From the age of ten, Thai artist Pannaphan Yodmanee was taught traditional Buddhist painting techniques by a monk at her local temple, and while she draws on this depth of knowledge, she moves beyond traditional conventions to connect the symbolic, the spiritual and the secular in exciting and experiential new ways. Through years of refining traditional painting practices, Yodmanee has formed a deep understanding of philosophies and cosmologies inherent in Thai Buddhist art, which she now transforms into densely layered installations.
Yodmanee’s In the Aftermath is a complex, immersive installation, presenting delicately painted stories in vivid temperas, gold pigments and mineral paints on the uneven surfaces of a constructed ruin.
Watch | Installation time-lapse
Pannaphan Yodmanee, Thailand b.1988 / In the aftermath 2018 / Found objects, artist-made icons, plaster, resin, concrete, steel, pigment / Site-specific installation, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) / Commissioned for ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Pannaphan Yodmanee
In the aftermath In the aftermath resembles both the decaying murals in the ruins of old temples and the rubble of demolished buildings. The installation commissioned for APT9 is based around three key elements: rocks and stones from the artist’s hometown representing the natural world; found objects and fragments of buildings; and miniatures of Buddhist icons and sacred stupas, which have been created by the artist in a range of materials.
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Pannaphan Yodmanee, Thailand b.1988 / In the aftermath 2018 / Found objects, artist-made icons, plaster, resin, concrete, steel, pigment / Site-specific installation, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) / Commissioned for ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) / © Pannaphan Yodmanee / Courtesy: The artist and Yavuz Gallery, Singapore / View full image
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Pannaphan Yodmanee, Thailand b.1988 / In the aftermath 2018 / Found objects, artist-made icons, plaster, resin, concrete, steel, pigment / Site-specific installation, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) / Commissioned for ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) / © Pannaphan Yodmanee / Courtesy: The artist and Yavuz Gallery, Singapore / View full image
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Pannaphan Yodmanee, Thailand b.1988 / In the aftermath 2018 / Found objects, artist-made icons, plaster, resin, concrete, steel, pigment / Site-specific installation, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) / Commissioned for ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) / © Pannaphan Yodmanee / Courtesy: The artist and Yavuz Gallery, Singapore / View full image
The environment is constructed using slabs of concrete, exposed iron structures and walls primed with concrete and rocks, into which Yodmanee places objects and delicately paints conquests and battles, as well as journeys across land and sea, applied with gold leaf and using the vivid blues of Buddhist painting.
The architectural setting chronicles the formation of individual and regional identities, and explores South-East Asian histories of migration, conflict and loss, as well as destructive human tendencies. In doing so, Yodmanee’s works have developed a new platform for Buddhist art, while they simultaneously capture the interconnectedness of art, religion and history in contemporary Thai society.
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Pannaphan Yodmanee, Thailand b.1988 / In the aftermath 2018 / Found objects, artist-made icons, plaster, resin, concrete, steel, pigment / Site-specific installation, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) / Commissioned for ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) / © Pannaphan Yodmanee / Courtesy: The artist and Yavuz Gallery, Singapore / View full image
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Pannaphan Yodmanee, Thailand b.1988 / In the aftermath 2018 / Found objects, artist-made icons, plaster, resin, concrete, steel, pigment / Site-specific installation, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) / Commissioned for ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) / © Pannaphan Yodmanee / Courtesy: The artist and Yavuz Gallery, Singapore / View full image
Toggle Caption
Pannaphan Yodmanee, Thailand b.1988 / In the aftermath 2018 / Found objects, artist-made icons, plaster, resin, concrete, steel, pigment / Site-specific installation, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) / Commissioned for ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) / © Pannaphan Yodmanee / Courtesy: The artist and Yavuz Gallery, Singapore / View full image
Read more about Pannaphan Yodmanee in the publication The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art
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Pannaphan Yodmanee visited her local Buddhist temple often as a child, and it was here, at the age of ten, that she learnt to paint. Buddhist shrines and temples in Thailand are places where art, religion, history and life intertwine. Ancient stories, histories and cosmologies are depicted on their inner walls and on murals in their grounds. As old paintings and murals decay, they are repainted and restored so narratives are preserved as towns and cities evolve.
Taught by a monk and extensively trained in traditional Buddhist painting techniques, Yodmanee has formed a deep understanding of the philosophies and cosmologies inherent in vernacular Buddhist art. Unencumbered by traditional conventions, she applies this knowledge in her work to reveal interactions between symbolic imagery and the world outside the sacred, and, in doing so, develops new social and artistic contexts to consider the significance of these narratives.
Related video: Artist Stories
Yodmanee’s dense installations are eruptions of materials and structures. Varying in size and texture, her works are composed of exposed structures and fields of detritus shrouded in small, vivid paintings and carefully layered wall treatments. Her installations resemble demolished urban sites, with stories composed along uneven surfaces and interspersed with miniature handmade objects. She creates storyboards of journeys and fables in landscapes of broken concrete and exposed girders. They are embedded with vivid temperas, gold pigments and mineral paints, and feature crumbling stupas and Buddhist icons that merge spirituality, the cosmos and local histories. The sprawling congregation of materials and images resembles a mural lying in ruin, with fragmented figures and motifs forming small chapters of a story that continues amidst the rubble.
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Watch the installation time-lapse
Yodmanee’s works are as much about material and structure as they are about spirituality and narrative, and are based around three elements: rocks and stones from the artist’s hometown representing the natural world, found objects and broken fragments of buildings slated for demolition, and miniatures of Buddhist icons created by the artist using experimental techniques. Along with illustrating Buddhist narratives, Yodmanee chronicles the formation of individual and regional identities, and explores South-East Asian histories of migration and conflict, and the destructive tensions within society.
The rough, industrial aesthetic of her work lies in stark contrast to the precise painting style Yodmanee was once taught in the quiet confines of her local temple, yet, somehow, harmony is achieved between the hard-edged, large-scale debris and the delicate paintings and sculptures scattered throughout. Her installations offer a new platform and contextualisation for Buddhist art and practice, a direction that has been influential in the development of contemporary art in Thailand since the early 1990s, as Thai artists have sought new possibilities to express faith in experimental forms of contemporary art.
Related: Pannaphan Yodmanee and ‘In the Aftermath’
In her use of urban materials, Pannaphan Yodmanee highlights the cycle of destruction and renewal in our contemporary world, which, in Thailand, parallels the pervading presence of Buddhist belief and custom with the continual development of cities. Her work conjures the power of faith to transcend the destructive forces inherent in modern development, and offers a place to engage with the constants of history and spirituality in an ever-changing environment.
Tarun Nagesh is Curator, Asian Art, QAGOMA
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QAGOMA Foundation
In 2019, as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Foundation, Thai artist Pannaphan Yodmanee’s extraordinary work In the aftermath 2018, commissioned for ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) is the subject of our 2019 Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) Foundation Appeal.
The Foundation, the Gallery’s vital fundraising body was established in 1979 and has raised more than $140 million, with generous support enabling the acquisition of more than 8,300 artworks, over 45 per cent of the State’s Collection.
The Foundation’s 40th anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on the generosity of the Gallery’s many supporters who have contributed over the past four decades. Find out more about the QAGOMA Foundation and the 2019 Foundation Appeal.
With your support, the 2019 QAGOMA Foundation Appeal will bring this significant work into the Collection. It will be a remarkable APT9 acquisition and addition to QAGOMA’s renowned collection of contemporary Asian and Pacific works, by one of the region’s rising stars.
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Read more about Pannaphan Yodmanee in The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art available online or in store. The publication represents an important and lasting document of the current artistic landscape of Australia, Asia and the Pacific.
Feature image detail: Pannaphan Yodmanee’s In the aftermath 2018
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The sober colour and aural palette of Yuko Mohri’s contemplative sound installation Breath or echo blends quietly with the architecture and landscape of the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) and Brisbane city, writes local sound artist Luke Jaaniste.
Watch | Performance in response to ‘Breath or echo’
Brisbane’s experimental violin and guitar duo Adam Cadell (violin) and Ryan Potter (guitar) of ‘The Scrapes’ perform live at ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) in response to Yuko Mohri’s Breath or echo / Commissioned for APT9, 24 November 2018 / © The Scrapes
Yuko Mohri ‘Breath or echo’
Breath or echo: to be the source of utterance and life (a breath), or to be merely a reflection of what was generated elsewhere (an echo). Shall we read this as a question? Is art, and all cultural artifice, a breath of fresh air, or an echo of it? Either way, both die out. Organisms eventually stop breathing (including you and me) and echoes dissipate. Everything decays.
But in decaying, some trace carries on. History is the trace of such decays, as Walter Benjamin mused in On the Concept of History (1940), which is the source of Yuko Mohri’s title:
The past carries a secret index with it, by which it is referred to its resurrection. Are we not touched by the same breath of air which was among that which came before? is there not an echo of those who have been silenced in the voices to which we lend our ears today?
Japanese sound and intermedia artist Yuko Mohri first created Breath or echo for the Sapporo International Art Festival in 2017. It was inspired by her experience of decay within an old mining town, Otoineppu, which she visited as part of her creative process, along with the work of sculptor Sunazawa Bikky (1939–81).
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‘Breath or echo’ 2017 installed at GOMA
For ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9), the work has been re-situated in GOMA’s River Lounge, continuing the connection between sound art and this area of the building.What we experience upon entering the space is a series of musical and industrial objects and electronic gadgets spread across the entire panorama of the windowed platform that overlooks the Brisbane cityscape. Alongside the sounds and sound-objects, light bulbs flicker from three of Mohri’s trademark street lamps (sourced locally for this installation) that have been placed laterally on the floor. Linger long enough and you will hear four interweaving layers of sounds. The most constant layer, which frequently comes and goes, is a high-pitched metallic bell-like shimmer, made from metal washers, discs and sticks knocking against old industrial electrical fittings, electromagnets and concrete blocks. Occasionally, we also hear a low guttural sound emerging from a piano laid with its back on the floor; five strings attached to wires stretch up to the ceiling, and automated units fibrillate the strings. Accompanying these industrial sounds is a slow, strange melodic duet between two upright pianos, which have been modified to play automatically via attached electronics, like modern-day player pianos. The fourth layer, a recitation of spoken-word poetry, emanates from lonely loudspeakers that can only be heard by stepping outside to the deck overlooking the nearby State Library of Queensland.
Yuko Mohri ‘Breath or echo’ 2017
The work’s sober colour and aural palette blends quietly with the concrete, glass and white walls of GOMA, and the white concrete and metal pylons, rails and roads of the Kurilpa Bridge and Riverside Expressway that skirt the city of Brisbane and which form a real-time living backdrop. The effect is like a fractured kaleidoscope of memories, something contemplative, distilled and even lonely, producing what has been described as ‘improvised ecosystems’: an auditory and object-laden landscape punctuates the air with minimal, occasional, accidental, random incursions. Such sounds are reminiscent of the aural activity of cityscapes — random accumulations of noise that can be musical if we wish to listen to it in this way, as John Cage and many other ambient and environmental experimentalists have encouraged us to do.
Breath or Echo is a collaborative work, and Mohri invited the input of a range of other artists: piano music by Ryuichi Sakamoto, poetry by Bikky Sunazawa, poetry recitation by Camille Norment, along with programming by Yuya Ito and lighting engineering by Keiji Ohba (Ryu). Nonetheless, Breath or Echo bears all the hallmark qualities of Mohri’s style, evident in her growing body of installations, including Moré Moré (Leaky): Variations 2017–, Parade 2011–, Divertimento for Child’s Room 2016– and Calls 2013–, which have been commissioned by and exhibited in major galleries in Asia, Europe and New York.Mohri’s artworks have a beginning date but remain ongoing projects; across multiple exhibitions and versions they appear and shift in configuration, operating in a ‘site-responsive’ space somewhere between touring and sitespecific realisation.
In creating her installations with simple, elemental components and basic gestures, Mohri’s work speaks to and intersects with a whole range of cultural trends and art-historical tropes: found objects and readymades, immersive installation and soundscapes, automated music and kinetic sculpture, collage and assemblage, and the materialisation of ephemeral media.
Luke Jaaniste is a sonic, spatial and social artist. As one half of Super Critical Mass (with Julian Day), he was a participating artist in APT8. He is trained in music composition, has completed a PhD in ambient experience and works as a solo and collaborative artist and performer.
Featured image detail: Yuko Mohri’s Breath or Echo (installation view) 2017 / Photograph: Joe Ruckli © QAGOMA
