The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) is one of the region’s most anticipated exhibitions. With a geographical reach that furnishes the Triennial with a diversity few art museum exhibitions can achieve, the series has grown to become central to the discourse on art in the Asia Pacific.
‘The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT8) has developed out of the concerns facing the Asia Pacific region over the last three years. These concerns can be celebratory, like the triumph of art practices in places lacking supportive infrastructure, or propelled by a re-appraisal of common materials into wondrous, imaginative structures. For many artists, however, the focus has been the social and political pressures that are currently shaping the region. Economic development and crisis; environmental exploitation and natural disaster; technology, democracy, human rights, border disputes; and the operation of the politics of nationhood, are ideas that pervade contemporary art in this part of the world. Our global connectedness means that people separated by geography can also share similar interests and participate in concurrent world discussion, if at arm’s length. The sheer volume of information and our ubiquitous exchange has the effect of flattening individuality and diversity, on the one hand, and galvanising opinion, building momentum and catalysing social and cultural change, on the other. The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan, the Arab Spring in the Middle East, the anti-nuclear movement in Japan and the political turmoil in Thailand and other parts of South-East Asia are examples of political movements that have played out in an ever-expanding public sphere.
APT8 features a number of artists who seek ways to build new social and cultural relationships and structures. For some, this requires a more complex and nuanced comprehension of history; for others, it involves the creation of relational spaces. In varying degrees, all express a hope for collective social renewal and variously engage the vulnerable, sensate body.
The conscious and deliberate activation of the body as a motif or instrument in contemporary practice is a palpable thematic thread throughout the exhibition. In simple terms, performance — or rather, an idea of performance as a reflection of the dense variety of social and cultural positions that might be encapsulated by the vast geographic expanse of Asia and the Pacific. A diversity of devices and approaches offers a highly layered understanding of the breadth of practices that illustrate how the body is employed in space; practices that draw out nuance, respond to history, champion the vernacular and create critical spaces for art. This APT asks, what makes these bodies reflective of their histories and environments? What can be learnt, and how can individuality be reinserted?
As its ephemerality dictates, performance often emerges or exists outside of the museum context, or is developed as a critique of it, and we are now placed at a discursive juncture where it becomes increasingly institutionalised and historicised. Performance artworks and documentation have recently become more actively collected by museums, and survey exhibitions and re stagings of works by performance artists are taking place with increasing regularity. It seems timely to consider a form that has always had a central position in Asian and Pacific art (and been an enduring element of the APT), but whose presence has expanded so considerably within the international contemporary art sphere over the past decade.
More than merely presenting a snapshot of art from in the region, the APT series also helps us to question prejudices around the role of the museum, and the institutional representation of varying creative practices. Over 16 years ago, the APT featured an example of the vernacular traditions of India, which was considered controversial by some factions of the art establishment and stirred wider criticism of the inclusion of vernacular practices in the realm of contemporary art. APT8 revisits some of these earlier conversations through a major project titled Kalpa Vriksha: Contemporary Indigenous and Vernacular Art of India. The exhibition project features 19 artists whose practices look to a range of traditions and inherited knowledge drawing from a diversity of locations, customs and belief systems. Components of traditional techniques are adopted, while others are discarded, as these artists experiment and re-evaluate their own creative devices and apply them to new contexts.
Yumi Danis (We Dance), a project co-curated with ni-Vanuatu songwriter, musician and author Marcel Meltherorong, brings together dancers and musicians from Papua, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. A conscious response to issues of translation and the contextualisation of contemporary Pacific performance for a broader audience, Yumi Danis is staged as an immersive multimedia installation, animated throughout the duration of the exhibition with live performances. Working closely with Meltherorong, Kanak artist Nicolas Molé has created an interactive multimedia landscape through which visitors are transported, via image, sound and dance, to the lands of Papua and the Ring of Fire imagined and articulated by Meltherorong in his poetic writing on this project. Visitors enter the space through the tangled roots of a banyan tree, found so often in the heart of a Melanesian village. A path opens up in the form of a sand drawing design, which we must try to fathom and then follow in order to enter into this cultural realm. The darkened forest surrounding the village beckons; if we watch closely, we are rewarded with glimpses of animated animals, spirit figures and the villagers as they watch us from this mysterious, darkened space.
Cinema has played an important role in the APT since 2006, highlighting key practitioners, cinema histories, and lines of influence between the moving image and other forms of cultural production in the region. Three projects have been developed for APT8 that frame particular religious geopolitics, cultural and aesthetic concerns: ‘Pop Islam’ (co-curated by Khaled Sabsabi), ‘Filipino Indie’ (co-curated by Yason Banal), and a program of works by artist–filmmaker Lav Diaz. Together these projects reflect on the agency of the moving image in its varied...
In the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh this week, Cambodian artists who have participated in the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) take centre stage in a landmark exhibition, acknowledging the role QAGOMA has played in supporting projects by Cambodian artists through its collecting and exhibition program.
Histories of the Future places some of Cambodia’s most prominent contemporary artists at the National Museum of Cambodia, the country’s primary art institution. It is the first time an exhibition of contemporary Cambodian artists has been staged at the museum, which holds some of the most important treasures of Cambodian culture including many of the masterpieces of the Angkor period.
Sponsored by the Australian Embassy in Phnom Penh, the exhibition celebrates the relationship between Australia and Cambodia, particularly the aid and support for the arts that Australian institutions and organisations have provided. This includes the restoration of the museum’s roof in the mid-1990s funded by the Australian government along with almost one million dollars raised through an Australian public appeal at the time.
From the National Museum’s press release:
The historical relationship between Australia and Cambodia serves as a backdrop for this exhibition which focuses on recent artworks acquired or commissioned by Australian institutions. The exchange between Cambodian artists and Australian galleries and festivals has been especially active and fruitful for more than a decade. Notably, the Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane) has had a very active role in the research and representation of contemporary art from Cambodia for the Asia Pacific Triennial (APT), a well-respected art event for the region.
There are seventeen artworks in the exhibition from a variety of mediums, including video, photography, sculpture, prints and installations. Together, many of the works seek to resolve social, spiritual, cultural and economic tensions of the last decade as Cambodia has emerged from a century of conflicts. This close look at contemporary art highlights the importance of institutional cultivation of forms of intellectual, aesthetic and critical expression.
The exhibition includes works by Anida Yoeu Ali, Leang Seckon and Khvay Samnang, who recently participated in APT8, alongside artists featured in APT6 in 2009-10: Pich Sopheap, Rithy Panh, Svay Ken whose paintings are currently on display in QAG Gallery 6, and Vandy Rattana who is included in the current GOMA exhibition ‘Time of Others‘.
Histories of the Future was collaboratively organised by the Australian Embassy in Phnom Penh, curator Dana Langlois and Director of the Museum Mr Kong Vireak, all valued friends of the Gallery. The exhibition opens July 1 2016 with an opening address by Australian Ambassador to Cambodia HE Angela Corcoran in her first official function as Ambassador, and over the weekend will also include a lecture by Vuth Lyno, who recently presented a paper at the APT8 Conference.
