India, Singapore, London<br />
and the United States.<br />
Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan<br />
b.1969 Jaffna, Sri Lanka<br />
Lives and works in New Delhi, India; and Jaffna<br />
Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan completed a<br />
Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s in 1998 and a Master of Fine<br />
<strong>Art</strong>s (painting) in 2000 at the University of Delhi.<br />
His first solo exhibition was held in 1998 at the<br />
artist-run Heritage <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Colombo. Since<br />
2001, he has worked as a senior lecturer in Fine<br />
<strong>Art</strong> at the University of Jaffna. He has worked as<br />
an artist and as a curator, and has exhibited in Sri<br />
Lanka and India as well as in the United Kingdom.<br />
Chandraguptha Thenuwara<br />
b.1960 Galle, Sri Lanka<br />
Lives and works in Colombo , Sri Lanka<br />
Chandraguptha Thenuwara studied painting at the<br />
Moscow State Institute, USSR, between 1985 and<br />
1992. In 1993, he founded the Vibhavi Academy<br />
of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s (VAFA), an artist-run art school and<br />
exhibition space. His first solo exhibition was<br />
held in 1978 at the Samudra <strong>Gallery</strong>, Colombo,<br />
and he continued to exhibit across Sri Lanka<br />
and the USSR. His ongoing series of works titled<br />
‘Barrelism‘, along with other works, have appeared<br />
in major exhibitions worldwide.<br />
Jagath Weerasinghe<br />
b.1954 Moratuwa, Sri Lanka<br />
Lives and works in Colombo , Sri Lanka<br />
Jagath Weerasinghe studied painting (Master of<br />
Fine <strong>Art</strong>s) at the American University, Washington<br />
D.C., and the Institute of Aesthetic Studies<br />
(Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s), University of Kelaniya,<br />
Colombo, between 1981 and 1991. His first solo<br />
exhibition, ‘Anxiety’, was presented in 1992 at<br />
the National <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Colombo, and he has<br />
continued to exhibit regularly. In 2002, he cofounded<br />
the artist-run initiative Theertha, where<br />
he has participated in and curated numerous<br />
exhibitions. His work has been shown in important<br />
exhibitions internationally, including APT3,<br />
Fukuoka Biennale and Singapore Biennale.<br />
Pacific Reggae<br />
Anstine Energy<br />
Solomon Islands<br />
Anslom featuring Sharzy<br />
Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands<br />
Apprentice<br />
Solomon Islands<br />
Chief Ragga featuring O-shen<br />
Hawai’i and Hawai’i/Papua New Guinea<br />
Dubmarine<br />
Australia<br />
Paula Fuga<br />
Hawai’i<br />
Huarere<br />
Vanuatu<br />
Jero, Bernard and Beeman<br />
New Caledonia/Vanuatu<br />
JVDK<br />
New Caledonia<br />
Katchafire<br />
New Zealand<br />
234 235
Mexem<br />
New Caledonia<br />
O-shen<br />
Papua New Guinea/Hawai’i<br />
One Tox<br />
Solomon Islands<br />
Jack Rasini<br />
Solomon Islands<br />
Sharzy<br />
Solomon Islands<br />
Sunshiners<br />
France/Vanuatu<br />
Straky<br />
Papua New Guinea<br />
Tiki Taane<br />
New Zealand<br />
Tune Zion Songsters<br />
Vanuatu<br />
26 Roots<br />
Vanuatu<br />
Upper Hutt Posse<br />
Aotearoa<br />
Vanlal<br />
Vanuatu<br />
XX Squad<br />
Vanuatu<br />
Zennith<br />
Australia<br />
Co-organised by Brent Clough (Producer and<br />
Presenter, ABC Radio National) and Maud Page<br />
(Curator, Contemporary Pacific <strong>Art</strong>, <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>)<br />
‘Pacific Reggae’ considers the ongoing appeal<br />
of reggae music across the region. The range<br />
of musical styles presented features live<br />
performance as well as narrative video clips<br />
which reveal the influence, diversity and reach<br />
of reggae across the Pacific, from dub to dancehall<br />
to roots reggae.<br />
Born in New Zealand, Brent Clough moved to<br />
Sydney in 1984. He joined ABC Radio National in<br />
1988, and has produced and presented the arts<br />
and music programs <strong>Art</strong>s National, In The Mix, Radio<br />
Eye, Other Worlds, The Daily Planet, Poetica, 360,<br />
and The Night Air. He was co-founder of Nasty Tek,<br />
Australia’s first dance hall reggae sound system;<br />
and currently works with Soulmaker, Australia’s<br />
longest running reggae ‘sound’. Clough has written<br />
extensively about reggae and contemporary music<br />
in Australia and the Pacific region.<br />
Rithy Panh<br />
b.1964 Phnom Penh, Cambodia<br />
Lives and works in Paris, France; and Phnom Penh<br />
The films of Rithy Panh centre on life in post-Khmer<br />
Rouge Cambodia and the struggle to reconcile<br />
the country’s traumatic history with contemporary<br />
urban and rural experiences. Panh and his family<br />
experienced the mass evacuation of Phnom Penh<br />
in 1975, sent to a remote Cambodian labour camp<br />
before fleeing to a refugee camp in Thailand. He<br />
later migrated to France, and in his early twenties<br />
studied filmmaking at the prestigious Institut des<br />
Hautes Études Cinématographiques (Institute for<br />
Advanced Cinematographic Studies) in Paris. He<br />
returned to Cambodia in 1990, and established<br />
the Bophana Audio Visual Resource Centre in<br />
Phnom Penh, which aims to preserve and develop<br />
Cambodia’s film, photography and audio heritage.<br />
Reuben Paterson<br />
b.1973 Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand<br />
Ngati Rangitihi<br />
Lives and works in Auckland<br />
Reuben Paterson’s work draws on sources such<br />
as his Māori culture, floral fabrics from the 1960s<br />
and 1970s, American Modernism, Op art and<br />
personal family associations. Paterson’s original<br />
eclectic influences and styles animate his paintings<br />
and also parody notions of the Pacific as an exotic<br />
paradise. He received a Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s from<br />
Elam School of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s, University of Auckland,<br />
in 1997, and in 2000 he completed a Graduate<br />
Diploma of Teaching.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Dunedin Public <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
New Zealand, 2007; City <strong>Gallery</strong>, Wellington, New<br />
Zealand, 2006; Institute of Modern <strong>Art</strong>, Brisbane,<br />
2006. Exhibitions (group): ‘E Tü Ake: Standing<br />
Strong’, The National Museum of New Zealand Te<br />
Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, 2008–09; ‘Of Deities<br />
and Mortals’, Christchurch City <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, New<br />
Zealand, 2008; ‘Dateline: Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> from<br />
the Pacific’, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin,<br />
2007; Prague Biennale, Czech Republic, 2005.<br />
Campbell Patterson<br />
b.1983 Portsmouth, United Kingdom<br />
Lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand<br />
Preferring to work alone and with real situations,<br />
Campbell Patterson creates video performances<br />
characterised by an interest in documenting<br />
the mental and physical limitations of the body,<br />
manifesting in playful, sometimes painful, and<br />
often mischievous, results. Patterson began<br />
exhibiting in 2005, and completed a Bachelor of<br />
Fine <strong>Art</strong>s in 2006 at the Elam School of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s,<br />
University of Auckland. His energy and immediacy<br />
mark a fresh new direction in performance-based<br />
video art of the region.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Michael Lett, Auckland, 2008;<br />
‘Square 2‘, City <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Wellington, 2007.<br />
Exhibitions (group): ‘<strong>Art</strong>ists Film Festival’, National<br />
Film Archive/Nga Kaitaki o Taonga Whitiahua,<br />
Auckland, 2008.<br />
Wit Pimkanchanapong<br />
b.1976 Bangkok, Thailand<br />
Lives and works in Bangkok<br />
Trained in architecture, Wit Pimkanchanapong<br />
applies his interest in space and design to a<br />
diverse practice that includes animation, video,<br />
installation, commercial graphics and display.<br />
He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture,<br />
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, in 1992,<br />
and went on to complete his Masters in Visual<br />
Communication in 1994 at Kent Institute of <strong>Art</strong><br />
and Design, United Kingdom. Pimkanchanapong<br />
also fosters collaborative projects, including the<br />
Fat Music Festival, Bangkok; and Soi Project, an<br />
ongoing ‘laboratory’ bringing together artists and<br />
practitioners from a range of disciplines.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): 100 Tonson <strong>Gallery</strong>, Bangkok,<br />
2009; National Museum, Bangkok, 2003. Exhibitions<br />
(group): Singapore Biennale, 2008; Sharjah<br />
Biennale, United Arab Emirates, 2007; ‘Animated<br />
Painting’, San Diego Museum of <strong>Art</strong>, United States,<br />
2007; Yokohama Triennale, Japan, 2005.<br />
Qiu Anxiong<br />
b.1972 Chengdu, China<br />
Lives and works in Shanghai, China<br />
Qiu Anxiong works with film, animation and<br />
drawing, often combining these disciplines to create<br />
multimedia installations. In 1994, he graduated<br />
from the Sichuan <strong>Art</strong> Academy, China, and in 2003<br />
completed further study at the Kunsthochschule<br />
of the University of Kassel, Germany. Qiu has<br />
developed an inimitable visual style that draws on<br />
traditional Chinese scroll painting, landscape, and<br />
ink-and-brush painting techniques.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): <strong>Gallery</strong> 4A, Sydney, 2009;<br />
Museum of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> Tokyo, 2007.<br />
Exhibitions (group): 3rd Guangzhou Triennial,<br />
China, 2008; Biennale of Sydney, 2008; ‘China<br />
Power Station’, Battersea Power Station and<br />
Serpentine <strong>Gallery</strong>, London, 2006.<br />
Kibong Rhee<br />
b.1957 Seoul, South Korea<br />
Lives and works in Seoul<br />
In the installations of Kibong Rhee, audiences<br />
encounter dreamlike scenarios in which<br />
everyday objects and images are made<br />
extraordinary through the illusion of movement<br />
and transformation. Using water and light to<br />
manipulate form and matter, Rhee plays on our<br />
expectations of the possible and impossible,<br />
offering metaphysical speculations that provide his<br />
work with a contemplative quality. He completed<br />
his Master of Fine <strong>Art</strong> in 1985 at Seoul National<br />
University, following the completion of his<br />
Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong> there in 1981.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Kukje <strong>Gallery</strong>, Seoul, 2008.<br />
Exhibitions (group): ‘Drawn in the Clouds’, Kiasma<br />
Museum of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>, Helsinki, Finland,<br />
2008; Singapore Biennale, 2008; ‘Thermocline<br />
of <strong>Art</strong>: New Asian Waves’, ZKM, Karlsruhe,<br />
Germany, 2007.<br />
Hiraki Sawa<br />
b.1977 Ishikawa, Japan<br />
Lives and works in London, United Kingdom;<br />
and Kanazawa, Japan<br />
Hiraki Sawa’s video animations are subtle<br />
reflections on ideas of time and motion, travel and<br />
mobility, displacement and dislocation. Having<br />
lived in both London and Japan for many years,<br />
cultural mobility has formed a key reference for<br />
his work. From 1996 to 1997 he attended the<br />
University of East London, graduating with a<br />
Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong>, and in 2001–03 he completed<br />
a Masters of Fine <strong>Art</strong> (Sculpture) at the Slade School<br />
of Fine <strong>Art</strong>, London. An ongoing strand of Sawa’s<br />
work has been to explore the nature of fantasy, and<br />
his narrative sequences are often about journeying<br />
into real, subconscious or imagined worlds.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Chisenhale <strong>Gallery</strong>, London,<br />
2007; National <strong>Gallery</strong> of Victoria, Melbourne,<br />
2006; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,<br />
Washington DC, 2005. Exhibitions (group): Busan<br />
Biennial, South Korea, 2008; Seoul International<br />
Media <strong>Art</strong> Biennale, 2006; Yokohama Triennale,<br />
Japan, 2005; Biennial of Valencia, Spain, 2005.<br />
Shirana Shahbazi<br />
b.1974 Tehran, Iran<br />
Lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland<br />
Shirana Shahbazi’s family moved from Iran to<br />
Germany in 1985. She completed studies in<br />
photography at the Fachhochschule Dortmund,<br />
Germany, in 1997, and later continued to study<br />
photography at the Hochschule für Gestaltung<br />
und Kunst, Zurich, Switzerland, finishing in<br />
2000. Shahbazi has extended her grounding in<br />
photography to produce work that is architectural<br />
in scale. She works across disciplines (photography,<br />
billboard painting, mural painting and weaving)<br />
and genres (portraiture, still life and landscape),<br />
drawing on the great cultural traditions of her<br />
native Iran as well as those of Europe.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Barbican <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, London,<br />
2007; Swiss Institute, New York, 2007; Centre<br />
d’<strong>Art</strong> Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland, 2005.<br />
Exhibitions (group): Sharjah Biennial, United Arab<br />
Emirates, 2005; 50th Biennale of Venice, 2003.<br />
Shooshie Sulaiman<br />
b.1973 Muar, Johor, Malaysia<br />
Lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia<br />
Susyilawati (Shooshie) Sulaiman’s installations,<br />
drawings, books and collages combine an interest<br />
in language, history and memory with a desire<br />
for personal communication and expression.<br />
She studied museum conservation in Malaysia<br />
and Australia, and has worked at the National<br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> in Kuala Lumpur as well as setting up<br />
her own gallery, called 12, in 2007. Her works<br />
constitute a kind of archive, infusing the social<br />
and artistic histories of Malaysia with her own<br />
responses and experiences.<br />
Exhibitions (group): ‘The Independence Project’,<br />
Galeri Petronas, Kuala Lumpur, and Gertrude<br />
Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> Spaces, Melbourne, 2007–08;<br />
‘documenta 12’, Kassel, Germany, 2007; ‘Wahana’,<br />
National <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Kuala Lumpur, 2003.<br />
Thukral and Tagra<br />
Jiten Thukral<br />
b.1976 Jalandhar, Punjab, India<br />
Sumir Tagra<br />
b.1979 New Delhi, India<br />
Live and work in Gurgaon, Haryana, India<br />
Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra have been working<br />
collaboratively since 2000. Thukral completed a<br />
Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s at the Chandigarh College<br />
of <strong>Art</strong>, India, and a Master of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s at the Delhi<br />
College of <strong>Art</strong>, India. Tagra completed a Bachelor<br />
of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s at the Delhi College of <strong>Art</strong>, India, and<br />
later studied at the National Institute of Design<br />
in Ahmedabad, India. Their multimedia practice<br />
encompasses painting, sculpture, installation<br />
and video; as well as fashion and product<br />
design, interior design and graphics under their<br />
‘Bosedk’ label, blurring the boundaries between<br />
advertising, retail and art.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Nature Morte, Berlin, 2009;<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Barry Keldoulis, Sydney, 2008; Bose<br />
Pacia, New York, 2007; Nature Morte, New Delhi,<br />
2007. Exhibitions (group): ‘Chalo! India’, Mori <strong>Art</strong><br />
Museum, Tokyo, 2008.<br />
Charwei Tsai<br />
b.1980 Taipei, Taiwan<br />
Lives and works in Paris, France; New York,<br />
United States; and Taipei<br />
Charwei Tsai’s practice draws on an interest in<br />
calligraphy and her study of Buddhist concepts, in<br />
particular the ideas of transience and emptiness<br />
that are at the heart of this philosophy. She<br />
produces Lovely Daze, an independent artist’s<br />
periodical that is released twice a year in limited<br />
editions. Tsai graduated from Industrial Design and<br />
<strong>Art</strong> and Architectural History at the Rhode Island<br />
School of Design, United States, in 2002, and is<br />
currently engaged in the postgraduate research<br />
programme at the L’École Nationale Supérieure<br />
des Beaux-<strong>Art</strong>s in Paris.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Sherman Contemporary<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Foundation, Sydney, 2009; Osage <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
Hong Kong, 2009. Exhibitions (group): ‘Traces<br />
of the Sacred’, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2008;<br />
‘Thermocline of <strong>Art</strong>: New Asian Waves’, ZKM,<br />
Karlsruhe, Germany, 2007; Singapore Biennale,<br />
2006.<br />
Vanuatu Sculptors<br />
Freddy Bule<br />
b.c.1967 Fanla Village, Ambrym Island, Vanuatu<br />
Bongnaim Frederick<br />
b.c.1957 Newea Village, Ambrym Island, Vanuatu<br />
Chief Joachin Kilfan<br />
b.c.1963 Halhal Village, Ambrym Island, Vanuatu<br />
Mansak Family<br />
Lolipa Village, Ambrym Island, Vanuatu<br />
Newea Village, Ambrym Island, Vanuatu<br />
Chief Michel Marakon<br />
b.c.1950 Newea Village, Ambrym Island, Vanuatu<br />
Michel Rangie<br />
b.c.1981 Olal Village, Ambrym Island, Vanuatu<br />
Chief Louis Wunbae<br />
b.1951 Newea Village, Ambrym Island, Vanuatu<br />
Live and work in North Ambrym, Vanuatu<br />
These sculptures are representative of one of the<br />
most important forms of art-making in Vanuatu,<br />
and are made from breadfruit trees, tree ferns<br />
236 237
and local fibres. The mague sculptures play a<br />
central role within the contemporary articulation<br />
of kastom in North Ambrym. Ambrymese society<br />
is structured around chiefs who rise through<br />
a series of grades. Each rise in rank is marked<br />
by a ceremony and the creation of a sculpture.<br />
Each work is unique, based on the chief’s social<br />
position at the time. The slit drums are used in the<br />
ceremonies, and the temar sculptures are created<br />
as memorials to ancestor spirits. Together, these<br />
works represent the strength, dynamism and vital<br />
nature of Ambrymese culture.<br />
Rohan Wealleans<br />
b.1977 Invercargill, New Zealand<br />
Lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand<br />
Rohan Wealleans’s practice is a unique fusion of<br />
painting and sculpture. Bulbous forms are crafted<br />
through a laborious process, whereby sculptures<br />
are coated with up to 300 layers of house paint.<br />
Once completed, patches of these slick surfaces<br />
are excised with a knife to reveal a richly coloured<br />
underbelly. In 2000, Wealleans graduated from the<br />
Elam School of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s, University of Auckland,<br />
with a Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong> (Painting), and was<br />
awarded a Master of <strong>Art</strong>s (Painting) in 2003.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Ivan Anthony <strong>Gallery</strong>, Auckland,<br />
2009; Roslyn Oxley9 <strong>Gallery</strong>, Sydney, 2008;<br />
Hamish McKay <strong>Gallery</strong>, Wellington, 2006; Dunedin<br />
Public <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, New Zealand, 2006. Exhibitions<br />
(group): TarraWarra Biennial, Yarra Valley, Australia,<br />
2008; ‘Just Painting’, Auckland <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, 2006;<br />
26th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil, 2004.<br />
Robin White, Leba Toki and Bale Jione<br />
Robin White<br />
b.1946 Te Puke, New Zealand<br />
Lives and works in Masterton, New Zealand<br />
Leba Toki<br />
b.1951 Moce, Fiji<br />
Lives and works in Lautoka, Fiji<br />
Bale Jione<br />
b.1952 Moce, Fiji<br />
Lives and works in Suva, Fiji<br />
Robin White is a significant New Zealand artist who<br />
has developed a comprehensive practice since the<br />
1970s. White’s recent collaborative work with Leba<br />
Toki and Bale Jione is inspired by her experience<br />
of living for many years in Kiribati, in the central<br />
Pacific. Both Toki and Jione are from Moce in the<br />
Lau group of islands of Fiji, which is renowned for<br />
its masi (barkcloth) work. Barkcloth is a material<br />
created throughout the Pacific, incorporating<br />
unique cultural aspects of each region.<br />
Robin White: Exhibitions (solo): Christchurch <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Te Puna o Waiwhetu, New Zealand,<br />
2005; Auckland <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, 2003. Exhibitions<br />
(group): ‘Painters as Printmakers’, Christchurch<br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Te Puna o Waiwhetu, New Zealand,<br />
2007; ‘Winged Wonders’, Auckland <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
2005; ‘Islands in the Sun’, National <strong>Gallery</strong> of<br />
Australia, Canberra, 2001.<br />
Yang Shaobin<br />
b. 1963 Tangshan, Hebei Province, China<br />
Lives and works in Beijing, China<br />
Yang Shaobin’s paintings are known for their refined<br />
composition, rich narrative and incisive commentary<br />
on the changing social landscape of China. Yang<br />
graduated from the Polytechnic University in Hebei,<br />
China, in 1983, and moved to the artist village at<br />
Yuanmingyuan, Beijing, in 1991, settling in Beijing’s<br />
Tonxian from 1995. The personal experience of<br />
growing up in a coalmining town in rural China has<br />
informed Yang’s recent series X – Blind Spot, works<br />
in painting, sculpture, video and installation.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Long March Space, Beijing, 2008;<br />
Alexander Ochs <strong>Gallery</strong>, Berlin, 2007. Exhibitions<br />
(group): ‘The Real Thing’, Tate Liverpool, United<br />
Kingdom, 2007; 48th Biennale of Venice, 1999.<br />
Yao Jui-chung<br />
b.1969, Taipei, Taiwan<br />
Lives and works in Taipei<br />
Yao Jui-chung’s practice explores the complex<br />
construction of Taiwanese culture, including its<br />
entanglement with Cold War ideology during<br />
the martial law period of 1949–87, the country’s<br />
embracing of capitalism, and the concurrent<br />
effects of multinationalism. Yao graduated from<br />
the National Institute of the <strong>Art</strong>s (now the Taipei<br />
National University of the <strong>Art</strong>s) with a degree in art<br />
theory in 1994. In 1997, he attended the Headland<br />
Center for the <strong>Art</strong>s in San Francisco. In addition<br />
to fine art, Yao has worked in the fields of theatre,<br />
film, photography, art history and art criticism.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): Taipei Fine <strong>Art</strong>s Museum, 2006.<br />
Exhibitions (group): ‘Spectacle: To Each His Own’,<br />
Museum of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>, Taipei, 2009;<br />
Yokohama Triennale, Japan, 2005; Taiwanese<br />
Pavilion, 47th Biennale of Venice, 1997.<br />
YNG<br />
Yoshitomo Nara<br />
b.1959 Hirosaki, Japan<br />
Lives and works in Toshigi, Japan<br />
graf<br />
est.1993 Osaka, Japan<br />
Yoshitomo Nara, one of Japan’s best known<br />
contemporary artists, regularly collaborates, under<br />
the acronym YNG, with Osaka-based design firm<br />
graf to construct playful and whimsical interactive<br />
environments, extending his fascination with the<br />
experience of childhood, and how specific spaces<br />
affect one's viewing of art.<br />
Nara received a Bachelor of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s in 1985<br />
and Master of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s in 1987 from the Aichi<br />
Prefectural University of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s and Music,<br />
Japan. Between 1988 and 1993, Nara studied<br />
at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. He<br />
is internationally renowned for his ‘super-flat’<br />
drawings, paintings and sculptures of mischievous<br />
children and animals. Strongly influenced by<br />
punk music, anime, manga and Marvel comics,<br />
Nara’s work is also inspired by his own childhood<br />
memories and experiences. His iconic, cartoon-like<br />
characters channel experiences of anxiety and<br />
fear, undercutting idealised notions of childhood<br />
innocence. While considered a cult figure in his<br />
native Japan, his works transcend national and<br />
cultural boundaries and are widely integrated into<br />
Western popular culture.<br />
graf is a creative design group established in<br />
Osaka in 1993 by Shigeki Hattori, Hiroto Aranishi,<br />
Kenji Tokyura, Hideki Toyoshima, Takashi Matsui<br />
and Yuji Nozawa. Their interdisciplinary studio<br />
practice includes architecture, interiors, fashion<br />
and furniture design, and investigates the<br />
crossovers between art and craft, and design and<br />
architecture. Their arts and cultural branch, graf<br />
media gm, runs a gallery space, a music label and<br />
a publishing house. Collaboration is intrinsic to all<br />
facets of their work, and since 2003 they have been<br />
working with Yoshitomo Nara to create a range of<br />
site-specific installations in gallery settings.<br />
Exhibitions (YNG, solo): BALTIC Centre for<br />
Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>, Gateshead, United Kingdom,<br />
2008; Museum of Contemporary <strong>Art</strong>, Den Haag,<br />
the Netherlands, 2007; Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> Centre,<br />
Malaga, Spain, 2007; Marianne Boesky <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
New York, 2005. Exhibitions (YNG, group): ‘KITA!!:<br />
Japanese <strong>Art</strong>ists Meet Indonesia’, Cemeti <strong>Art</strong><br />
House, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2008; Yokohama<br />
Triennale, Japan, 2005.<br />
Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu<br />
Zhu Weibing<br />
b.1971 Heilongjiang, China<br />
Ji Wenyu<br />
b.1959 Shanghai, China<br />
Live and work in Shanghai<br />
Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu have been making<br />
textile-based sculptures since 2003. Their<br />
delicately balanced works owe much to Zhu’s<br />
training as a fashion designer and art professor,<br />
while Ji worked previously as a painter,<br />
incorporating a critical take on Western Pop art<br />
in particular. In their soft sculptures, the artists<br />
comment on consumerism and social aspirations<br />
in post-Cultural Revolution China.<br />
Exhibitions (solo): ShanghART <strong>Gallery</strong>, Shanghai,<br />
2006, 2007 and 2008. Exhibitions (group): ‘Red<br />
Hot: Asian <strong>Art</strong> Today’, Museum of Fine <strong>Art</strong>s,<br />
Houston, United States, 2007.<br />
Next page<br />
Hana Makhmalbaf<br />
Iran b.1988<br />
Production still from Buda as sharm foru rikht (Buddha<br />
Collapsed Out of Shame) 2007 / 35mm and DV, colour,<br />
stereo, 81 minutes, Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) / Image<br />
courtesy: Wild Bunch, Paris<br />
238 239
Australian Cinémathèque Programs<br />
Promised Lands / The Cypress and the Crow:<br />
50 Years of Iranian Animation<br />
Promised Lands<br />
THE ROAD TO JAFFNA<br />
Beate Arnestad<br />
Norway b.1957<br />
Morten Daae<br />
Norway b.1969<br />
Min Datter Terroristen (My Daughter<br />
the Terrorist) 2007<br />
HD video, colour, stereo, 60 minutes,<br />
Norway, Tamil (English subtitles) /<br />
Directors: Beate Arnestad, Morten<br />
Daae / Script: Beate Arnestad /<br />
Cinematographer: Frank Alvegg /<br />
Editor: Morten Daae / Print source/<br />
rights: Oslo Dokumentarkino,<br />
Norwegian Film Institute / Screening<br />
format: Digital Betacam<br />
Asoka Handagama<br />
Sri Lanka b.1962<br />
Me Mage Sandai (This Is My Moon)<br />
2000<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 104 minutes,<br />
Sri Lanka, Sinhala, French subtitles<br />
(Live English subtitles) / Director/<br />
Script: Asoka Handagama /<br />
Cinematographer: Channa<br />
Deshapriya / Editor: Ravindra<br />
Guruge / Print source/rights:<br />
Héliotrope Films<br />
Vimukthi Jayasundara<br />
Sri Lanka b.1977<br />
The Land of Silence 2001<br />
16mm, black and white, mono, 29<br />
minutes, Sri Lanka, Sinhala (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Vimukthi<br />
Jayasundara / Cinematographer:<br />
Sunil Sri Perera / Editor: Nuwan<br />
Katugampola / Print source/rights:<br />
Vimukthi Jayasundara / Screening<br />
format: DVD<br />
Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken<br />
Land) 2005<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby SR, 108<br />
minutes, Sri Lanka/France, Sinhala<br />
(English subtitles) / Director/<br />
Script: Vimukthi Jayasundara /<br />
Cinematographer: Channa<br />
Deshapriya / Editor: Gisèle Rapp-<br />
Meichler / Print source/rights:<br />
Unlimited Films<br />
Ahasin Wetei (Between Two Worlds)<br />
2009<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby SR, 86 minutes,<br />
Sri Lanka/France, Sinhala (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Vimukthi<br />
Jayasundara / Cinematographer:<br />
Channa Deshapriya / Editor: Gisèle<br />
Rapp-Meichler / Print source/rights:<br />
Memento Films International<br />
Dharmasena Pathiraja<br />
Sri Lanka b.1943<br />
In Search of a Road 2006<br />
Betacam SP, black and white<br />
and colour, stereo, 82 minutes,<br />
Sri Lanka, English/Sinhala/Tamil<br />
(English subtitles) / Director:<br />
Dharmasena Pathiraja / Script: Sarath<br />
Kellepotha, Sivamohan Sumathy /<br />
Cinematographer: Channa<br />
Deshapriya / Editor: Elmo Halliday /<br />
Print source/rights: Dharmasena<br />
Pathiraja Productions<br />
Prasanna Vithanage<br />
Sri Lanka b.1962<br />
Pura Handa Kaluwara (Death on a full<br />
Moon Day) 1997<br />
35mm, colour, mono, 74 minutes,<br />
Sri Lanka/Japan, Sinhala (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Prasanna<br />
Vithanage / Cinematographer: MD<br />
Mahindapala / Editor: A Sreekar<br />
Prasad / Print source/rights: Prasanna<br />
Vithanage<br />
Ira Madiyama (August Sun) 2003<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 108 minutes,<br />
Sri Lanka, Sinhala (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Prasanna Vithanage / Script:<br />
Priyath Liyanage / Cinematographer:<br />
MD Mahindapala / Editor: A Sreekar<br />
Prasad / Print source/rights: Prasanna<br />
Vithanage<br />
CINEMA OF PARTITION<br />
Ritwik Ghatak<br />
East Bengal (now Bangladesh)<br />
1925–76<br />
Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-<br />
Capped Star) 1960<br />
35mm, black and white, mono,<br />
126 minutes, India, Bengali (English<br />
subtitles) / Director: Ritwik Ghatak /<br />
Script: Ritwik Ghatak, Shaktipada<br />
Rajguru / Cinematographer: Dinen<br />
Gupta / Editor: Ramesh Joshi / Print<br />
source/rights: The family of Ritwik<br />
Ghatak<br />
Komal Gandhar (A Soft Note on a<br />
Sharp Scale) 1961<br />
35mm, black and white, mono,<br />
134 minutes, India, Bengali (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Ritwik<br />
Ghatak / Cinematographer: Dilip<br />
Ranjan Mukhopadhyay / Editor:<br />
Ramesh Joshi / Print source/rights:<br />
The family of Ritwik Ghatak<br />
Subarnarekha (The Golden Thread)<br />
1965<br />
35mm, black and white, mono,<br />
143 minutes, India, Bengali (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Ritwik<br />
Ghatak / Based on the story by<br />
Radheshyam Jhunjhunwala /<br />
Cinematographer: Dilip Ranjan<br />
Mukhopadhyay / Editor: Ramesh<br />
Joshi / Print source/rights: The family<br />
of Ritwik Ghatak<br />
Nemai Ghosh<br />
West Bengal (now India) 1914–88<br />
Chinnamul (The Uprooted) 1950<br />
35mm, black and white, mono,<br />
117 minutes, India, Bengali<br />
(English subtitles) / Director/<br />
Cinematographer: Nemai Ghosh /<br />
Script: Swarnakamal Bhattacharya,<br />
Satyajit Ray / Editor: Kalabaran Das /<br />
Print source/rights: National Film<br />
Archive of India<br />
Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy<br />
Pakistan b.1950<br />
Zia Mian<br />
Pakistan b.1962<br />
Crossing the Lines: Kashmir, Pakistan,<br />
India 2004<br />
Betacam SP, colour, stereo,<br />
45 minutes, Pakistan, English/<br />
Urdu/Hindi/Kashmiri/Punjab<br />
(English subtitles) / Directors/<br />
Script: Pervez Hoodbhoy, Zia Mian /<br />
Cinematographers: Ali Faisal Zaidi,<br />
Nasir Teherany, Ajai Raina, Habib-ur-<br />
Rehman, Anand Patwardhan / Editor:<br />
Pervez Hoodbhoy / Print source/<br />
rights: Pervez Hoodbhoy / Screening<br />
format: DVD<br />
Lalit Mohan Joshi<br />
India b.1955<br />
Beyond Partition 2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 65<br />
minutes, India, English / Director/<br />
Cinematographer/Editor: Lalit<br />
Mohan Joshi / Script: Kusum<br />
Pant Joshi, Lalit Mohan Joshi /<br />
Print source: South Asian Cinema<br />
Foundation / Rights: Lalit Mohan<br />
Joshi / Screening format: DVD<br />
Sanjay Kak<br />
India b.1958<br />
Jashn-e-Azadi (How We Celebrate<br />
Freedom) 2007<br />
Digital video, black and white and<br />
colour, stereo, 139 minutes, India,<br />
Urdu/Kashmiri (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Sanjay Kak /<br />
Cinematographer: Ranjan Palit /<br />
Editor: Tarun Bhartiya / Print source/<br />
rights: Sanjay Kak / Screening<br />
format: Digital Betacam<br />
Amar Kanwar<br />
India b.1964<br />
A Season Outside 1997<br />
Betacam SP, colour, stereo,<br />
30 minutes, India, English /<br />
Director/Script: Amar Kanwar /<br />
Cinematographer: Dilip Varma /<br />
Editor: Sameera Jain / Print source/<br />
rights: Amar Kanwar<br />
Tareque Masud<br />
Bangladesh b.1957<br />
Matir Monia (The Clay Birds) 2002<br />
35mm, colour, mono, 89 minutes,<br />
France/Pakistan/Bangladesh, Bengali<br />
(English subtitles) / Director: Tareque<br />
Masud / Script: Catherine Masud,<br />
Tareque Masud / Cinematographer:<br />
Sudhir Palsane / Editor: Catherine<br />
Masud / Print source/rights: MK2<br />
Deepa Mehta<br />
India b.1950<br />
Earth 1998<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 110 minutes,<br />
India/Canada, Hindi/English/Parsee/<br />
Punjabi/Urdu (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Deepa Mehta /<br />
Based on the story by Bapsi Sidhwa /<br />
Cinematographer: Giles Nuttgens /<br />
Editor: Barry Farrell / Print source/<br />
rights: David Hamilton<br />
Govind Nihalani<br />
Pakistan b.1940<br />
Tamas (Darkness) 1986<br />
35mm, colour, mono, 227 minutes,<br />
India, Hindi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Govind Nihalani /<br />
Based on the story by Bhisham<br />
Sahni / Cinematographers: Govind<br />
Nihalani, K Murthy / Editor: Vanray<br />
Bhatia / Print source/rights: National<br />
Film Archive of India<br />
MS Sathyu<br />
India b.1930<br />
Garm Hava (Hot Winds) 1973<br />
35mm, colour, mono, 146 minutes,<br />
India, Urdu (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: MS Sathyu / Script:<br />
Kaifi Azmi, Shama Zaidi / Based<br />
on the story by Ismat Chughtai /<br />
Cinematographer: Ishan Arya /<br />
Editor: S Chakravarty / Print source/<br />
rights: Cameo Digital Systems<br />
Supriyo Sen<br />
India b.1967<br />
Way Back Home 2003<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 118<br />
minutes, India, Bengali (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script/Editor:<br />
Supriyo Sen / Cinematographer:<br />
Ranjan Palit / Print source: Magic<br />
Lantern Foundation / Rights: Supriyo<br />
Sen / Screening format/rights:<br />
Betacam SP<br />
Sarah Singh<br />
India b.1971<br />
The Sky Below 2007<br />
Digital video, black and white and<br />
colour, stereo, 76 minutes, India/<br />
Pakistan, Urdu/Hindi/English/Punjab/<br />
Sindhi/Kashmiri (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script/Cinematographer/<br />
Editor: Sarah Singh / Print source/<br />
rights: Sarah Singh / Screening<br />
format: DVD<br />
Santosh Sivan<br />
India b.1961<br />
Tahaan: A Boy with a Grenade 2008<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital,<br />
105 minutes, India, Hindi<br />
(English subtitles) / Director/<br />
Cinematographer: Santosh Sivan /<br />
Script: Santosh Sivan, Ritesh<br />
Menon, Paul Hardart / Editor: Shakti<br />
Hasija / Print source/rights: IDream<br />
Independent Pictures, Middlesex /<br />
Screening format: Digital Betacam<br />
Sabiha Sumar<br />
Pakistan b.1961<br />
Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters) 2003<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby SR, 99 minutes,<br />
Pakistan/France/Germany, Punjabi/<br />
Urdu (English subtitles) / Director:<br />
Sabiha Sumar / Script: Sabiha Sumar,<br />
Paromita Vohr / Cinematographer:<br />
Ralph Netzer / Editor: Bettina<br />
Böhler / Print source/rights: Les Films<br />
du Losange<br />
THE TREE OF LIFE<br />
Kasim Abid<br />
Iraq b.1950<br />
Life after the Fall 2008<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
100 minutes, Iraq/United Kingdom,<br />
Arabic (English subtitles) / Director/<br />
Cinematographer: Kasim Abid /<br />
Editor: Maysoon Pachachi / Print<br />
source/rights: Kasim Abid /<br />
Screening format: Digital Betacam<br />
Fenar Ahmad<br />
Czechoslovakia b.1981<br />
Mesopotamia 2008<br />
HD Video, colour, Dolby SR,<br />
25 minutes, Denmark, Arabic<br />
(English subtitles) / Director: Fenar<br />
Ahmad / Script: Jakob Katz, Fenar<br />
Ahmad / Cinematographer: Niels A<br />
Hansen / Editor: Martin Friis / Print<br />
source/rights: Beofilm / Screening<br />
format: 35mm<br />
Shahram Alidi<br />
East Kurdistan, Iran b.1971<br />
Sirta la Gal ba (Whisper with the<br />
Wind) 2009<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby SR, 76<br />
minutes, Iraq, Kurdish (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Shahram<br />
Alidi / Cinematographer: Touraj<br />
Aslani / Editor: Hayedeh Safiyari /<br />
Print source/rights: Urban Media<br />
International<br />
Siddiq Barmak<br />
Afghanistan b.1962<br />
Osama 2003<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital,<br />
83 minutes, Afghanistan/The<br />
Netherlands/Japan/Ireland/<br />
Iran, Pashtu/English/Dari (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script/Editor:<br />
Siddiq Barmak / Cinematographer:<br />
Ebrahim Ghafori / Print source/<br />
rights: Sharmill Films<br />
Asghar Farhadi<br />
Iran b.1972<br />
Darbareye Elly (About Elly) 2009<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 119<br />
minutes, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Asghar Farhadi /<br />
Cinematographer: Hossein Jafarian /<br />
Editor: Hayedeh Safiyari / Print<br />
source/rights: DreamLab Films<br />
Bahman Ghobadi<br />
East Kurdistan, Iran b.1969<br />
Lakposhtha Parvaz Mikonand (Turtles<br />
Can Fly) 2004<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 98 minutes,<br />
Iran/France/Iraq, Kurdish (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Bahman<br />
Ghobadi / Cinematographer:<br />
Shahriar Assadi / Editors: Mostafa<br />
Kherghehpoosh, Haydeh Safi-Yari /<br />
Print source/rights: Palace Films<br />
Hana Makhmalbaf<br />
Iran b.1988<br />
Ruzhaye Sabz (Green Days) 2009<br />
HD Video, colour, stereo, 87 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Hana Makhmalbaf /<br />
Cinematographer: Mohammad<br />
Yazdi / Editor: Babak Karimi / Print<br />
source/rights: Wild Bunch, Paris /<br />
Screening format: HD Cam<br />
Buda as Sharm foru Rikht (Buddha<br />
Collapsed Out of Shame) 2007<br />
35mm and DV, colour, stereo, 81<br />
minutes, Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Hana Makhmalbaf /<br />
Script: Marzieh Makhmalbaf /<br />
Cinematographer: Ostad Ali / Editor:<br />
Mastaneh Mohajer / Print source/<br />
rights: Wild Bunch, Paris<br />
Samira Makhmalbaf<br />
Iran b.1980<br />
Takhté siah (Blackboards) 2000<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 85 minutes,<br />
Iran/Italy/Japan, Kurdish (English<br />
subtitles) / Director: Samira<br />
Makhmalbaf / Script: Mohsen<br />
Makhmalbaf, Samira Makhmalbaf,<br />
Zaheer Qureshi / Cinematographer:<br />
Ebrahim Ghafori / Editor: Mohsen<br />
Makhmalbaf / Print source/rights:<br />
Sharmill Films<br />
Mahmoud al Massad<br />
Jordan b.1969<br />
Ea’ Adat Khalk (Recycle) 2007<br />
HD video, colour, Dolby SR, 78<br />
minutes, Netherlands/Jordan, Arabic<br />
(English subtitles) / Director/Script/<br />
Editor/Cinematographer: Mahmoud<br />
al Massad / Print source/rights: Wide<br />
Management / Screening format:<br />
Digital Betacam<br />
Jafar Panahi<br />
Iran b. 1960<br />
Talaye Sorkh (Crimson Gold) 2003<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 95 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Editor: Jafar Panahi / Script:<br />
Abbas Kiarostami / Cinematographer:<br />
Hossein Djafarian / Print source/<br />
rights: Celluloid Dreams<br />
Nahid Persson Sarvestani<br />
Iran b.1960<br />
The Queen and I 2008<br />
HD video, black and white and<br />
colour, stereo, 89 minutes, Sweden,<br />
Farsi/English (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Nahid Persson Sarvestani /<br />
Script: Zinat S Lloyd, Persson<br />
Sarvestani / Cinematographer:<br />
Nicklas Narpaty / Editor: Zinat S<br />
Lloyd / Print source/rights: Seventh<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Releasing / Screening format:<br />
Digital Betacam<br />
Parvez Sharma<br />
India b.1974<br />
A Jihad for Love 2007<br />
HD video, colour, stereo, 81<br />
minutes, USA/UK/France/Germany/<br />
Australia, English/Arabic/Hindi/Farsi/<br />
Urdu/French (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Parvez Sharma /<br />
Cinematographers: Berke Bas, David<br />
W Leitner, Parvez Sharma / Editor:<br />
Juliet Weber / Print source/rights:<br />
Pervez Sharma / Screening format:<br />
Digital Betacam<br />
242 243
Hassan Yektapanah<br />
Iran b.1963<br />
Djomeh 2000<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 94 minutes,<br />
Iran/France, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script/Editor: Hassan<br />
Yektapanah / Cinematographer:<br />
Ali Loghmani / Print source/rights:<br />
Celluloid Dreams<br />
RETURN OF THE POET<br />
Atom Egoyan<br />
Egypt b.1960<br />
Ararat 2002<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 115<br />
minutes, Canada/France, English/<br />
Armenian/French/German (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Atom<br />
Egoyan / Cinematographer: Paul<br />
Sarossy / Editor: Susan Shipton / Print<br />
source/rights: Serendipity Point Films<br />
Reha Erdem<br />
Turkey b.1960<br />
Beş Vakit (Times and Winds) 2006<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 111<br />
minutes, Turkey, Turkish (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script/Editor:<br />
Reha Erdem / Cinematographer:<br />
Florent Herry / Print source/rights:<br />
Momento Films International<br />
Pelin Esmer<br />
Turkey b.1972<br />
Oyun (The Play) 2005<br />
Digital video, colour, Dolby SR,<br />
73 minutes, Turkey, Turkish (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script/Editor:<br />
Pelin Esmer / Cinematographers:<br />
Pelin Esmer, Ozlem Ozbek, Mustafa<br />
Unlu / Print source/rights: Sinefilm-<br />
Pelin Esmer / Screening format:<br />
Digital Betacam<br />
Harutyun Khachatryan<br />
Georgia b.1955<br />
Poeti Veradardze (Return of the Poet)<br />
2006<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 88 minutes,<br />
Armenia, Armenian (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Editor: Harutyun<br />
Khachatryan / Script: Harutyun<br />
Khachatryan, Mikayel Stamboltsyan /<br />
Cinematographers: Vrej Petrosyan,<br />
Armen Mirakyan, Ashot Movsesyan,<br />
<strong>Art</strong>yom Melkoumyan / Print source/<br />
rights: Golden Apricot Fund for<br />
Cinema<br />
Sahman (Border) 2009<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 82 minutes,<br />
Armenia/The Netherlands, Armenian<br />
(English subtitles) / Director/Script/<br />
Editor: Harutyun Khachatryan /<br />
Cinematographer: Vrezh Petrosyan /<br />
Print source/rights: Golden Apricot<br />
Fund for Cinema<br />
Mahsun Kırmızıgül<br />
Turkey b.1969<br />
Güneşi Gördüm (I Saw the Sun) 2009<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 120<br />
minutes, Turkey, Turkish (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Mahsun<br />
Kırmızıgül / Cinematographer:<br />
Soykut Turan / Editor: Hamdi Deniz /<br />
Print source/rights: Pinema<br />
Sergei Parajanov<br />
Georgia b.1924<br />
Sayat Nova aka The Colour of<br />
Pomegranates 1968<br />
35mm, colour, mono, 79 minutes,<br />
Armenia/USSR, Armenian (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Sergei<br />
Parajanov / Based on the poems<br />
by Sayat Nova / Cinematographer:<br />
Suren Shakhbazyan / Editors: Sergei<br />
Parajanov, M Ponomarenko / Print<br />
source/rights: Nora Armani<br />
<strong>Art</strong>avazd Pelechian<br />
Armenia b.1938<br />
Menq (We) 1969<br />
35mm, black and white, mono, 25<br />
minutes, Armenia, Armenian (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: <strong>Art</strong>avazd<br />
Pelechian / Cinematographers:<br />
Laert Porossian, Elisbar Karavaev,<br />
Karen Messian / Editors: <strong>Art</strong>avazd<br />
Pelechian, L Volkova / Print source/<br />
rights: Films sans Frontières<br />
Obibateli (The Inhabitants) 1970<br />
35mm, black and white, mono,<br />
10 minutes, Armenia/France, No<br />
dialogue / Director: <strong>Art</strong>avazd<br />
Pelechian / Cinematographer:<br />
Evgueni Anissimov / Editor:<br />
L Volkova / Print source/rights:<br />
<strong>Art</strong>avazd Pelechian<br />
Tarva Yeghanaknere aka Vremena<br />
Goda (The Seasons) 1972<br />
35mm, black and white, mono,<br />
29 minutes, Armenia/USSR, Russian<br />
intertitles / Director/Script: <strong>Art</strong>avazd<br />
Pelechian / Cinematographers:<br />
Mikhail Vartanov, B Hovsepian,<br />
G Tchavouchian / Editor: Aida<br />
Galstian / Print source/rights: Films<br />
sans Frontières<br />
Verj (The End) 1993–94<br />
35mm, black and white, mono,<br />
8 minutes, Armenia, No dialogue /<br />
Director/Script/Editor: <strong>Art</strong>avazd<br />
Pelechian / Cinematographer:<br />
Vahagn Ter-Hakobyan / Print source/<br />
rights: <strong>Art</strong>avazd Pelechian<br />
Gariné Torossian<br />
Lebanon b.1970<br />
Girl from Moush 1994<br />
16mm, colour, mono, 5 minutes,<br />
Canada, Armenian / Director/<br />
Cinematographer: Gariné Torossian /<br />
Editor: Gariné Torossian, Lewis<br />
Cohen / Print source: Canadian<br />
Filmmakers Distribution Centre /<br />
Rights: Gariné Torossian<br />
Stone Time Touch 2007<br />
Digital Betacam, colour, stereo, 72<br />
minutes, Armenia/Canada, Armenian/<br />
English (English subtitles) / Director/<br />
Editor: Gariné Torossian / <strong>Art</strong>istic and<br />
conceptual collaborator: Arsinée<br />
Khanjian / Cinematographers: Gariné<br />
Torossian, Fred Kelemen, Ruben<br />
Khatchatryan / Print source: Canadian<br />
Filmmakers Distribution Centre /<br />
Rights: Gariné Torossian / Screening<br />
format: Betacam SP<br />
EATING MY HEART<br />
Hany Abu-Assad<br />
Palestine b.1961<br />
Paradise Now 2005<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital,<br />
90 minutes, Palestine/France/<br />
Germany/The Netherlands/Israel,<br />
Arabic/English (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Hany Abu-Assad / Script:<br />
Hany Abu-Assad, Bero Beyer /<br />
Cinematographer: Antoine Héberlé /<br />
Editor: Sander Vos / Print source/<br />
rights: Sharmill Films<br />
Kamal Aljafari<br />
Palestine b.1972<br />
Al-sateh (The Roof) 2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 60<br />
minutes, Palestine/Germany, Arabic/<br />
Hebrew/English (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script/Editor: Kamal<br />
Aljafari / Cinematographer: Diego<br />
Martínez Vignatti / Print source/<br />
rights: Kamal Aljafari / Screening<br />
format: Digital Betacam<br />
Port of Memory 2009<br />
16mm, colour, stereo, 63 minutes,<br />
Palestine/Untited Arab Emirates,<br />
Arabic/Hebrew (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Kamal Aljafari /<br />
Cinematographer: Jacques Besse /<br />
Editor: Marie Hélène Mora / Print<br />
source/rights: Kamal Aljafari /<br />
Screening format: 35mm<br />
Nurith Aviv<br />
Israel b.1945<br />
Langue Sacrée, Langue Parlée<br />
(Sacred Language, Spoken<br />
Language) 2008<br />
Digital video, colour, 73 minutes,<br />
France, French/Hebrew (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Nurith<br />
Aviv / Cinematographer: Itai Marom /<br />
Editors: Michal Ben Tovim, Guillaume<br />
Guerry / Print source/rights:<br />
Doc&Films International / Screening<br />
format: DVD<br />
Yael Bartana<br />
Israel b.1970<br />
A Declaration 2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
7:30 minutes, Israel, No dialogue /<br />
Director/Cinematographer/Editor:<br />
Yael Bartana / Courtesy: Annet<br />
Gelink <strong>Gallery</strong> and the artist /<br />
Screening format: Betacam SP<br />
Summer Camp 2007<br />
DV, colour, stereo, 12 minutes,<br />
Israel, No dialogue / Director:<br />
Yael Bartana / Cinematographer:<br />
Avigail Sperber / Editors: Yael<br />
Bartana, Daniel Meir, Anal Salomon /<br />
Courtesy: Annet Gelink <strong>Gallery</strong> and<br />
the artist / Screening format: Digital<br />
Betacam<br />
Simone Bitton<br />
Morocco b. 1950<br />
Rachel 2009<br />
HD Video, colour, Dolby SR, 100<br />
minutes, France/Belgium, English/<br />
Arabic/Hebrew (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Simone Bitton /<br />
Cinematographer: Jacques<br />
Bouquin / Editors: Jean-Michel Perez,<br />
Catherine Poitevin / Print source/<br />
rights: Urban Media International /<br />
Screening format: 35mm<br />
Ari Folman<br />
Israel b.1963<br />
Vals Im Bashir (Waltz with Bashir)<br />
2008<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 90<br />
minutes, Israel/France/USA/Finland/<br />
Switzerland/Belgium/Australia,<br />
Hebrew/German/English/Arabic<br />
(English subtitles) / Director/Script:<br />
Ari Folman / Director of Animation:<br />
Yoni Goodman / <strong>Art</strong> Director/<br />
Illustrator: David Polonsky / Editor:<br />
Nili Feller / Print source/rights:<br />
Sharmill Films<br />
Amos Gitaï<br />
Israel b.1950<br />
Carmel 2009<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby SR, 93 minutes,<br />
Israel/France/Italy, Hebrew/French<br />
(English subtitles) / Director/Script:<br />
Amos Gitaï / Cinematographer:<br />
Stefano Falivene / Editor: Isabelle<br />
Ingold / Print source/rights:<br />
AGAV Films<br />
Joana Hadjithomas<br />
Lebanon b.1969<br />
Khalil Joreige<br />
Lebanon b.1969<br />
Baddi Chouf (I Want to See) 2008<br />
HD video transferred to 35mm,<br />
colour, Dolby SR, 75 minutes,<br />
Lebanon/France, Arabic/French<br />
(English subtitles) / Directors:<br />
Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige /<br />
Script: Zeina Saab de Melero /<br />
Cinematographer: Julien Hirsch /<br />
Editor: Enrica Gattolini / Print source/<br />
rights: Films Boutique / Screening<br />
format: HD Cam<br />
Khiam 2000–2007 2008<br />
Digital video, colour, mono,<br />
103 minutes, Lebanon, Arabic<br />
(English subtitles) / Directors/<br />
Script/Cinematographers: Joana<br />
Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige / Editors:<br />
Michèle Tyan (Part 1), Tina Baz<br />
Legal (Part 2) / Print source/rights:<br />
Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige /<br />
Screening format: Betacam SP<br />
Annemarie Jacir<br />
Palestine/Israel b.1974<br />
Le Sel de la Mer (Salt of this Sea)<br />
2008<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 109 minutes,<br />
Palestine/Belgium/France/Spain/<br />
Switzerland, Arabic (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script:<br />
Annemarie Jacir / Cinematographer:<br />
Benoît Chamaillard / Editor: Michèle<br />
Hubinon / Print source/rights:<br />
Pyramid International<br />
Lamia Joreige<br />
Lebanon b.1972<br />
Nights and Days 2007<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
17 minutes, Lebanon, No dialogue /<br />
Director/Cinematographer/Editor:<br />
Lamia Joreige / Print source/rights:<br />
Lamia Joreige / Screening format:<br />
Mini DV<br />
Mai Masri<br />
Jordan b. 1959<br />
33 Yaoum (33 Days) 2007<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
70 minutes, Lebanon, Arabic (English<br />
subtitles) / Director: Mai Masri /<br />
Cinematographers: Hussein Nassar,<br />
Mai Masri / Editors: Elias Chahine,<br />
Michael Tyan / Print source/rights:<br />
AFD/Typecast Films / Screening<br />
format: Betacam SP<br />
Avi Mograbi<br />
Israel b.1956<br />
Nekam Achat Mishtey Eynay (Avenge<br />
But One of My Two Eyes) 2005<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 100 minutes,<br />
France/Israel English/Arabic/Hebrew<br />
(English subtitles) / Director/Script:<br />
Avi Mograbi / Cinematographers:<br />
Philippe Bellaiche, Yoav Gurfinkel,<br />
Avi Mograbi, Itzik Portal / Editors:<br />
Ewa Lenkiewicz, Avi Mograbi / Print<br />
source/rights: Les Films du Losange<br />
Z32 2008<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby, 81 minutes,<br />
France/Israel, Hebrew (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Editor: Avi<br />
Mograbi / Script: Noam Enbar,<br />
Avi Mograbi / Cinematographer:<br />
Philippe Bellaiche / Print source/<br />
rights: Doc&Film International<br />
Jocelyne Saab<br />
Lebanon b.1948<br />
Chou am bi Sir? (What’s Going on?)<br />
2009<br />
HD video, colour, stereo, 84<br />
minutes, Lebanon, French/Arabic<br />
(English subtitles) / Director:<br />
Jocelyne Saab / Script: Jocelyne<br />
Saab with participation to<br />
dialogue by Joumana Haddad /<br />
Cinematographer: Jacques<br />
Bouquin / Editor: Catherine Poitevin /<br />
Print source/rights: Jocelyne Saab /<br />
Screening format: HD Cam<br />
Larissa Sansour<br />
Palestine/Israel b.1973<br />
Happy Days 2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
3 minutes, Palestine, English /<br />
Director/Script/Editor: Larissa<br />
Sansour / Cinematographer: Soren<br />
Lind / Print source/rights: Larissa<br />
Sansour / Screening format: Mini<br />
DV / Courtesy: Le Galerie La B.A.N.K<br />
Soup over Bethlehem (Mloukhieh)<br />
2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
9 minutes, Palestine, Arabic (English<br />
subtitle) / Director/Script/Editor:<br />
Larissa Sansour / Cinematographer:<br />
Soren Lind / Print source/rights:<br />
Larissa Sansour / Screening format:<br />
Mini DV / Courtesy: Le Galerie<br />
La B.A.N.K<br />
Land Confiscation Order 06/24/T<br />
2007<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
10 minutes, Palestine, Arabic (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script/Editor:<br />
Larissa Sansour / Cinematographer:<br />
Soren Lind / Print source/rights:<br />
Larissa Sansour / Screening format:<br />
Mini DV / Courtesy: Le Galerie<br />
La B.A.N.K<br />
A Space Exodus 2008<br />
HD video, colour, Dolby SR,<br />
5:24 minutes, Denmark, English /<br />
Director/Script: Larissa Sansour /<br />
Cinematographer: Niels A Hansen /<br />
Editors: Lars Lyngstadaas, Martin<br />
Friis / Print source/rights: Larissa<br />
Sansour / Screening format: HD CAM /<br />
Courtesy: Le Galerie La B.A.N.K<br />
Eyal Sivan<br />
Israel b.1964<br />
Michel Khleifi<br />
Israel b.1950<br />
Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in<br />
Palestine-Israel 2004<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
270 minutes Belgium/France/<br />
Germany/UK, Arabic/Hebrew<br />
(English subtitles) / Directors/<br />
Script/Editors: Eyal Sivan, Michel<br />
Khleifi / Cinematographer: Philippe<br />
Bellaiche / Print source/rights: Urban<br />
Media International / Screening<br />
format: Digital Betacam<br />
Elia Suleiman<br />
Palestine/Israel b.1960<br />
Al Zaman Al Baqi (The Time That<br />
Remains) 2009<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby SR, 109<br />
minutes, France/Belgium/Italy/UK,<br />
Hebrew/Arabic/English (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Elia<br />
Suleiman / Cinematographer:<br />
Marc-André Batigne / Editor:<br />
Véronique Lange / Print source/<br />
rights: Wild Bunch<br />
Yadon Ilaheyya (Divine Intervention)<br />
2002<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby SR, 92 minutes,<br />
France/Morocco/Germany/Palestine,<br />
Arabic/Hebrew/English (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Elia<br />
Suleiman / Cinematographer: Marc-<br />
André Batigne / Editor: Véronique<br />
Lange / Print source/rights: Pyramid<br />
International<br />
Akram Zaatari<br />
Lebanon b.1966<br />
Al-Shrit Bikhayr (All is Well on the<br />
Boarder) 1997<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
43 minutes, Lebanon, Arabic (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script/Editor/<br />
Cinematographer: Akram Zaatari<br />
Print source: Galerie Sfeir-Semler /<br />
Rights: Akram Zaatari / Screening<br />
format: Betacam SP<br />
Shou Bhabbak (How I Love You) 2001<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
29 minutes, Lebanon, Arabic<br />
(English subtitles) / Director/Script/<br />
Cinematographer: Akram Zaatari /<br />
Editor: Michèle Tyan / Print source:<br />
V-Tape / Rights: Akram Zaatari /<br />
Screening format: Betacam SP<br />
Tabiaah Samitah (Still Life aka Nature<br />
Morte) 2008<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
11 minutes, Lebanon, Arabic<br />
(English subtitles) / Director/Script/<br />
Cinematographer: Akram Zaatari /<br />
Editor: Khalil Hajjar / Print source:<br />
V-Tape / Rights: Akram Zaatari /<br />
Screening format: DV Cam<br />
244 245
The Cypress and the Crow:<br />
50 Years of Iranian Animation<br />
Mohammad Reza Abedi<br />
Iran<br />
Hambazi (Playmate) 1989<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 16 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Mohammad Reza<br />
Abedi / Editor: Mohammad<br />
Haghighi / Music: Fariborz Lachini /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Noghli va Boloorhaye Barf (Noghli<br />
and the Snow Crystals) 1989<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 10 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Mohammad Reza<br />
Abedi / Music: Reza Aligholi / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Ghete Gomshode (The Lost Piece)<br />
1993<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 9 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Mohammad Reza<br />
Abedi / Editor: Mohammad<br />
Haghighi / Music: Parham Parvas /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Hekayate Shirin (The Sweet Story)<br />
1995<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 15 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Mohammad Reza<br />
Abedi / Editor: Changiz Sayyad /<br />
Music: Parham Parvas / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Maryam Abouzari<br />
Iran b.1982<br />
Aghazi Digar (Another Beginning)<br />
2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
9:30 minutes, Iran, Farsi (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Maryam<br />
Abouzari / Animator: Siavash<br />
Khodaei / Editor: Siavash Khodaei /<br />
Music: Sepohr Abasi / Print source/<br />
rights: Documentary & Experimental<br />
Film Center<br />
Soudabeh Agah<br />
Iran<br />
Dayereh (The Circle) 1977<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 4:45 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Soudabeh Agah /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Seyyed Morteza Ahadi<br />
Iran b.1963<br />
Safar-e Bidari (The Path of Love) 2004<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 21 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Seyyed Morteza<br />
Ahadi / Editor: Hassan Hassan-<br />
Doust / Sound: Changuiz Sayyad /<br />
Music: Abbas Dabirdanesh / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Gonjeshk va Panbeh Daneh (The<br />
Sparrow and the Boll) 2007<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 12 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Seyyed Morteza<br />
Ahadi / Script: Ali Dadrass / Based<br />
upon an old Iranian tale / Editor:<br />
Saeed Pour-Esmaili / Sound:<br />
Mahmoud Mohaghegh / Music:<br />
Pirouz Arjomand / Cinematographer:<br />
Seyyed Morteza Ahadi / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Esfandiar Ahmadieh<br />
Iran b.1928<br />
Mollah Nasreddin 1957<br />
16mm, black and white,mono,<br />
13 seconds, Iran / Director/Script/<br />
Editor: Esfandiar Ahmadieh /<br />
Cinematographer: Petrus Palian /<br />
Print source/rights: Ministry of <strong>Art</strong>s<br />
and Culture<br />
Ordak Hasood (Jealous Duck) 1962<br />
35mm, colour, mono, 6:21 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Esfandiar Ahmadieh / Print<br />
source/rights: Ministry of <strong>Art</strong>s and<br />
Culture<br />
Rostam and Esfandiar (extract) 2002<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 15 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Esfandiar Ahmadieh /<br />
Cinematographer: Nazanin Rabet /<br />
Print source/rights: IRIB Media Trade<br />
Tavalode Zal (Birth of Zal) 2005<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, Iran,<br />
Farsi (English subtitles) / Director:<br />
Esfandiar Ahmadieh / Script:<br />
Shahnameh Ferdosi / Print source/<br />
rights: Saba Animation Center<br />
Zendegi (Life) 1966<br />
35mm, colour, mono, 16:30 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Nosrat Karimi /<br />
Animator: Esfandiar Ahmadieh /<br />
Editor: Esfandiar Ahmadieh, Nosrat<br />
Karimi / Print source/rights: Ministry<br />
of <strong>Art</strong>s and Culture<br />
Khachik Akoopian<br />
Iran<br />
Mard va Parandeh (The Man and<br />
the Bird) 1979<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 15:30 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Khachik Akoopian /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Abdollah Alimorad<br />
Iran b.1947<br />
Kaghaz va Taa (Origami) 1984<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 5 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Abdollah Alimorad /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Bache ha dar Moozeh (Children at<br />
the Museum) 1987<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 10 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Abdollah Alimorad /<br />
Editor: Changuiz Sayyad / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Kelid Naghsh (The Role Key) 1990<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 6 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Abdollah Alimorad /<br />
Editor: Mohammad Haghighi / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Ghesehay Bazar-tooti va Baghal (The<br />
Parrot and the Grocer) 1991<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 32 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) / Director:<br />
Abdollah Alimorad / Editor: Changiz<br />
Sayyad / Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Koohe Javaher (The Jewel Mountain)<br />
1994<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 27 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Abdollah Alimorad /<br />
Editor: Changuiz Sayyad / Music:<br />
Fariborz Lachini / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Gheseha-ye Bazar (The Tales of<br />
Bazaar) 1995<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 77 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Abdollah Alimorad / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Vorood be Donyaye Aroosakha<br />
(Travelling to the Puppet World) 1995<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 20 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Abdollah Alimorad / Editor:<br />
Changiz Sayyad / Music: Kambiz<br />
Roshanravan / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Yeki Kam Ast (One is Not Enough)<br />
1998<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 27 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Abdollah Alimorad / Editor:<br />
Changiz Sayyad / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Bahador 2000<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 27 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Abdollah Alimorad / Editor:<br />
Changiz Sayyad / Music: Saeed<br />
Ansari / Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Sepid Balan (The White Wings) 2002<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 13:45 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Abdollah Alimorad /<br />
Editor: Changiz Sayyad / Music:<br />
Fardin Khalatbari / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Rouzi Kalaghi (Once a Crow) 2006<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 20 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Abdollah Alimorad /<br />
Editor: Changuiz Sayyad / Music:<br />
Fardin Khalatbari / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Ahmad Arabani<br />
Iran b.1947<br />
Tabar (The Axe) 1982<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 8:40 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director/Script: Ahmad<br />
Arabani / Animator: Abdollah<br />
Alimorad / Editor: Mohammad<br />
Haghighi / Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Ganj (Treasure) 1989<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 10 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Ahmad Arabani /<br />
Editor: Changiz Sayyad / Music:<br />
Fariborz Lachini / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Noghli va Golhaye (Noghli and the<br />
Sunflowers) 1993<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 8 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Ahmad Arabani /<br />
Editor: Changiz Sayyad / Music:<br />
Saeed Ansari / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
En’ekas (Reflection) 1996<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 4:30 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Ahmad Arabani /<br />
Editor: Changiz Sayyad / Music:<br />
Saeed Ansari / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Khialbaf (The Dreamer) 1996<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 4:30 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Ahmad Arabani /<br />
Editor: Changiz Sayyad / Music:<br />
Saeed Ansari / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Sokoot (Silence) 1998<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 2 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Ahmad Arabani /<br />
Editor: Changiz Sayyad / Music:<br />
Parham Parvas / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Safar Ali Asgharzadeh<br />
Iran b.1940<br />
Hamneshin (Companion) 1990<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 15<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Safar Ali<br />
Asgharzadeh / Script: Vadjiollah<br />
Fard Moghadam / Editor: Changiz<br />
Sayyad / Music: Fariborz Lachini /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Bacheha ba Ham (Children Together)<br />
1994<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 30<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Safar Ali<br />
Asgharzadeh / Editor: Changiz<br />
Sayyad / Music: Parham Parvas /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Kashti-ye Nuh (Noah’s Ark) 2002<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 16 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Safar Ali Asgharzadeh /<br />
Script: Seyed Mehdi Shoja’ei / Music:<br />
Fardin Khalatbari / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Maryam Bayani<br />
Iran b.1982<br />
Dastane Sofal (The Pottery Tale) 2008<br />
DVD, colour and black and white,<br />
stereo, 8:34 minutes, Iran / Director:<br />
Maryam Bayani / Sound: Shirmohammad<br />
Espandar (adapted<br />
from Baluchistan Folk Music) / Print<br />
source/rights: Maryam Bayani<br />
Alireza Chitaei<br />
Iran b.1979<br />
Jaryan (The Flow) 2002<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 3:50 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Alireza Chitaei / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Khaab (The Dream) 2007<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 4:45<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Alireza<br />
Chitaei / Sound: Sa’eed Pouresmaeili /<br />
Music: Kayvan Honarmand / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Azhdar Deldadeh<br />
Iran b.1972<br />
Ahmad Bayad Peporsad (Ahmad<br />
Must Ask) 1998<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 5:30 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director/Script: Azhdar Deldadeh /<br />
Editor: Changiz Sayyad / Music:<br />
Albert Araklian / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Behzad Farahat<br />
Iran b.1968<br />
Man Khdam Peyda Kardan (I Found<br />
it Myself) 2002<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 16:40 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Behzad Farahat / Editor:<br />
Changiz Sayyad / Music: Halmed<br />
Sabet / Print Source/Rights: Kanoon<br />
Bazgasht beh Khaneh (Returning<br />
Home) 2005<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 12 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Behzad Farahat /<br />
Script: Naser Farahat, Mohammad<br />
Aminolsharieh / Sound: Mahmoud<br />
Mohaghegh / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Ghissihaye ye Khati 1 (Simple<br />
Things 1) 2008<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 4 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Behzad Farahat /<br />
Sound: Mahmoud Mohaghegh /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Ghissihaye ye Khati 2 (Simple<br />
Things 2) 2008<br />
35mm colour, stereo, 4 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Behzad Farahat / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Vadjiollah Fard Moghadam<br />
Iran b.1945<br />
Mozahem-ha (The Intruders) 1976<br />
16mm, colour, stereo, 3:50 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Vadjiollah Fard Moghadam /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Taghlid (Imitation) 1979<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 14:40 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Vadjiollah Fard<br />
Moghadam / Editor Mohammad<br />
Haghighi / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Bazgasht (The Return) 1986<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 17:44 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Vadjiollah Fard<br />
Moghadam / Editor: Mohammad<br />
Haghighi / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Dar Kenar Ham (Together With Each<br />
Other) 1992<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 12 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Vadjiollah Fard<br />
Moghadam / Editor: Changiz<br />
Sayyad / Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Lili Lili Hosak (Lily Lily Little Pool)<br />
1992<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 16 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Vadjiollah Fard<br />
Moghadam / Animator: Farkhondeh<br />
Torabi / Editor: Changiz Sayyad /<br />
Music: Mohammad Mirzamani / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Yar Ham dar Kenar-e Ham (Being<br />
Friends Being Together) 1998<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 7:25 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Vadjiollah Fard<br />
Moghadam / Editor: Hadi Yaghinlou /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Lida Fazli<br />
Iran b.1977<br />
Why Dogs Hate Cats 2008<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 12 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director/Script: Lida Fazli /<br />
Editor: Mohsen Fazli / Music: Mehrad<br />
Nabaei / Print source/rights: Saba<br />
Centre<br />
Behrouz Gharibpour<br />
East Kurdistan, Iran b.1950<br />
Karagah 2 (Detective 2) 1988<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 70 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Behrouz Gharibpour /<br />
Editor: Samad Tavazoi / Music:<br />
Arsalan Kamkar / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Fatemeh Goudarzi<br />
Iran b.1974<br />
Keshavarz va Gav (The Farmer and<br />
the Cow) 2002<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 6 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Fatemeh Goudarzi /<br />
Editor: Said Pour-Esmaili / Music:<br />
Reza Mahai / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Madar Bororgu-e Parandeh (The<br />
Flying Grandma) 2006<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 12 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Fatemeh Goudarzi /<br />
Editor: Said Pouresmaili / Music:<br />
Nima Hossein-Zadeh / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Shahram Heydarian<br />
Iran b.1973<br />
War Maker 2008<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 6:34<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Shahram<br />
Heydarian / Editor: Orod Peykanfar /<br />
Music: Hamed Kiaee / Print source/<br />
rights: Documentary & Experimental<br />
Film Center<br />
Bozorgmehr Hosseinpour<br />
Iran b.1976<br />
The Good the Bad and the Love 2009<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 5:55<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Bozorgmehr<br />
Hosseinpour / Adapted from<br />
One thousand and one nights /<br />
Editor: Sima Haghshenas / Music:<br />
Nima Pashak / Print source/rights:<br />
Research and Production Centre<br />
Animation<br />
Lisa Jamileh Barjesteh<br />
United States b.1970<br />
Parande-ieh Sokut (Bird of Silence)<br />
2005<br />
35mm, black and white, stereo, 7<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Lisa Jamileh<br />
Barjesteh / Music: Amirhossein<br />
Jalili / Editor: Reza Bahadorian / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Minoo Janmohammadi<br />
Iran b.1979<br />
Golha (Flowers) 2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 6<br />
minutes, Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Minoo Janmohammadi /<br />
Based on the story Die Blumen<br />
by Peter Bichsel / Music: Hootan<br />
Pourzaki / Print source/rights: Raiavin<br />
Bahram Javaheri<br />
Iran<br />
Gol Parandeh va Khorshid (The<br />
Flower, the Bird and the Sun) 2001<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 10 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Bahram Javaheri /<br />
Editor: Ebrahim Saeedi / Music:<br />
Mohammad Reza Aligholi / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Mahin Javaherian<br />
Iran b.1950<br />
Baroon Miad Jar Jar (Hajar´s<br />
Wedding) 2008<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 8 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Mahin Javaherian / Based<br />
on folkloric poems / Editor: Saeed<br />
Pour Esmaeili / Music: Abbas<br />
Dabirdanesh, Omid Fathollahi / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Parviz Kalantari-Teleghani<br />
Iran b.1931<br />
Azadi-ye Amrikayee (Liberty the<br />
American Style) 1980<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 6 minutes, Iran,<br />
Farsi (English subtitles) / Director/<br />
Script: Parviz Kalantari-Teleghani /<br />
Based on a story by Parviz Kalantari /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Sarvenaz Karimianpour<br />
Iran b.1976<br />
No title 2002<br />
Digital video, black and white,<br />
stereo, 5:32 minutes, Iran, Farsi<br />
(English subtitles) / Director:<br />
Sarvenaz Karimianpour / Editor:<br />
Abtin Mozaffari / Sound: Vahid<br />
Safari / Print source/rights: Sarvenaz<br />
Karimianpour<br />
Untitled 2007<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
5:28 minutes, Iran, Farsi (English<br />
subtitles) / Director: Sarvenaz<br />
Karimianpour / Editor: Abtin<br />
Mozaffari / Sound: Vahid Safari / Print<br />
source/rights: Sarvenaz Karimianpour<br />
Amir Kasavandi<br />
Iran b.1962<br />
Turkmen Boy 2008<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo,<br />
15 minutes, Iran, Farsi (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script/Editor:<br />
Amir Kasavandi / Music/Sound:<br />
Mohommad Abraham Gorge / Print<br />
source/rights: IRIB Media Trade<br />
246 247
Ali Reza Kavian Rad<br />
Iran b.1967<br />
The Ancient Tales 2006<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 11:42<br />
minutes, Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Ali Reza Kavian Rad / Script:<br />
Mohammad Marciano / Editor:<br />
Mohommad Abraham Gorge /<br />
Music/Sound: Mercado Jeanie / Print<br />
source/rights: IRIB Media Trade<br />
Maryam Khalilzadeh<br />
Iran b.1978<br />
Aks (Photo) 2009<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 9:32<br />
minutes, Iran / Director/Script:<br />
Maryam Khalilzadeh / Animators:<br />
Maryam Khalilzadeh, Azadeh Moezi,<br />
Maryam Charmchi / Editor/Sound:<br />
Leila Khalilzadeh / Music: Sharareh<br />
Sheikh Khan / Print source/rights:<br />
Elypse Short Film Distribution<br />
Rashin Kheirieh<br />
Iran b.1979<br />
Marde-e-tavan va Khayat-e Hilegar<br />
(The Cunning Taylor and the Young<br />
Man) 2008<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 9 minutes, Iran /<br />
Director: Rashin Kheirieh / Animator:<br />
Iraj Khossronia / Sound: Changiz<br />
Sayyad / Editor: Iraj Khossronia /<br />
Music: Fardin Khalatbari / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Ali Khodaei<br />
Iran b.1959<br />
Ci Messleh Ci (What’s It Like?) 2004<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 3:30<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Ali Khodaei /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Laleh Khorramian<br />
Iran b.1974<br />
Sophie and Goya 2004<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 10:42<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Laleh<br />
Khorramian / Print source/rights:<br />
Laleh Khorramian, Salon 94<br />
Chopperlady 2005<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 9 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Laleh Khorramian /<br />
Print source/rights: Laleh<br />
Khorramian, Salon 94<br />
I Without End Meanwhile 2008<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 4:20<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Laleh<br />
Khorramian / Print source/rights:<br />
Laleh Khorramian, Salon 94<br />
I Without End (single channel) 2008<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 6:20<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Laleh<br />
Khorramian / Print source/rights:<br />
Laleh Khorramian, Salon 94<br />
Omid Khoshnazar<br />
Iran b.1981<br />
Sefr darajeh (Zero Degree) 2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 8<br />
minutes, Iran / Director/Script/Editor:<br />
Omid Khoshnazar / Sound: Behrouz<br />
Shahaamat / Print source/rights:<br />
Omid Khoshnazar<br />
Labyrinth 2007<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
9:20 minutes, Iran, English / Director:<br />
Omid Khoshnazar / Animator:<br />
Bezhad Rajabipour / Script: Mehdi<br />
Rajabi / Editor: Arash Karimi / Sound:<br />
Behrooz Shahamat / Print source/<br />
rights: Omid Khoshnazar<br />
Parasite 2009<br />
Digital video, colour, silent, 8:30<br />
minutes, Switzerland/Iran / Director/<br />
Script: Omid Khoshnazar / Animator:<br />
Bezhad Rajabipour / Editor: Arash<br />
Karimi / Print source/rights: Omid<br />
Khoshnazar<br />
Amir Mehran<br />
Iran b.1980<br />
The Lost Waves 2004<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 7<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Amir<br />
Mehran / Script: Mehdi Rajabi /<br />
Editor: Hossein Eghbali / Sound: Amir<br />
Mehran / Music: Sanaz Moradian /<br />
Print source/rights: Amir Mehran<br />
The Injustice Castle 2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 2:30<br />
minutes, Iran / Director/Script:<br />
Amir Mehran / Animator: Ameneh<br />
Arbaboun / Editor: Mas’ood<br />
Ghodsiyeh / Sound: Houman<br />
Homami / Music: Houman Homami /<br />
Print source/rights: Amir Mehran<br />
Farshid Mesghali<br />
Iran b.1943<br />
Aga-ye Hayoula (Mr Monster) 1970<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 8 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Farshid Mesghali /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Soo-e-tafahom (Misunderstood) 1970<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 4:25 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Farshid Mesghali /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Pesar saz va Parandeh (The Boy the<br />
Bird and the Musical Instrument)<br />
1971<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 12:21 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Farshid Mesghali /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Shahr-e Khakestari (The Grey City)<br />
1972<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 6:45 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Farshid Mesghali /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Kerm-e Kheili Kheili Khoob (A Very<br />
Good Worm) 1973<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 3:46 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Farshid Mesghali /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Dobareh Negah Kon (Look Again)<br />
1974<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 10 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Farshid Mesghali /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Bijan Mirbagheri<br />
Iran b.1968<br />
Mahsa (The Dew) 2003<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 7:48 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Bijan Mirbagheri /<br />
Script: Leyla Mirhadi / Editor/Sound:<br />
Mahmood Mirbagheri / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Mohammad Moghadam<br />
Iran b.1965<br />
Derakht Bakhshande (The Generous<br />
Tree) 1993<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 14 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Mohammad<br />
Moghadam / Music: Saeed / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Maryam 1996<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 15 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) / Director:<br />
Mohammad Moghadam / Music:<br />
Panahi / Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Toulanitarin Safar-e Donya (The<br />
Longest Voyage) 1999<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 10:15<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Mohammad<br />
Moghadam / Animator: Elaheh<br />
Goudarzi / Editor: Changiz Sayyad /<br />
Music: Hesamian / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Mashaallah Mohammadi<br />
East Kurdistan, Iran b.1969<br />
Other Being 2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 1:30<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Mashaallah<br />
Mohammadi / Script: Siamand<br />
Mohammadi / Music: Cwan Hacoo /<br />
Print source/rights: Mashaallah<br />
Mohammadi<br />
Pain 2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 3:30<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Mashaallah<br />
Mohammadi / Script: Hamid Reza<br />
Ardalan / Editors: Mashaallah<br />
Mohammadi, Hooman Rabiei / Music:<br />
Kurdish traditional / Print source/<br />
rights: Mashaallah Mohammadi<br />
The Last Song of My Neighboring<br />
Girl Before They Burn All Her Dreams<br />
2007<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 3:30<br />
minutes, Iran/Kurdistan / Director:<br />
Mashaallah Mohammadi / Music:<br />
Rojhin / Print source/rights:<br />
Mashaallah Mohammadi<br />
Colourful Rains 2009<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 3:39<br />
minutes, Iran/Kurdistan / Director:<br />
Mashaallah Mohammadi / Script:<br />
Siamand Mohammadi / Music:<br />
Ramiz Qulyev / Print source/rights:<br />
Mashaallah Mohammadi<br />
Human Beings 2009<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 3:10<br />
minutes, Iran/Kurdistan / Director:<br />
Mashaallah Mohammadi / Music:<br />
Mozart Piano Concerto No 23 /<br />
Print source/rights: Mashaallah<br />
Mohammadi<br />
Morteza Momayez<br />
Iran 1935–2005<br />
Yek Noghteh-ye Sabz (A Green Dot)<br />
1972<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 5:14 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Morteza Momayez /<br />
Music: Esfandiar Monfaredzadeh /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Siah Parandeh (The Bird of Doom)<br />
1973<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 7:45 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Morteza Momayez /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Parviz Naderi<br />
Iran<br />
Esteghlal (Independence) 1973<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 4:25 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Parviz Naderi / Based on a<br />
story by Noureddin Zarrinkelk / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
The Man and the Cloud 1975<br />
35mm, black and white, stereo, 6:50<br />
minutes, Iran / Director/Script: Parviz<br />
Naderi / Based on a story by Parviz<br />
Naderi / Sound: Herair Atashkar /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Sib (The Apple Tree) 1982<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 7:30 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Parviz Naderi / Based<br />
on a story by Aboutaleb Habibi /<br />
Editor: Mohammad Haghighi / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Vahid Nasirian<br />
Iran b.1971<br />
The Hole 2002<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
6 minutes, Iran, Farsi (English<br />
subtitles) / Director/Script: Vahid<br />
Nasirian / Print source/rights:<br />
Documentary & Experimental Film<br />
Center<br />
Contrasts 2004<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 7 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Vahid Nasirian /<br />
Animator: Saadat Rahim Zadeh /<br />
Music: Mohsen Namjou / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Babak Nazari<br />
Iran b.1974<br />
Mah Boud-o-roubah (The Fox and the<br />
Moon) 2005<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 12 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director/Script/Editor: Babak<br />
Nazari / Music: Fardin Khalatbari /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Shekarestian (Sugarland: The Lie,<br />
Which Didn’t Come through the<br />
Gates) 2008<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 15 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Babak Nazari / Script:<br />
Mehdi Esmaeili, Saeid Zameni, Babak<br />
Nazari / Music: Jalal Zolfonoun /<br />
Print source/rights: Research and<br />
Production Centre Animation<br />
Jangal-e Ma (Pink Jungle) 2009<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 5:53<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Babak<br />
Nazari / Print source/rights: Research<br />
and Production Centre Animation<br />
Shekarestian (Sugarland: Fake<br />
Brother) 2009<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 15 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Babak Nazari / Script:<br />
Mehdi Esmaeili, Saeid Zameni, Babak<br />
Nazari / Music: Jalal Zolfonoun /<br />
Print source/rights: Research and<br />
Production Centre Animation<br />
Sa’adat Rahimzadeh<br />
Iran b.1974<br />
There’s No Beginning 2007<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 7<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Sa’adat<br />
Rahimzadeh / Print source/rights:<br />
Documentary and Experimental Film<br />
Center<br />
Zohal Razavi<br />
Iran b.1975<br />
Happy Birthday 2004<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 11 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Zohal Razavi /<br />
Script: Faranak Ash / Animator:<br />
Farzad Mousavi / Editor: Mehdi<br />
Saffarpour / Sound: Sam Kashefi /<br />
Music: Rohollah Amirteymouri / Print<br />
source/rights: IRIB Media Trade<br />
Kalaghha (The Crows) 2008<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 8 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director/Script: Zolid Nazavi /<br />
Animator: Homed Kamali / Editor:<br />
Mehdi Saffarpour / Sound/Music:<br />
Sepehr Abbasi / Print source/rights:<br />
IRIB Media Trade<br />
Mohammad Reza Khanzad<br />
Iran b.1971<br />
Hich Rouzi (No Days) 2006<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 5:40<br />
minutes, Iran, Farsi (English<br />
subtitles) / Director: Mohammad<br />
Reza Khanzad / Script: Mehdi<br />
Abouhashem / Editor: Ebrahim<br />
Gorji / Sound: Nader Alimardani /<br />
Music: Amr MirAqasi / Print source/<br />
rights: Saba Animation Center<br />
Nafiseh Riyahi<br />
Sweden b.1943<br />
Cheghedr Midoonam? (How Much<br />
Do I Know?) 1972<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 6:30 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Nafiseh Riyahi / Editor:<br />
Harayer Atashkar / Music: Sheyda<br />
Gharcheh / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Rangin-kaman (Rainbow) 1973<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 5:43 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Nafiseh Riyahi / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Medad Banafsh (Violet Pencil) 1975<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 12:40<br />
minutes, Iran / Directors: Nafiseh<br />
Riyahi, Soudabeh Agah / Based on<br />
a story by Nafiseh Riyahi / Editor:<br />
Harayer Atashkar / Music: Kambiz<br />
Roshanravan / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Az Tehran ta Tehran (From Tehran to<br />
Tehran) 1987<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 24 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Nafiseh Riyahi / Music:<br />
Kambiz Roshanravan / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Ali Akbar Sadeghi<br />
Iran b.1937<br />
Haft Shahr (Seven Cities) 1971<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 15 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Ali Akbar Sadeghi / Music:<br />
Sheyda Gharcheh-Daghi / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Golbaran (Flower Storm) 1972<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 7:45 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Ali Akbar Sadeghi /<br />
Based on a story by Hossein<br />
Samakar / Animator: Parviz Naderi /<br />
Editor: Harayer Atashkar / Music:<br />
Esfandiar Monfaredzadeh / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Rokh (The Rook) 1974<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 10:31<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Ali Akbar<br />
Sadeghi / Based on a story by<br />
Ebrahim Forouzesh / Editor:<br />
Harayer Atashkar / Music: Esfandiar<br />
Monfaredzadeh / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Malek Khorshid (The Sun King) 1975<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 13 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Ali Akbar Sadeghi /<br />
Editor: Harayer Atashkar / Music:<br />
Daruish Dolatshahi / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Zaal and Simorgh 1977<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 26:30 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Ali Akbar Sadeghi / Music:<br />
Majid Entezami / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Moin Samadi<br />
Iran b.1979<br />
Haft Seen (7 Seen) 2004<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
2 minutes, Iran / Director: Moin<br />
Samadi / Music: Arman Mousapoor /<br />
Print source/rights: Raiavin<br />
Nowrooz (Newrooz) 2004<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
2 minutes, Iran / Director: Moin<br />
Samadi / Music: Arman Mousapoor /<br />
Print source/rights: Raiavin<br />
Negah Dar, Piadeh Misham!<br />
(Stop It! I’m Out) 2005<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
10:30 minutes, Iran / Director: Moin<br />
Samadi / Music: Farzad Golpayegani /<br />
Print source/rights:Raiavin<br />
Aroosak Gomshode (The Lost<br />
Puppet) 2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
7 minutes, Iran / Director: Moin<br />
Samadi / Animator: Amir Savadkouhi /<br />
Music: Fardin Khalatbari, Rai Avin<br />
Studio, Mehdi Aghahossein Na’eini /<br />
Print source/rights: Raiavin<br />
Boz Bazi (Boz Game) 2007<br />
DVD, black and white, stereo,<br />
2:30 minutes, Iran / Director: Moin<br />
Samadi / Music: Armin Bahari / Print<br />
source/rights: Raiavin<br />
Nazanin Sarbandi<br />
Iran b.1949<br />
Ghali (Carpet) 1980<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 8 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Nazanin Sarbandi /<br />
Editor: Mohammad Haghighi /<br />
Music: Esmail Tehrani / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Etehad (The Unity) 1989<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 9 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Nazanin Sarbandi /<br />
Editor: Mohammad Haghighi /<br />
Music: Saeed Shahrah / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Neshaani (Address) 2006<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 5:20 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Nazanin Sarbandi /<br />
Editor: Shahrzad Akromi / Music:<br />
Mohmoud Riza Mohaghegh / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Marjane Satrapi<br />
Iran b.1969<br />
Persepolis 2007<br />
35mm, black and white, Dolby,<br />
95 minutes, Iran, French/English/<br />
Persian/German (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Vincent Paronnaud,<br />
Marjane Satrapi / Script: Vincent<br />
Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi / Based<br />
on a graphic novel by Marjane<br />
Satrapi of the same name / Editor:<br />
Stéphane Roche / Cinematographer:<br />
Olivier Bernet / Print source/rights:<br />
Roadshow Films<br />
Farshid Shafiyee<br />
Iran b.1969<br />
Sidewalk 2003<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 8 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director/Editor: Farshid<br />
Shafiyee / Animators: Amir Hossein<br />
Jalili, Kaveh Faraji / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Nahid Shamsdoust<br />
Iran b.1952<br />
Baran-e Shadi (Rain of Happiness)<br />
2002<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 14 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Nahid Shamsdoust /<br />
Script: Hormoz Nazempour / Editor:<br />
Changuiz Sayyad / Music: Iraj<br />
Panahi / Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
248 249
Mehrdad Sheikhan<br />
Iran b.1965<br />
Farkhondeh Torabi<br />
Iran b.1965<br />
Noureddin Zarrinkelk<br />
Iran b.1937<br />
Hossein Ziaei<br />
Iran b.1973<br />
Tanhaai (Solitude) 2008<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 10 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director/Editor/Script:<br />
Mehrdad Sheikhan / Animator:<br />
Behzad Rajabipour / Music: Hossein<br />
Alizadeh / Print source/rights:<br />
Mehrdad Sheikhan<br />
Mozaffar and Ramin Sheydaei<br />
Iran b.1957 and 1968<br />
Sib (The Story of Apple) 2000<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 14 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Mozaffar et Ramin<br />
Sheydaei / Editor: Mohammad<br />
Haghighi / Music: Mohammad Reza<br />
Aligholi / Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Mohammad Ali Soleymanzadeh<br />
Iran b.1955<br />
Kalaghi keh Mikhast Ghavita rin<br />
Bashed (A Crow Who Wanted to be<br />
the Strongest) 1998<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 12 minutes,<br />
Iran / Directors: Mohammad Ali<br />
Soleymanzadeh, Morteza Ahadi /<br />
Editor: Changiz Sayyad / Music:<br />
Malek-Iraj Panahi / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
General va Badbadak (The General<br />
And The Kite) 2004<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 14:30 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Mohammad Ali<br />
Soleymanzadeh / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Parvin Tajvid<br />
Iran b.1961<br />
Fakhte Tanha (The Lonely Cuckoo)<br />
1995<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 9 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Parvin Tajvid / Editor:<br />
Changiz Sayyad / Music: Parvas /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Ghesse-ye Panirak (The Story<br />
of Panirak) 1999<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
4:30 minutes, Iran, Farsi (English<br />
subtitles) / Director: Parvin Tajvid /<br />
Music: Saeed Shahrah / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Zibatarin Avaz (The Most Beautiful<br />
Song) 2000<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 7<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Parvin<br />
Tajvid / Editor: Ali Tahmasebi /<br />
Music: Albert Araklian / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Parvaz (Flight) 1993<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 12 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Farkhondeh Torabi /<br />
Editor: Changiz Sayyad / Music:<br />
Fardin Khalatbari / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Shangoul-o- Mangoul 1999<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 18 minutes,<br />
Iran / Directors: Farkhondeh Torabi,<br />
Morteza Ahadi Sarkani / Editor:<br />
Hassan Hassan-Doust / Music: Pirouz<br />
Arjomand / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Risheh dar Asseman (The Sprout)<br />
2006<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 8 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Farkhondeh Torabi /<br />
Editor: Hassan Hassan-Doust / Music:<br />
Ali-Reza Kohandayri / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Jabbar Vaziri<br />
Iran<br />
Sokoot-e Bimogheh (Untimely<br />
Silence) 1997<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
9 minutes, Iran, Farsi (English<br />
subtitles) / Director: Jabbar Vaziri /<br />
Editor: Changiz Sayyad / Music:<br />
Ansari / Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Khorro Pof (Snore) 1999<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 7:04 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Jabbar Vaziri / Editor:<br />
Changiz Sayyad / Music: Hossein<br />
Moradi, Bekman Alvandi / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Mehdi Zarringhalami<br />
Iran b.1976<br />
Beatle 2001<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 3<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Mehdi<br />
Zarringhalami / Print source/rights:<br />
Mehdi Zarringhalami<br />
One Two Three & Four 2003<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo, 4<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Mehdi<br />
Zarringhalami / Sound: Ali<br />
Zarringhalami / Print source/rights:<br />
Mehdi Zarringhalami<br />
Starving Inside a Whale 2007<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo, 13:30<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Mehdi<br />
Zarringhalami / Editor: Farshad<br />
Nekoomanesh / Sound: Mehdi<br />
Zarringhalami / Music: Sadegh<br />
Sajak / Print source/rights: Mehdi<br />
Zarringhalami<br />
Zamin bazi-e Baboosh (A Playground<br />
for Babousch) 1971<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 6:45<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Noureddin<br />
Zarrinkelk / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Tadee (Association of Ideas) 1973<br />
35mm, black and white, stereo, 4<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Noureddin<br />
Zarrinkelk / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Atal Matal Tootooleh 1974<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 5 minutes,<br />
Iran, Farsi (English subtitles) /<br />
Director: Noureddin Zarrinkelk / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Donyayeh Divaneh Divaneh (The<br />
Mad Mad Mad World) 1975<br />
35mm, black and white, stereo, 3:50<br />
minutes, Iran / Director: Noureddin<br />
Zarrinkelk / Print source/rights:<br />
Kanoon<br />
Amir Hamza the Lover and the<br />
Dancing Zebra 1977<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 26 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Noureddin Zarrinkelk /<br />
Print source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Cheshm-e Tang-e Donia-dar (One<br />
Two Three More …) 1980<br />
35mm, colour, stereo, 18 minutes,<br />
Iran / Director: Noureddin<br />
Zarrinkelk / Editor: Changiz Sayyad /<br />
Music: Abass DabrDanesh / Print<br />
source/rights: Kanoon<br />
Abargodratha (The Superpowers)<br />
1987<br />
35mm, black and white, stereo,<br />
12 minutes, Iran / Director:<br />
Noureddin Zarrinkelk / Print source/<br />
rights: Kanoon<br />
Pood (Persian Carpet) 1998<br />
Betacam, colour, stereo,<br />
17 minutes, Iran, Farsi (English<br />
subtitles) / Director: Noureddin<br />
Zarrinkelk / Based on a story by<br />
Nader Ebrahimy / Animator: Sahar<br />
Yasinpoor / Music: Saeid Zehni / Print<br />
source/rights: IRIB Media Trade<br />
Hassan Zaryabi Yekta<br />
Iran b.1962<br />
Zemzemaye Hasti (Whisper of<br />
Existence) 2005<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
8 minutes, Iran / Director/Script/<br />
Cinematographer: Hassan Zaryabi<br />
Yekta / Editor: Arash Karimi / Sound:<br />
Behroz Rezaei Mohammadi / Print<br />
source/rights: Documentary &<br />
Experimental Film Center<br />
Out of the Cup of Tea 2006<br />
Digital video, colour, stereo,<br />
15:39 minutes, Iran / Director:<br />
Hossein Zia’ee / Editor/Sound:<br />
Ramin Naddafi / Print source/rights:<br />
Documentary & Experimental Film<br />
Center<br />
Santosh Sivan<br />
India b.1961<br />
Production still from Tahaan: A Boy with a Grenade 2008<br />
35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 105 minutes, India,<br />
Hindi (English subtitles) / Image courtesy: IDream<br />
Independent Pictures, Middlesex<br />
250 251
Acknowledgments<br />
Sponsors<br />
Founding supporter:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Government</strong><br />
Presenting sponsor:<br />
Santos<br />
Principal benefactor:<br />
Tim Fairfax Family Foundation<br />
Principal partners:<br />
Australia Council<br />
Visual <strong>Art</strong>s and Craft Strategy<br />
(<strong>Art</strong>s <strong>Queensland</strong>)<br />
Major sponsors:<br />
Chairman’s Circle<br />
Industrea Limited<br />
Ishibashi Foundation<br />
Tourism & media partners:<br />
<strong>Art</strong> & Australia<br />
Adshel<br />
Brisbane Marketing<br />
The Courier-Mail<br />
Tourism <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
Austereo’s Triple M<br />
Network Ten<br />
ourbrisbane.com<br />
Supporting sponsors:<br />
Australia–China Council<br />
Australia–Korea Foundation<br />
Australia–India Council<br />
Australia–Malaysia Institute<br />
Australia–Thailand Institute<br />
Creative New Zealand<br />
Gordon Darling Foundation<br />
Japan Foundation<br />
Koryo Tours<br />
Sherman Contemporary <strong>Art</strong><br />
Foundation<br />
Kids’ APT:<br />
Tim Fairfax Family Foundation<br />
Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre: Santos<br />
Quest Community Newspapers<br />
(Summer Spectacular)<br />
APT regional programs:<br />
Visual <strong>Art</strong>s and Craft Strategy<br />
(<strong>Art</strong>s <strong>Queensland</strong>)<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ists<br />
The <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> wishes<br />
to thank the artists and filmmakers<br />
and their representatives for their<br />
generous assistance to APT6.<br />
Lenders<br />
The <strong>Gallery</strong> is grateful to the many<br />
lenders to the exhibition:<br />
Nicholas Bonner, Beijing<br />
Lenzi-Morisot Foundation,<br />
Singapore/France<br />
Private Collection of<br />
Mr and Mrs Shehab Gargash<br />
Newell Harry, Sydney<br />
Isabelle Levy and<br />
Geraldine Galateau, Paris<br />
Kukje <strong>Gallery</strong>, South Korea<br />
The MAC Collection, Dubai<br />
Dr Oei Hong Djien<br />
The Lekha and Anupam Poddar<br />
Collection<br />
Sigg Collection, Switzerland<br />
Tapi Collection, India<br />
And other private collectors who<br />
wish to remain anonymous.<br />
The <strong>Gallery</strong> acknowledges and<br />
thanks the many individuals and<br />
organisations that have generously<br />
supported APT6 artists and projects,<br />
as well as sharing advice during APT<br />
research and travel.<br />
Project Support<br />
26 Roots, Vanuatu: David and<br />
Caroline Nalo<br />
3RRR FM Melbourne: Namila Benson<br />
677 Band/One Television: Rineta<br />
‘Rinay’ Bennett<br />
Aboriginal <strong>Art</strong> Prints Network,<br />
Sydney: Michael Kershaw<br />
Dr Mohamad Abdalla, Brisbane<br />
AddIn, Ho Chi Minh City:<br />
Ngo Thai Uyen<br />
Waleed Aly, Melbourne<br />
Amalgamated Films, Charters<br />
Towers, Australia: Steven Snell<br />
Ambassade de France, Sydney:<br />
Jean-Jacques Garnier<br />
Carl Amneus, Sydney<br />
Annandale Galleries, Sydney:<br />
Bill & Anne Gregory<br />
Arario <strong>Gallery</strong>, Beijing: June Y Gwak,<br />
Hwajung Choi<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Vietnam, Hanoi: Suzanne Lecht<br />
Australia Network: Tania Nugent,<br />
Bernadette Nunn<br />
Australian Embassy, Hanoi:<br />
Ambassador Allaster Cox, Julie<br />
Glasgow, Aidan Storer (Austrade)<br />
and Embassy staff<br />
David Baker, Sydney<br />
Dale Berning, London<br />
Bishop Museum, Honolulu: Noelle<br />
Kahanu<br />
Bistaveos Productions, Vanuatu:<br />
Joe Tjiobang, Bong Veta<br />
Bob van Orsouw <strong>Gallery</strong>, Zurich:<br />
Eleonora Holthoff,<br />
Eveline Baumgartner<br />
Andrew Boe, Brisbane<br />
Brisbane Digital Images: Martin Barry<br />
Buena Vista International, South<br />
Yarra, Australia: Ivan Vukusic<br />
Catherine Dussart Productions, Paris<br />
Celluloid Dreams, Paris: Olivier<br />
<strong>Art</strong>hur, Anne-Sophie Lehec,<br />
Pascale Ramonda<br />
Central Motion Picture, Taipei:<br />
Gene Yao<br />
Kiri Chan, Brisbane<br />
Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai:<br />
Mort Chatterjee, Tara Lal<br />
Chinese-Taipei Film Archive, Taipei:<br />
Teresa Huang, Winston Lee<br />
CHM Supersound, Papua New<br />
Guinea: Richard Francisco,<br />
Stephen Rae<br />
Chung Tian Temple, Brisbane:<br />
Ven. Chueh-Shan, Peter Cheung<br />
Antonia Cimini, Beijing<br />
Compact Megastore:<br />
Thierry Caupert<br />
Creative New Zealand (development<br />
grant to Reuben Paterson)<br />
CulturesFrance, Paris<br />
Adrian Dannat, New York<br />
Linda Degeoffroy, New Caledonia<br />
Meredith Desha, Honolulu<br />
Devi <strong>Art</strong> Foundation, Gurgaon:<br />
Anupam & Lekha Poddar,<br />
Amit Kumar Jain, Jaya Neupaney,<br />
Shweta Wahi<br />
Do Dat Jump, New Caledonia:<br />
Mike O’Flynn, Andre Gaspart<br />
Edition Holiday Music, New<br />
Caledonia: Jean Luc Martin<br />
Fest’Napuan, Vanuatu:<br />
Ralph Rengenvanu<br />
Film Distribution, Paris:<br />
Martin Caraux<br />
Further <strong>Art</strong>s, Vanuatu: Tom Dick<br />
(now Brisbane)<br />
Gajah <strong>Gallery</strong>, Singapore:<br />
Jasdeep Sandhu, Aisha Amrin,<br />
Kimberley Croy, Krisstel Martin<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Barry Keldoulis, Sydney:<br />
Barry Keldoulis<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Nature Morte, New Delhi:<br />
Peter Nagy, Amrieka Takhar<br />
Erin Gleeson, Phnom Penh<br />
Gow Langsford <strong>Gallery</strong>, Auckland<br />
Josh and Los Green, Kuala Lumpur<br />
Grey Noise, Lahore: Umer Butt<br />
Benjamin Milton Hampe, Brisbane<br />
Hanart TZ <strong>Gallery</strong>, Hong Kong:<br />
Chang Tsong-zung, Marcello Kwan<br />
Han Bridge School, Ho Chi Minh City:<br />
Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao,<br />
Le Thi Cam Giang<br />
High Stakes Records, Auckland,<br />
New Zealand: Tiopira McDowell<br />
Justice Holmes, Brisbane<br />
The Honolulu Advertiser, Hawai’i<br />
Hopscotch Films, Sydney:<br />
Janine de Bry<br />
Hsiao-pei Chan, Taipei<br />
Huarere, Vanuatu: George Tapeta<br />
Kirk Huffman, Sydney<br />
Hui-ting Ho, Taipei<br />
Ibiza Bar & Restaurant, Hanoi:<br />
To Hanh Trinh, Tran Vu Hoai<br />
Institut National de l’Audiovisuel,<br />
Paris: Sylvie Dargnies<br />
Jan Manton <strong>Art</strong>, Brisbane: Jan Manton<br />
JBA Productions, Paris:<br />
Capucine Henry<br />
Nicholas Jose, Boston<br />
Jumbunna Indigenous House<br />
of Learning, Sydney:<br />
Jason De Santolo<br />
Katchafire, Hamilton, New Zealand:<br />
Logan Bell, Leila Tarawa<br />
Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama:<br />
Mayumi Hiran<br />
Koryo Tours, Beijing:<br />
Hannah Barraclough,<br />
Simon Cockerell, Cécile Matet,<br />
Emily Qiu<br />
KTUH 90.3, Hawai’i: Nick Yee<br />
and staff<br />
Kukje <strong>Gallery</strong>, Seoul:<br />
Hanyoung Chung, Suzie Kim,<br />
Yumi Koh, Seungmin Lee,<br />
Eunsie Park, Gimo Yi<br />
Deddy Kusuma, Jakarta<br />
LASALLE College of the <strong>Art</strong>s,<br />
Singapore: Milenko Prvacki<br />
Long March Space, Beijing:<br />
Lu Jie, Zoe Butt, Sheryl Cheung,<br />
David Tung<br />
Hamish McKay <strong>Gallery</strong>, Wellington:<br />
Hamish McKay<br />
Madman Entertainment, Melbourne:<br />
Paul Tonta<br />
Schultze Maetola, Solomon Islands<br />
Nasrin Maleki, Tehran<br />
Mai Tung, Ho Chi Minh City<br />
Mangrove Productions,<br />
New Caledonia: Anne-Lise<br />
Barbou, Stéphane Hervé,<br />
Alain Lecante<br />
Jack Siviu Martau, Port Vila, Vanuatu<br />
Max Protetch <strong>Gallery</strong>, New York:<br />
Josie Brown, Max Protetch<br />
Michael Lett, Auckland: Michael Lett<br />
Mizuma <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, Tokyo:<br />
Miho Osada<br />
Moving Productions, Auckland,<br />
New Zealand: Dave Allan<br />
National <strong>Art</strong>s Council, Singapore<br />
New Zero <strong>Art</strong> Space, Yangon:<br />
Aye Ko and New Zero/<br />
New Generation artists<br />
Peter McLeavey <strong>Gallery</strong>, Wellington:<br />
Peter McLeavey<br />
Principal Norbert, Vanuatu<br />
One TV, Solomon Islands:<br />
Dorothy Wickham, Terrence Ziru<br />
Osage <strong>Gallery</strong>, Hong Kong:<br />
Eugene Tan, Ong Puay Khim<br />
Ota Fine <strong>Art</strong>s, Tokyo: Hidenori Ota,<br />
Yasuko Kaneko<br />
ozreggae.com<br />
Pakipika Productions, Hawai’i:<br />
Spencer Toyama<br />
Tina Pang, Hong Kong<br />
Para/Site <strong>Art</strong> Space, Hong Kong:<br />
Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya,<br />
Sherona Chan<br />
Phare Ponleu Selpak, Battambang,<br />
Cambodia: Srey Bandol,<br />
Anna Tuyen Tran<br />
Tobias Putrih, Slovenia<br />
Michael Quennell, Brisbane<br />
Raking Leaves, London:<br />
Sharmini Pereira<br />
Roadshow Films, Brisbane:<br />
John Anderson<br />
Rodeo, Istanbul: Merve Elveren,<br />
Sylvia Kouvali<br />
Roi Roa Productions,<br />
Solomon Islands:<br />
Geoffrey ‘Gibby’ Molia<br />
rokrokmusic.com, Papua New<br />
Guinea: Emmanuel Narakobi<br />
Roslyn Oxley9 <strong>Gallery</strong>, Sydney:<br />
Roslyn Oxley<br />
Rossi & Rossi <strong>Gallery</strong>, London:<br />
Fabio Rossi<br />
Runa Islam Studio, London:<br />
Ewout Vellekoop<br />
John Salong, Vanuatu<br />
Sammy ‘Sharzy’ Saeni,<br />
Solomon Islands<br />
SCAI The Bathhouse,<br />
Shiraishi Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> Inc.,<br />
Tokyo: Fumiko Nagayoshi<br />
Catrin Seefranz, Vienna<br />
Alexandra Seno, Hong Kong<br />
ShanghART <strong>Gallery</strong>, Shanghai:<br />
Chen Yan; Lorenz Heibling,<br />
Jin Sun, Laura Zhou<br />
Sharpnote Records, Honolulu:<br />
Laka Preis Carpenter<br />
Shochiku, Tokyo: Yusuke Okada<br />
Shugo <strong>Art</strong>s, Tokyo<br />
Singapore Film Commission<br />
Solomon Islands Music Federation:<br />
Placid Walekwate<br />
Sony Pictures, Sydney:<br />
Michael Atkins<br />
Subodh Gupta Studio, Gurgaon:<br />
Flora Boillot, Pia Goswamy<br />
Sunshiners: La Chimiz Productions<br />
France/Vanuatu, Feal Cool<br />
Jazz, Gael Gag Chosson, Bibou<br />
Sebastien Pujol, David Nalo<br />
Sutton <strong>Gallery</strong>, Melbourne:<br />
Irene Sutton<br />
Tamasa Distribution, Paris:<br />
Laurence Berbon,<br />
Philippe Chevassu<br />
Tapi Collection, India:<br />
Praful Shah, Munira Akikwala<br />
Television Blong Vanuatu (TBV)<br />
Terrasphere Productions/<br />
Australasian World Music Expo:<br />
Simon Rayner<br />
The Japan Foundation, Sydney:<br />
Masafumi Konomi<br />
The Japan Foundation, Tokyo:<br />
Aiko Yatsuhashi<br />
The Third Line, Dubai:<br />
Tarané Ali Khan, Laila Binbreck,<br />
Claudia Cellini, Katrina Weber<br />
Tikidub Productions, Hamilton,<br />
New Zealand: Ninakaye<br />
Tokyo <strong>Gallery</strong>+BTAP, Tokyo:<br />
Miho Doi, Hiroyuki Sasaki<br />
Tomio Koyama <strong>Gallery</strong>, Tokyo:<br />
Satoko Hamada, Kosaku Kanechika,<br />
Tomio Koyama, Tomoko Omori<br />
Unisound Studios, Solomon Islands:<br />
Ronnie Buaoka, Inca Chow<br />
Unity Pacific, Auckland,<br />
New Zealand: Bryn Evans,<br />
Tigilau Ness<br />
Universal Pictures, Sydney:<br />
Daniel Fairclough<br />
Upper Hutt Posse, Aotearoa:<br />
Dean ‘Te Kupu’ Hapeta<br />
Uplands <strong>Gallery</strong>, Melbourne:<br />
Jarrod Rawlins<br />
Urban <strong>Art</strong> Projects, Brisbane:<br />
Daniel Tobin, Matthew Tobin<br />
Vanuata Productions, Vanuatu:<br />
Jean-Marc Wong<br />
Vinausteel and SSESTEEL, Hanoi:<br />
Henry Lam, Alan Young<br />
White Cube <strong>Gallery</strong>, London: Hayley<br />
Embleton, Sophie Grieg<br />
XX Squad, Vanuatu: Marcel ‘Mars<br />
Melto’ Meltherorong<br />
Zennith and Andrea Gower, Kuranda,<br />
Australia<br />
Cambodia<br />
Java Café and <strong>Gallery</strong>, Phnom Penh:<br />
Dana Langlois<br />
Reyum Institute, Phnom Penh:<br />
Ly Daravuth, Van Sovanny<br />
China<br />
Ai Weiwei<br />
Australian Consulate-General,<br />
Shanghai<br />
Australian Embassy, Beijing:<br />
Ambassador Dr Geoff Raby,<br />
Jill Collins and Embassy staff<br />
Beijing Commune: Leng Lin<br />
China Academy of <strong>Art</strong>, Hangzhou:<br />
Gao Fu Yan, Zhang Peili:<br />
Gao Shiming<br />
Qiu Zhijie<br />
Red Gate <strong>Gallery</strong>, Beijing:<br />
Brian Wallace<br />
Song Dong<br />
Shanghai <strong>Art</strong> Museum: Zhang Qing<br />
Wang Qingsong<br />
India<br />
Nancy Adajania<br />
<strong>Art</strong> India: Abhay Sardesai<br />
Australian High Commission, New<br />
Delhi: High Commissioner Peter<br />
Varghese and Commission staff<br />
Rustom Bharucha<br />
Galerie 88, Kolkata: Supriya Banerjee<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Chemould, Mumbai:<br />
Shireen Ghandy<br />
Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke,<br />
Mumbai: Ranjana Mirchandani<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> SKE, Bangalore<br />
Goethe-Institut, Kolkata: Raju Raman<br />
Suman Gopinath<br />
Ranjit Hoskote<br />
Geeta Kapur<br />
Deeksha Nath<br />
Photoink, New Delhi:<br />
Devika Daulet-Singh<br />
Project 88, Mumbai: Sree Goswany<br />
Sakshi <strong>Gallery</strong>, Mumbai:<br />
Geetha Mehra<br />
Chaitanya Sambrani<br />
Kumar Shahani<br />
Pooja Sood<br />
Vivan Sundaram<br />
Talwar <strong>Gallery</strong>, New Delhi/New York:<br />
Deepak Talwar<br />
Vadehra <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>, New Delhi:<br />
Roshini Vadehra<br />
Grant Watson<br />
Japan<br />
<strong>Art</strong>-iT/Real Tokyo: Tetsuya Ozaki<br />
Mori <strong>Art</strong> Museum, Tokyo:<br />
Fumio Nanjo<br />
Australian Embassy, Tokyo:<br />
Ambassador Mr AM McLean,<br />
OAM, Hitomi Toku and Embassy<br />
staff<br />
The Japan Foundation, Tokyo:<br />
Yasuko Furuichi, Aki Hoashi<br />
Hisako Hara<br />
Tokyo Wonder Site:<br />
Yusaku Imamura<br />
Yokohama Museum of <strong>Art</strong>:<br />
Taro Amano<br />
Korea<br />
Alternative <strong>Art</strong> Space Bandee, Busan:<br />
Seong-Youn Kim<br />
Alternative Space LOOP, Seoul:<br />
Jinsuk Suh, Yonghee Sung;<br />
Australian Embassy, Seoul:<br />
Ambassador Sam Gerovich and<br />
Embassy staff<br />
Busan Biennale, Busan: Seung Bo Jun<br />
Gertrude Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> Spaces,<br />
Melbourne: Alexie Glass-Kantor<br />
Gyeonggi Museum of Modern <strong>Art</strong>,<br />
Ansan: Kim Hong-hee<br />
Manu Park<br />
PKM <strong>Gallery</strong>, Seoul: Yoewool Kang,<br />
Hye seung Chung<br />
SSamzieSpace, Seoul: Hyunjin Shin,<br />
Hyunsook Ahn<br />
Young-hae Chang & Marc Voge<br />
Malaysia<br />
Australian High Commission, Kuala<br />
Lumpur: High Commissioner<br />
Penny Williams and Commission<br />
staff<br />
Roslisham Ismail (Ise)<br />
Eva McGovern<br />
Myanmar (Burma)<br />
Aung Ko<br />
Australian Embassy, Rangoon:<br />
Ambassador Michelle Chan<br />
and Embassy staff<br />
Chaw Ei Thein<br />
Phyu Ei Thein<br />
Pacific<br />
Peter Brunt, Wellington<br />
Govett-Brewster <strong>Gallery</strong>, New<br />
Plymouth: Rhana Devenport<br />
Tjibaou Cultural Centre, Noumea:<br />
Emmanuel Kasarerhou<br />
Karen Kosasa, Honolulu<br />
Kapulani Landgraf, Honolulu<br />
Robert Leonard, Brisbane<br />
Sean Mallon, Wellington<br />
Ngahiraka Mason, Auckland<br />
Justin Paton, Christchurch<br />
Jeannette Paulson Hereniko,<br />
Honolulu<br />
Momoe Von Reiche, Samoa<br />
Pakistan<br />
Australian High Commission,<br />
Islamabad: High Commissioner<br />
Timothy George and Commission<br />
staff<br />
Green Cardamom, London:<br />
Hammad Nasser<br />
Salima Hashmi<br />
Quddus Mirza<br />
Huma Mulji<br />
Rashid Rana<br />
Philippines<br />
Poklong Anading<br />
Australian Embassy, Manila:<br />
Ambassador Rod Smith<br />
and Embassy staff<br />
Ringo Bunoan<br />
Joselina Cruz<br />
Gina Fairley<br />
Patrick Flores<br />
Judy Freya Sibayan<br />
Green Papaya <strong>Art</strong> Projects, Manila:<br />
Norberto (Peewee) Roldan<br />
David Griggs<br />
252 253
Barbara Hermon<br />
Jose Legaspi<br />
Ramon Lerma<br />
Movement 8<br />
Singapore<br />
Australian High Commission,<br />
Singapore: High Commissioner<br />
Doug Chester and Commission<br />
staff<br />
Heman Chong<br />
Lee Weng Choy<br />
Matthew Ngui<br />
Tan Boon Hui<br />
Jose Tay<br />
June Yap<br />
Taiwan<br />
AKI <strong>Gallery</strong>, Taipei: Rick Wang<br />
Chi-Wen <strong>Gallery</strong>, Taipei:<br />
Joanne CW Huang<br />
Francois Elphick<br />
Galerie Grand Siècle, Taipei:<br />
Tseng Chi-rung<br />
Lee Mingwei Studio, Taipei<br />
VT <strong>Art</strong> Salon, Taipei; Sean Hu<br />
and staff<br />
Yu Cheng Ta<br />
Thailand<br />
100 Tonson <strong>Gallery</strong>, Bangkok:<br />
Aey Phanachet<br />
Australian Embassy, Bangkok:<br />
Ambassador Paul Grigson,<br />
Piyarat Suksiri and Embassy staff<br />
Bangkok <strong>Art</strong> & Culture Centre:<br />
Chatvichai Promadhattavedi<br />
Bangkok University <strong>Gallery</strong>:<br />
Ark Fongsmut<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Ver, Bangkok:<br />
Pratchaya Phinthong<br />
Gridthiya Gaweewong<br />
David Teh<br />
Vietnam<br />
San <strong>Art</strong>, Ho Chi Minh City:<br />
Dinh Q Le, Zoe Butt<br />
Do Tuong Linh<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> Quynh, Ho Chi Minh City:<br />
Quynh Pham<br />
Sue Hajdu<br />
Tran Luong<br />
Australian Cinémathèque<br />
Promised Lands<br />
Kasim Abid, London<br />
AFD/Typecast Films, Seattle:<br />
Alex O Williams<br />
Agav Films, Paris: Sandrine Beeri<br />
Kamal Aljafari, Cambridge,<br />
United States<br />
Annet Gelink <strong>Gallery</strong>, Amsterdam:<br />
Carolien Sijberden,<br />
Floor Wullems<br />
Nora Armani, Paris<br />
<strong>Art</strong>avazd Pelechian, Moscow<br />
Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Brisbane:<br />
Maxine Williamson<br />
Nurith Aviv, Paris<br />
Yael Bartana, Tel Aviv<br />
Beofilm, Copenhagen:<br />
David B Sørensen<br />
Rinkoo Bhowmik, Singapore<br />
Brisbane International Film Festival,<br />
Brisbane: Anne Demy-Geroe<br />
British Film Institute, London:<br />
Andrew Youdell<br />
Canadian Filmmakers Distribution<br />
Centre, Toronto: Larissa Fan<br />
Celluloid Dreams, Paris:<br />
Pascale Ramonda, Olivier <strong>Art</strong>hur,<br />
Anne-Sophie Lehec<br />
Centre for Contemporary <strong>Art</strong><br />
Afghanistan, Kabul<br />
Neel Chaudhury, New Delhi<br />
Doc&Film International, Paris:<br />
Hwa-Seon Choi<br />
DreamLab Films, Le Cannet, France:<br />
Nasrine Médard de Chardon<br />
Ego Films <strong>Art</strong>, Toronto:<br />
Marcy Gerstein<br />
Films Boutique, Berlin:<br />
Charlotte Renaut<br />
Films sans Frontières, Paris:<br />
Christophe Calmels<br />
The family of Ritwik Ghatak, Calcutta<br />
Golden Apricot Fund For Cinema<br />
Development, Yerevan, Armenia:<br />
Tatevik Manoukyan<br />
Griffith University, Brisbane:<br />
Dr Debra Porch<br />
Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige,<br />
Paris and Beirut<br />
Héliotrope Films, Paris:<br />
Laurent Aléonard<br />
Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy,<br />
Islamabad<br />
IDream Independent Pictures,<br />
Middlesex, United Kingdom:<br />
Kanika Vasudeva, Soniya Kulkarni<br />
Iranian Independents, Tehran:<br />
Mohammad Atebbai<br />
Lamia Joreige, Beirut<br />
Sanjay Kak, New Delhi<br />
Harutyun Khachatryan, Yerevan<br />
Le Galerie La B.A.N.K, Paris:<br />
Celine Brugnon<br />
Les Films du Losange, Paris:<br />
Thomas Petit<br />
Tareque Masud & Catherine Masud,<br />
Dhaka<br />
Mk2, Paris: Saadia Karim<br />
Momento Films International, Paris:<br />
Marion Klotz<br />
National Film and Sound Archive,<br />
Canberra: Quentin Turnour<br />
National Film Archive of India, Pune:<br />
Vijay H Jadhav<br />
Norwegian Film Institute, Oslo:<br />
Toril Simonsen<br />
Oslo Dokumentarkino, Norway:<br />
Sarah Prosser<br />
Ayman Ouda, Melbourne<br />
Palace Films, Melbourne: Tony Zrna<br />
Dharmasena Pathiraja, Colombo<br />
Pyramid International, Paris:<br />
Paul Richer<br />
Pervez Sharma, New York<br />
Jocelyne Saab, Paris<br />
Larissa Sansour, Copenhagen<br />
Serendipity Point Films, Toronto:<br />
Wendy Saffer<br />
Seventh <strong>Art</strong> Releasing, Los Angeles:<br />
Udy Epstein<br />
Sharmill Films, Melbourne: Elly Smart<br />
Sinefilm-Pelin Esmer, Istanbul: Tolga<br />
Esmer, Armagan Lale<br />
Sarah Singh, New York<br />
Eyal Sivan, London<br />
South Asian Cinema Foundation,<br />
London<br />
Supriyo Sen, Kolkata<br />
Tamasa Distribution, Paris: Laurence<br />
Berbon, Philippe Chevassu<br />
Gariné Torossian, Toronto<br />
Unlimited Films, Paris: Philippe Avril,<br />
Marc Troonen<br />
University of Sydney:<br />
Dr Laleen Jayamanne<br />
Urban Media International, Paris:<br />
Clément Duboin<br />
Vtape, Toronto, Canada:<br />
Wanda vanderStoop<br />
Prasanna Vithanage, Colombo<br />
Wide Management, Paris: Camille<br />
Rousselet, Amélie Garin-Davet<br />
Wild Bunch, Paris: Esther Devos<br />
Akram Zaatari, Beirut<br />
The Cypress and the Crow:<br />
50 Years of Iranian Animation<br />
Esfandiar Ahmadieh, Tehran<br />
Parsooa Ahmadieh, Toronto<br />
Arya Sanat Takhayol, Boroujerd, Iran:<br />
Daryoush Dalvand<br />
Abbas Banaei, Tehran<br />
Maryam Bayani, Tehran<br />
Mahbod Bazrafshan, Shiraz<br />
Giannalberto Bendazzi, Tehran<br />
Brisbane International Film Festival,<br />
Brisbane: Anne Demy-Geroe<br />
Documentary and Experimental<br />
Film Center (DEFC), Tehran:<br />
Shirin Naderi<br />
Dreamlab Films, Le Cannet, France:<br />
Nasrine Médard de Chardon<br />
Elypse Short Film Distribution,<br />
Cáceres, Spain: Muriel Gravouil<br />
Farabi Cinema Foundation, Tehran:<br />
Reza Tashakkori<br />
Vadjiollah Fard Moghadam, Tehran<br />
Shahram Heydarian, Tehran<br />
Bozorgmehr Hosseinpour Tehran<br />
Iranian Young Cinema Society (IYCS),<br />
Tehran: Hassan Dezvareh<br />
Fatemeh Jafari, Tehran<br />
Kanoon, Institute for the Intellectual<br />
Development of Children and<br />
Young Adults (IIDCYA),<br />
Tehran: Maryam Bafekhpour,<br />
Zohreh Shamloo Fard<br />
Sarvenaz Karimianpour, Tehran<br />
Maryam Khalilzadeh, Tehran<br />
Laleh Khorramian, New York<br />
Omid Khoshnazar, Isfahan<br />
Les films du Paradoxe,<br />
Bois-Colombes, France:<br />
Anne-Laure Morel<br />
Les Films du Préau, Paris:<br />
Emmanuelle Chevalier and<br />
Marie Bourillon<br />
Amir Mehran, Sabzevar, Iran<br />
Melbourne International Animation<br />
Festival (MIAF): Malcolm Turner<br />
Mashaallah Mohammadi, Sanadaj,<br />
Iran<br />
Shirin Mozaffari, Chicago<br />
Siavash Naghshbandi Tehran<br />
Najmeh Namjou, Tehran<br />
Raiavin Studio, Tehran: Moin Samadi,<br />
Minoo Janmohammadi<br />
Rasaneh Fard Company, Tehran:<br />
Sholeh Soltanpoor and<br />
Arash Yaghmaeian<br />
Zohal Razavi, Tehran<br />
Research and Production Centre<br />
for Animated Motion Pictures<br />
(RPCA), Tehran: Maryam Naghibi<br />
Saba Center, Tehran: Changiz Hasani<br />
and Maryam Mousavi<br />
Salon 94, New York: Sirui Yan,<br />
Fabienne Stephan,<br />
Alissa Friedman<br />
Farshid Shafiyee (Shafiei), Tehran<br />
Alireza Shahrokhi, Tehran<br />
Mehrdad Sheikhan Tehran<br />
Mohammad Hossein Tehrani, Tehran<br />
Mehdi Zaringhalami, Tehran<br />
Noureddin Zarrinkelk, Tehran<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Board of Trustees<br />
Professor John Hay, ac (Chair)<br />
Dr Amanda Bell<br />
Tim Fairfax, am<br />
Mark Gray<br />
John Lobban<br />
David Millhouse<br />
Avril Quaill<br />
David Williams<br />
Executive Management Team<br />
Tony Ellwood, Director<br />
Andrew Clark, Deputy Director,<br />
Programming and Corporate<br />
Services<br />
Lynne Seear, Deputy Director,<br />
Curatorial and Collection<br />
Development<br />
Celestine Doyle, Manager, Marketing<br />
and Business Development<br />
Curatorial Team<br />
Tony Ellwood, Director<br />
Lynne Seear, Deputy Director,<br />
Curatorial and Collection<br />
Development<br />
Suhanya Raffel, Curatorial Manager,<br />
Asian and Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Russell Storer, Curator,<br />
Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Maud Page, Curator, Contemporary<br />
Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Andrew Clark, Deputy Director,<br />
Programming and Corporate<br />
Services / Kids’ APT<br />
Kathryn Weir, Curatorial Manager,<br />
International <strong>Art</strong> and Australian<br />
Cinémathèque / Australian<br />
Cinémathèque<br />
Jose Da Silva, Associate Curator,<br />
Film, Video and New Media /<br />
Cinema, South Korea, Taiwan<br />
Julie Ewington, Curatorial Manager,<br />
Australian <strong>Art</strong> / Australia<br />
Miranda Wallace, Acting Head of<br />
Managerial Research / India<br />
Assisted by:<br />
Mellissa Kavenagh, Assistant Curator,<br />
Asian and Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Robyn Ziebell, Project Officer, Asian<br />
and Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Ruth McDougall, Curatorial Assistant,<br />
Asian and Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Naomi Evans, Assistant Curator,<br />
International Contemporary <strong>Art</strong><br />
Francis E Parker, Curator,<br />
Contemporary Australian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Bree Richards, Curatorial Assistant,<br />
Contemporary Australian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Rosie Hays, Assistant Curator, Cinema<br />
Acquisitions and Programming<br />
Olivia Malheiro, Australian<br />
Cinémathèque Intern<br />
Co-curators<br />
Nicholas Bonner, Beijing<br />
Brent Clough, Sydney<br />
Rich Streitmatter-Tran,<br />
Ho Chi Minh City<br />
Australian Centre of Asia Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
(ACAPA) Visiting Scholars<br />
Shihoko Iida, Tokyo<br />
Rose Issa, London<br />
Yvonne Low, Singapore<br />
Jose Tay, National Museum<br />
of Singapore<br />
Para/Site <strong>Art</strong> Space Curatorial<br />
Training Program, Hong Kong:<br />
Alvis Choi, Michelle Lee,<br />
Wong Wing Fung<br />
Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre programs<br />
Kids’ APT<br />
Andrew Clark, Deputy Director,<br />
Programming and Corporate<br />
Services<br />
Don Heron, Design Manager<br />
Kate Ryan, Program Officer,<br />
Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre and Youth<br />
Kerrie Campbell, Exhibition Designer<br />
Donna McColm, Senior Program<br />
Officer, Education, Children’s <strong>Art</strong><br />
Centre and Membership<br />
Michael O’Sullivan, Senior Exhibition<br />
Designer<br />
Maud Page, Curator, Contemporary<br />
Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Kate Perry, Designer<br />
Suhanya Raffel, Curatorial Manager,<br />
Asian and Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Paul Smith, Multimedia and Web<br />
Designer<br />
Russell Storer, Curator,<br />
Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Warren Watson, Installation<br />
Coordinator<br />
Tim Walsh, Education and Public<br />
Programs Assistant<br />
Jessica White, Assistant Exhibition<br />
Designer<br />
Kids’ APT Summer Spectacular<br />
Andrew Clark, Deputy Director,<br />
Programming and Corporate<br />
Services<br />
Donna McColm, Senior Program<br />
Officer, Education, Children’s <strong>Art</strong><br />
Centre and Membership<br />
Kate Ryan, Program Officer, Education<br />
and Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre<br />
Mellissa Kavenagh, Curatorial<br />
Assistant, Asian and Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Fiona McFadyen, Project Officer,<br />
Children’s <strong>Art</strong> Centre and Youth<br />
Dana Mam, Marketing Assistant<br />
Melinda Nutt, Assistant Exhibition<br />
Designer<br />
Maud Page, Curator, Contemporary<br />
Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Francis E Parker, Curator,<br />
Contemporary Australian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Kate Perry, Designer<br />
Raymonda Rajkowski, Project<br />
Assistant, Managerial Research<br />
Suhanya Raffel, Curatorial Manager,<br />
Asian and Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Bree Richards, Curatorial Assistant,<br />
Contemporary Australian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Claire Robertson, Education and<br />
Public Programs Assistant<br />
Russell Storer, Curator,<br />
Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Camilla Tunnell, Project Officer,<br />
Regional Services<br />
Tim Walsh, Education and Public<br />
Programs Assistant<br />
Project Team<br />
Graeme Archibald, Head of<br />
Protection and Services<br />
and staff<br />
Suzanne Berry, Financial Services<br />
Manager<br />
and staff<br />
Allan Brand, Head of Technology<br />
and staff<br />
Tarragh Cunningham, Exhibition<br />
Manager<br />
and staff<br />
Celestine Doyle, Manager, Marketing<br />
and Business Development<br />
Bronwyn Klepp, Senior Marketing<br />
and Advertising Coordinator<br />
Alexis Wheatley, Acting Marketing<br />
and Advertising Coordinator<br />
Shirley Powell, Senior<br />
Communications Officer<br />
Amelia Gundelach, Media<br />
Coordinator<br />
Elliott Murray, Senior Project<br />
Designer, Marketing<br />
Hayley Owen, Acting Projects and<br />
Events Coordinator<br />
and staff<br />
Andrew Dudley, Head of Registration<br />
Catherine Henderson, Assistant<br />
Registrar, Major Projects<br />
and staff<br />
Don Heron, Design Manager<br />
Michael O’Sullivan, Senior Exhibition<br />
Designer<br />
Jenna Scurrah, Acting Senior<br />
Graphic Designer<br />
Sarah Ballard, Graphic Designer<br />
Kerrie Campbell, Exhibition Designer<br />
Rebekah Coffey, Assistant Exhibition<br />
Designer<br />
John Francia, Exhibition Project<br />
Assistant<br />
Peter Liddy, Installation Coordinator<br />
Warren Watson, Installation<br />
Coordinator<br />
and staff<br />
Linda Mehan, Commercial Services<br />
Manager<br />
and staff<br />
Amanda Pagliarino, Acting Head<br />
of Conservation<br />
and staff<br />
Kate Ravenswood, Head of Access,<br />
Education and Regional Services<br />
Donna McColm, Senior Program<br />
Officer, Education, Children’s <strong>Art</strong><br />
Centre and Membership<br />
Helen Bovey, Program Officer, Visitor<br />
Services<br />
Melina Mallos, Curriculum and<br />
Education Programs Officer<br />
Sarah Stratton, Program Officer,<br />
Education and Public Programs<br />
and staff<br />
Miranda Wallace, Acting Head<br />
of Managerial Research<br />
and staff<br />
Volunteers<br />
The <strong>Gallery</strong> also wishes to thank the<br />
many volunteers who have given their<br />
time and expertise to the project.<br />
Publication<br />
Publication committee:<br />
Tony Ellwood, Director<br />
Lynne Seear, Deputy Director,<br />
Curatorial and Collection<br />
Development<br />
Suhanya Raffel, Curatorial Manager,<br />
Asian and Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Russell Storer, Curator,<br />
Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Julie Ewington, Curatorial Manager,<br />
Australian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Kathryn Weir, Curatorial Manager,<br />
International <strong>Art</strong> and Australian<br />
Cinémathèque<br />
Miranda Wallace, Acting Head of<br />
Managerial Research<br />
Don Heron, Design Manager<br />
Design: Emily Engel,<br />
Graphic Designer<br />
Judy Gunning, Head of Information<br />
and Publishing Services<br />
Editor: Rebecca Dezuanni,<br />
Acting Senior Editor<br />
Curatorial editor: Russell Storer,<br />
Curator, Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Editorial assistants: Kylie Timmins,<br />
Publications Assistant; Stephanie<br />
Kennard, Project Assistant<br />
Additional editing: Sarah Stutchbury,<br />
Senior Managerial Researcher<br />
Copyright and images: Robyn<br />
Ziebell, Project Officer, Asian<br />
and Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Photography of art works by Natasha<br />
Harth, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>,<br />
unless otherwise credited. All other<br />
photography credited as known.<br />
Research assistance:<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Research<br />
Library staff<br />
254 255
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> Foundation<br />
The <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Foundation, the <strong>Gallery</strong>’s fundraising<br />
arm, assists with the development<br />
of the <strong>Gallery</strong>’s Collection and<br />
exhibition programs by raising vital<br />
funding from individuals and the<br />
corporate sector.<br />
Special Patron<br />
Adshel<br />
Ai Weiwei<br />
Annabel Anderson<br />
Australia Council<br />
Philip Bacon, am<br />
Michael Simcha Baevski<br />
Brisbane Marketing<br />
Henry and Amanda Bartlett Trust<br />
Francesco Conz<br />
Grace L Davies (dec’d)<br />
Nell C Davies (dec’d)<br />
In honour of Tory & Beatrice Cossart<br />
of Boonah – the gift of James Ellis<br />
(dec’d) & Jessica Ellis (dec’d)<br />
Gina Fairfax<br />
Tim Fairfax, am<br />
Ann Gamble Myer<br />
Max Gimblett<br />
Nicholas Jose and Claire Roberts<br />
Lawrence F King (dec’d) in memory<br />
of the late Mr and Mrs SW King<br />
Yayoi Kusama<br />
Lee Ufan<br />
Daphne Morgan<br />
The Myer Foundation<br />
Network Ten (Brisbane) Pty Ltd<br />
Timothy North<br />
and Denise Cuthbert<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> Events Corporation<br />
Pty Ltd<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> Newspapers Pty Ltd<br />
Santos Ltd<br />
Singapore Airlines Limited<br />
James C Sourris<br />
Tim Fairfax Family Foundation<br />
Tourism <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
Xstrata Coal Pty Ltd<br />
Patron<br />
Dr Norman Behan, ao, cmg, lld<br />
(Hon.) (dec’d)<br />
Foster’s Australia<br />
Idemitsu Kosan Co. Ltd<br />
Dr Jann Marshall<br />
Mike Parr<br />
Dr Robert Piaggio<br />
Alan and Jancis Rees<br />
Rio Tinto Alcan<br />
William Robinson, ao,<br />
and Shirley Robinson<br />
Win Schubert<br />
Sir Hercules Sinnamon, obe (dec’d)<br />
In memory of Vincent and<br />
Johanna Stack<br />
Wang Qingsong<br />
Vice Patron<br />
Airey family<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Exhibitions Australia Limited<br />
Austereo Brisbane Ltd<br />
David Baker<br />
Lawrence Daws<br />
Gadens Lawyers<br />
Professor John Hay, ac,<br />
and Barbara Hay<br />
Dr Geoffrey Hirst<br />
Professor Lawrence Hirst<br />
Major Brisbane Festivals<br />
Cathryn Mittelheuser, am<br />
Margaret Mittelheuser, am<br />
Margaret Olley, ac<br />
Valmai Pidgeon, am<br />
The Thomas Foundation<br />
Xstrata<br />
Governor<br />
Ah Xian<br />
Andrew Thyne Reid Charitable Trust<br />
Anonymous<br />
Anonymous<br />
Ausenco Pty Ltd<br />
Australia–Indonesia Institute<br />
Bank of <strong>Queensland</strong> Limited<br />
Thomas Bradley<br />
Mr and Mrs Peter W Bray<br />
Brisbane City Council<br />
Centenary of Federation <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
Christopher Chapman<br />
Clemenger<br />
Coles Myer Ltd<br />
Commonwealth Bank of Australia<br />
Patrick Corrigan, am,<br />
and Barbara Corrigan<br />
Creative New Zealand <strong>Art</strong>s Council<br />
of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa<br />
Lauraine Diggins<br />
James Fairfax, ao<br />
Gordon Darling Foundation<br />
Ian Holland (dec’d)<br />
James Hardie Industries Limited<br />
W Ross Johnston<br />
Geoff Kleem<br />
A Ray Lewis<br />
Dr Morris Low<br />
Jack Manton Benefaction<br />
Mazda Australia Pty Limited<br />
Phillip and Barbara McConnell<br />
Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance<br />
Company<br />
James Mollison, ao<br />
Motorline BMW<br />
National Australia Bank Limited<br />
Nikko Securities Australia<br />
Nomura Australia Limited<br />
Roslyn and Tony Oxley<br />
Pioneer Sugar Mills Limited<br />
The Potter Family Trust<br />
PricewaterhouseCoopers<br />
Betty P Quelhurst (dec’d)<br />
Quest Community Newspapers<br />
Conty M Robinson (dec’d)<br />
Samsung Electronics Australia<br />
Alan CA Thiess<br />
G Bette Tipper<br />
Melvyn G Tipper<br />
Lady Trout (dec’d)<br />
Ashby Utting<br />
Sir Bruce Watson, ac (dec’d)<br />
Lady Watson<br />
Lyn Williams, am<br />
Greg Woolley<br />
Founder Benefactor<br />
ABC Television<br />
Accor Hotels and Resorts<br />
ANZ Banking Group Ltd<br />
Australia–China Council<br />
Australia–India Council<br />
Australian Posters<br />
Robin Bade and Michael Parkin<br />
Dr Anne Best<br />
BHP Billiton Limited<br />
Boral Limited<br />
Marion Borgelt<br />
William D Bowness<br />
Stephen Bush<br />
The Hon. Ian Callinan, ac<br />
Castlemaine Perkins Limited<br />
Estate of the late Margaret Cilento<br />
Corrs Chambers Westgarth<br />
Dr Jim Cousins, ao,<br />
and Libby Cousins<br />
CSR Limited<br />
David Jones Limited<br />
Estate of the late Sally Welch Edwards<br />
Dr Paul Eliadis<br />
Friends of the <strong>Queensland</strong><br />
<strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
Robin F Gibson, ao<br />
Simryn Gill<br />
Dr Nicholas S Girdis, cbe<br />
James T Gleeson, ao<br />
Goldman Sachs JBWere<br />
Jocelyn R Gow<br />
Charles and Cornelia Goode<br />
Barbara and Peter Grant<br />
Robin Greer<br />
Katharina Grosse<br />
Doug Hall, am<br />
Evelyn F Harrison<br />
Phillip C Harrison<br />
HarrisonNess<br />
Haulmark Group<br />
May Heck<br />
Hitachi Australia Ltd<br />
Margaret Hockey, oam (dec’d),<br />
in memory of Patrick Hockey<br />
Ishibashi Foundation<br />
Japan Foundation<br />
Japan Travel Bureau (Aust.) Pty Ltd<br />
J Johnstone<br />
Dr Dominic H Katter, ranr<br />
Wayne N Kratzmann<br />
Leighton Contractors Pty Limited<br />
Nigel Lendon<br />
Louis Vuitton Australia Pty Ltd<br />
Macquarie Group Foundation<br />
The Manton Family in loving memory<br />
of Joyce Mary Snelling, mbe<br />
Jennifer J Manton<br />
Estate of the late Ouida Marsten<br />
Joyce G McCracken (dec’d)<br />
Mary McKillop<br />
John M Michelmore<br />
Naomi Milgrom<br />
Mitsui & Co. (Australia) Pty Ltd<br />
Ivor G Morris, cmg<br />
Douglas GM Murphy, am (dec’d)<br />
and A Nancy Murphy<br />
NQX Freight System<br />
ourbrisbane.com<br />
Playking Foundation Pty Ltd<br />
Qantas Airways Limited<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> Alumina Ltd<br />
Scott Redford<br />
Anne Regan<br />
Rio Tinto Limited<br />
George V Roberts, cbe<br />
Sir Albert Sakzewski (dec’d)<br />
Screen Offset Printing<br />
Lady Yoko Fukano Sewell<br />
Shell Company of Australia Limited<br />
Noela Shepherdson (dec’d)<br />
The Sidney Myer Fund<br />
Christopher Simon<br />
Drs Philip and Lenna Smith<br />
Heather M Stoney<br />
Thiess Pty Ltd<br />
Steven Tonge<br />
Utah Foundation<br />
Carl Warner<br />
Westpac Banking Corporation<br />
Fellow<br />
ACI Glass Packaging Australia<br />
Allens <strong>Art</strong>hur Robinson<br />
John G Allpass<br />
Richard Anderson, oam,<br />
and Margaret Anderson<br />
Anonymous<br />
Anonymous<br />
Joy A Anton<br />
Architectus<br />
Arija Austin<br />
<strong>Art</strong>bank<br />
Australia–Korea Foundation<br />
Russell F Banham<br />
C Ian Barclay, cbe, am<br />
Sylvia D Bassingthwaighte<br />
Barbara Bedwell<br />
Adeline G Bell (dec’d)<br />
Edward P Benson, am<br />
John L Bickford<br />
Barbara Blackman<br />
BP Australia Limited<br />
British Council Australia<br />
Brookfield Multiplex Developments<br />
Pty Ltd<br />
Geoffrey Brown<br />
Kay E Bryan<br />
Bundaberg Sugar Ltd<br />
Avril Burn<br />
Dr Sheena Burnell<br />
Thomas R Burrell, obe (dec’d)<br />
Con & Anne Castrisos<br />
Irene Chou<br />
ClarkeKann Lawyers<br />
Daryl Clifford<br />
The Hon. PD Connolly, csi, cbe, qc<br />
(dec’d)<br />
Elizabeth M Cooper (dec’d)<br />
Tim BI Crommelin<br />
Dr Ailbhe M Cunningham<br />
Dr W Frank Cunningham<br />
Winifred Davson, mbe<br />
Robyn Daw<br />
Domenico De Clario<br />
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu<br />
eX de Medici<br />
Department of Foreign Affairs<br />
and Trade<br />
Kiernan D Dorney, am, qc<br />
Barbara Duhig<br />
G June Dunn<br />
Professor Hugh Dunn, ao (dec’d)<br />
and Marney Dunn<br />
Dr Damon Eisen<br />
Robyn Elphinstone<br />
Ergon Energy<br />
Ernst & Young<br />
The Hon. Paul Everingham, ao<br />
B R Fadden<br />
Peter Fay<br />
Joan I Fletcher<br />
The Follent Family<br />
Dr Ross Forgan-Smith<br />
Dr Ian H Frazer<br />
Islay W Frazer-Ryan<br />
Carrillo Gantner, ao,<br />
and Ziyin Gantner<br />
Ian and Christine George<br />
Frances Gerard<br />
Marian Gibney<br />
Ailsa J Gillies<br />
Dr Judith H Gold, cm,<br />
and Dr Edgar Gold, am, cm, qc<br />
Professor Kenneth L Goodwin, am<br />
Wayne K Goss<br />
Jack Grace and Janet Grace<br />
Ian J Gray<br />
Alan E Greenaway<br />
Paul Greenaway, oam<br />
Dr Margaret Greenidge<br />
Lillian B Gresham, mbe (dec’d)<br />
CD Neil Griffin<br />
Richard and Bettina Groves<br />
Andrew and Felicity Gutteridge<br />
Dr Bruce H Gutteridge, am, ed (dec’d)<br />
Dorothea Haly<br />
Gail Ann Harrison<br />
Tricia Hatcher<br />
Michael B Hawkins<br />
Robert A Henderson, cbe (dec’d)<br />
Dr Keith E Hirschfeld<br />
E (Manny) Hirsh<br />
Graham Hobbs<br />
Margaret I Hofmeister<br />
HSBC Stockbroking<br />
Dr Frederick Hunt<br />
Hyne & Son Pty Ltd<br />
Industrea Limited<br />
ITOCHU Australia Ltd<br />
JL Mactaggart Holdings Pty Ltd<br />
Keith M James<br />
Elizabeth M Jameson<br />
Anthony and Francine John<br />
Dr Elaine B Katte<br />
Mary Jo Katter<br />
Shirley King, oam<br />
Kraft Foods<br />
Dr Gertrude Langer, obe (dec’d)<br />
Lady Leggo (dec’d)<br />
Janet L Leighton<br />
Philip M Leslie<br />
Shirley Leuthner<br />
A Muriel Loveland (dec’d)<br />
Alex Mackay<br />
Dr James MacKean<br />
John A Maclean, mbe<br />
Macmillan Publishers Australia<br />
Pty Ltd<br />
John Mainwaring<br />
Frank J Manning<br />
David and Jan Manton<br />
Melissa M Manton<br />
Mathers Shoes Pty Ltd<br />
Dr and Mrs BT McCann<br />
Christine A McDonald<br />
Donald FT McDonald, am, obe<br />
Cameron McTavish<br />
Rosemary C Mercer (dec’d)<br />
Don Mitchell<br />
Mobil Oil Australia Ltd<br />
Moët & Chandon Australian<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Foundation<br />
Milton Moon, am, and Betty Moon<br />
Dr John Morris<br />
Estate of the late Kathleen Elizabeth<br />
Mowle<br />
Donald F and Anne Munro<br />
Judith Musgrave<br />
Myer <strong>Queensland</strong> Stores Ltd<br />
Kenneth B Myer, ac, dsc (dec’d)<br />
S Baillieu Myer, ac<br />
AJ Myers, ao, qc<br />
Deborah Newell<br />
Elizabeth A Nosworthy, ao<br />
Christine Nye<br />
Daniel L O’Connor<br />
Ewan G Ogilvy<br />
Elizabeth Ord Burns<br />
Orica Limited<br />
John Panizza, obe (dec’d)<br />
Mary Panizza<br />
William A Park, cbe, am<br />
Ross C Parry<br />
Constantine M Philippides, obe<br />
(dec’d)<br />
Perpetual Foundation Beryl Graham<br />
Family Memorial Gift Fund<br />
Sally Pitkin<br />
Blayne and Helen Pitts<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> University of Technology<br />
Rashid Rana<br />
Marilyn Redlich<br />
Lyndal Reid in memory of the late<br />
James Baxter Reid<br />
Barbara Reye<br />
Ruth Richardson<br />
Margaret Ridley<br />
Dr Gillian J Ritchie<br />
Dr John & Mrs Elizabeth Rivers<br />
Professor Alan G Rix<br />
Richard A Roberts<br />
Carl C Robertson<br />
Editha M Robinson (dec’d)<br />
R Scott Robinson<br />
Patricia L Ryan<br />
Sarina Russo Group<br />
Tony Schwensen<br />
Ross Searle<br />
Professor Tom Shapcott, ao<br />
Marion and Tom Sharman<br />
M Ann Shevill<br />
Leonard Shillam, am (dec’d)<br />
and Kathleen Shillam, am (dec’d)<br />
Anne Maitland Slater<br />
David G Slater<br />
Nigel GW Smith<br />
Sir Edward Stewart (dec’d)<br />
Mary Stewart, mbe (dec’d)<br />
Kerry Stokes, ao<br />
Warren Tapp<br />
Estate of the late Betty Taylor<br />
Everil Taylor<br />
Johanna J Thannhauser<br />
Nicholas Thompson<br />
Ian Thornquest<br />
Transfield Pty Ltd<br />
Beverley A Trivett<br />
Margaret Tuckson<br />
Dr Caroline Turner<br />
and Dr Glen Barclay<br />
Peter Tyndall<br />
Edite Vidins<br />
Mo Wedd-Buchholz<br />
Richard Werner<br />
Westpac Private Bank<br />
Brian White<br />
Robert M Wilson (dec’d)<br />
Bruce Wolfe<br />
Ken Woolley, am<br />
Judith Wright<br />
Wellington and Virginia Yee<br />
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Contributing authors<br />
Nicholas Bonner is a British-born<br />
filmmaker and landscape architect<br />
based in Beijing, and the co-curator<br />
of the Mansudae <strong>Art</strong> Studio project.<br />
Bonner and director Daniel Gordon’s<br />
award-winning documentary films<br />
include The Game of Their Lives<br />
2002, A State of Mind 2004, and<br />
Crossing the Line 2008.<br />
Aotearoa-born Brent Clough is coproducer–presenter<br />
of The Night Air<br />
on ABC Radio National, and the cocurator<br />
of the Pacific Reggae project.<br />
He is a writer and DJ (selector) with<br />
a longstanding interest in Jamaican<br />
and Pacific music and culture.<br />
Abigail Fitzgibbons is Curatorial<br />
Officer, <strong>Queensland</strong> College of <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong>, Griffith <strong>Art</strong>works.<br />
Shihoko Iida is Visiting Curator,<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> / <strong>Gallery</strong><br />
of Modern <strong>Art</strong>, and was formerly<br />
Curator, Tokyo Opera City <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>.<br />
Yvonne Low is a freelance writer and<br />
researcher based in Singapore. She<br />
was formerly a Curatorial Volunteer,<br />
Asian and Pacific <strong>Art</strong>, <strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> / <strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong>.<br />
Napong Norbert is Principal of<br />
Topol Junior Secondary School,<br />
North Ambrym, Vanuatu.<br />
Rich Streitmatter-Tran is an artist<br />
based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam,<br />
and the co-curator of The Mekong<br />
project.<br />
<strong>Queensland</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong> /<br />
<strong>Gallery</strong> of Modern <strong>Art</strong><br />
David Burnett Curator,<br />
International <strong>Art</strong><br />
Ellie Buttrose Curatorial Office<br />
Coordinator<br />
Nicholas Chambers Curator,<br />
Contemporary International <strong>Art</strong><br />
Andrew Clark Deputy Director,<br />
Programming and Corporate<br />
Services<br />
Jose Da Silva Associate Curator,<br />
Film, Video and New Media<br />
Naomi Evans Assistant Curator,<br />
International <strong>Art</strong><br />
Julie Ewington Curatorial Manager,<br />
Australian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Angela Goddard Curator, Australian<br />
<strong>Art</strong> to 1970<br />
Michael Hawker Curatorial Assistant,<br />
Australian <strong>Art</strong> to 1970<br />
Rosie Hays Assistant Curator, Cinema<br />
Acquisitions and Programming<br />
Mellissa Kavenagh Assistant Curator,<br />
Asian and Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Donna McColm Senior Program<br />
Officer, Education, Children’s <strong>Art</strong><br />
Centre and Membership<br />
Ruth McDougall Curatorial Assistant,<br />
Asian and Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Maud Page Curator, Contemporary<br />
Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Francis E Parker Curator,<br />
Contemporary Australian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Suhanya Raffel Curatorial Manager,<br />
Asian and Pacific <strong>Art</strong><br />
Bree Richards Curatorial Assistant,<br />
Contemporary Australian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Lynne Seear Deputy Director,<br />
Curatorial and Collection<br />
Development<br />
Amanda Slack-Smith Curatorial<br />
Assistant, Film, Video and New Media<br />
Russell Storer Curator,<br />
Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Sarah Stutchbury Senior Managerial<br />
Researcher<br />
Dr Miranda Wallace Acting Head of<br />
Managerial Research<br />
Kathryn Weir Curatorial Manager,<br />
International <strong>Art</strong> and Australian<br />
Cinémathèque<br />
Ian Were Editor<br />
Kids’ APT artist projects<br />
Zoe De Luca (ZDL), Project Assistant,<br />
Managerial Research<br />
Kate Ryan (KR), Program Officer,<br />
Children's <strong>Art</strong> Centre and Youth<br />
Russell Storer (RS), Curator,<br />
Contemporary Asian <strong>Art</strong><br />
Tim Walsh (TW), Education<br />
and Public Programs Assistant<br />
Minam Apang<br />
India b.1980<br />
He wore them like talismans all over his body (detail) 2008<br />
Ink, synthetic polymer paint and tea on fabriano<br />
cold-pressed paper / 138.5 x 184cm / The Lekha<br />
and Anupam Poddar Collection / Image courtesy:<br />
The artist and Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai<br />
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