Ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa practises art with a spirit of generosity, optimism and inclusion. Community-minded and attuned to contemporary concerns, including climate change, social justice and the migrant experience, he addresses these issues through artworks that offer hope for our troubled times.

Srivilasa is known primarily for his idiosyncratic and meticulously crafted blue-and-white porcelain sculptures that celebrate his Buddhist faith, the folktales and iconography of his homeland and his life in Australia. He moved from Bangkok to Melbourne in 1997 to study ceramics at Monash University, and completed further study in Tasmania before settling in Melbourne.

Since 2008, Srivilasa has included audience participation in many of his artworks, explaining: ‘I’ve always been interested in creating opportunities for sharing and exploring complex ideas of cross-cultural experience’.[1]

Watch: Vipoo introduces ‘Shrine of Life/Benjapakee Shrine’

The blue-and-white palette Srivilasa has typically favoured references Lai Krarm, or Thai domestic tableware, and, more broadly, the ceramics that originated in Henan Province, China, in the ninth century, which were traded through the Middle East via the Silk Road and later imported to Europe. The crockery became a ubiquitous and coveted commodity in late-eighteenth-century England during a period of colonial expansionism, when potters such as Josiah Spode appropriated the original Chinese designs and adapted them to suit British tastes. The phenomenon has been interpreted as a form of cultural imperialism by postcolonial theorist Edward Said, whose text Orientalism (1978) dissected Western tendencies to exoticise the East. Srivilasa recognises this history while seeing the importation of blue-and-white ware as analogous to his own journey from East to West, and embracing the cross-cultural exchange it has entailed. ‘Nowadays,’ he says, ‘I find it hard to tell which culture is which in my work … The boundary is a blur.’[2]

Vipoo Srivilasa ‘Shrine of Life/Benjapakee Shrine’

Vipoo Srivilasa, Thailand/Australia b.1969 / Shrine of Life / Benjapakee Shrine 2021 / Mixed-media installation with five ceramic deities / Commissioned for ‘The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT10) / Purchased 2021 with funds from the Contemporary Patrons through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Vipoo Srivilasa

Vipoo Srivilasa, Thailand/Australia b.1969 / Shrine of Life / Benjapakee Shrine 2021 / Mixed-media installation with five ceramic deities / Commissioned for ‘The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT10) / Purchased 2021 with funds from the Contemporary Patrons through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Vipoo Srivilasa / View full image

Vipoo Srivilasa, Thailand/Australia b.1969 / Shrine of Life / Benjapakee Shrine 2021 / Mixed-media installation with five ceramic deities / Commissioned for ‘The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT10) / Purchased 2021 with funds from the Contemporary Patrons through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Vipoo Srivilasa

Vipoo Srivilasa, Thailand/Australia b.1969 / Shrine of Life / Benjapakee Shrine 2021 / Mixed-media installation with five ceramic deities / Commissioned for ‘The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT10) / Purchased 2021 with funds from the Contemporary Patrons through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Vipoo Srivilasa / View full image

Srivilasa’s Shrine of Life/Benjapakee Shrine2021 builds on the audience-oriented nature of his previous work and pays homage to his fluid identity. The shrine-like sanctuary houses five contemporary deities Srivilasa has made to represent qualities important to him: love equality, spirituality, security, identity and creativity. Infused with the scent of jasmine — familiar to worshippers at Thai temples where the blooms are offered as phuang malai (garlands) — the structure makes reference to the Lak Mueang shrine in the centre of Bangkok, which is distinguished by its white and gold architecture and is similarly protected by five Thai deities.[3] Srivilasa recalls visiting Lak Mueang to pay his respects and ask for blessings before he left Thailand for Australia, and his artwork venerates this memory and acknowledges what the relocation has meant to him. ‘Love equality’, for example, comments on same-sex marriage that was legalised in Australia in 2017, allowing Srivilasa and his partner to wed, but has yet to be endorsed in Thailand. The king penguins included allude to celebrated gay penguin couple Skipper and Ping in Zoo Berlin, while the arms of the figures that are yet to meet signify an incomplete heart, and Thailand’s ongoing journey towards marriage equality.[4]

Bridging the sacred and the secular, Srivilasa’s shrine is both a personal expression of devotion and an invitation to visitors to request blessings and protection from one of the deities by making an offering of a paper flower to them. By providing a space in which to reflect and express gratitude, Vipoo Srivilasa shares something of his holistic approach to life and asks audiences to join him in honouring our differences and our commonalities.

Samantha Littley is Curator, Australian Art, QAGOMA
This is an extract from the QAGOMA publication The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art available in-store and online from the QAGOMA Store.


The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT10) / Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane / 4 December 2021 to 26 April 2022.

#APT10QAGOMA #QAGOMA

Endnotes

  1. ^ Vipoo Srivilasa, quoted in Owen Leong, ‘Peril interview – Vipoo Srivilasa’, Peril: Asian-Australian Arts and Culture, 23 September 2011, <https://peril.com.au/back-editions/edition11/peril-interview-vipoosrivilasa/>, accessed 18 March 2021.
  2. ^ Vipoo Srivilasa, quoted in Alice Pung, ‘The colonisation of the cute – exploring the work of Vipoo Srivilasa’, Garland Magazine no. 6, 10 March 2017, accessed 13 April 2021.
  3. ^ The number five is significant in Buddhist culture: Benjapakee are the sets of five grand Buddhist amulets that are most revered — benja, meaning five; and pakee, meaning associates. The word refers to the five followers the Buddha gathered around him at the deer park at Isipatana where he delivered his first teachings, or Dharma.
  4. ^ In July 2020, the cabinet of Thailand approved a draft civil partnership bill that, if ratified by Parliament, will permit same-sex couples to register their union, adopt children, claim inheritance rights and jointly manage assets. See Vitit Muntarbhorn, ‘Thailand’s same-sex civil partnership law – a rainbow trailblazer?’, East Asia Forum, 2 September 2020, <https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2020/09/02/thailands-same-sex-civil-partnership-law-arainbow-trailblazer/>, accessed 27 April 2021.

Related Stories

  • Read

    Ceramic installations evoke the landscape from which they are produced

    Australian artist Yasmin Smith is known for her research-based ceramic installations that formally and chromatically evoke the landscape from which they are produced. As part of her investigative method, Smith gathers natural materials and, through analysis, determines how she can harness their chemical properties. Key to the artist’s process is burning plant material as a basis for glazes. The minerals, nutrients and toxins absorbed from soil and water remain in the ash, resulting in fascinating colour and textural variations in the glazes that cover Smith’s earthenware and ceramic casts of the original plants. Flooded Rose Red Basin 2018 Flooded Rose Red Basin 2018 (illustrated) first exhibited for the tenth Asia Pacific Triennial, and currently on display, draws upon ancient ceramic traditions in China while also referencing the rapid development that is changing that country’s rural landscape. The ceramic sculpture was made while Smith was in residence at the Jinhui Ceramic Sanitary Ware Factory near Wuchangzhen, in Sichuan Province. Ci zhu bamboo was collected from the nearby Shiyan village, in Jiajiang County, known for its tradition of bamboo paper-making. Segments of the stems were cast at the factory in collaboration with the workers who usually produce toilets and sinks. The plant material was burnt, and the remaining ash used to glaze the stoneware objects. Jiajiang bamboo Eucalyptus grandis Smith’s initial interest in bamboo was spurred on by recent scientific investigations into the material as a possible source of biosilica for future electric, solar, satellite and phone technologies. During her time in Sichuan, however, the artist noticed established plantings of Eucalyptus grandis — a species endemic to Australia, commonly known as flooded gum or rose gum. Eucalyptus was first introduced in China in 1890 as an ornamental planting, but it was not until the 1950s that large eucalyptus timber plantations were established. Encountering this Australian tree far from its original habitat, yet deeply embedded in the Chinese landscape, prompted Smith to create a set of stoneware eucalypt branches with a syrupy, gum-ash glaze that are presented alongside the sections of cast bamboo. The glazes are unrefined and freely stream and pool across the body of the branches and stems. Although it might be assumed that the high amount of silica in the glaze would produce a glassy finish, the bamboo glaze is matt with speckles of sand-like deposits. Meanwhile, the high amount of iron and manganese give the eucalyptus glaze its amber-olive colour. Hairline cracks appear on the surface as a result of the object expanding and compressing at a different rate to the glaze during firing. While the bamboo stems and gum branches are repeated forms made from industrial stoneware, their idiosyncratic glazes make them unique objects. In Flooded Rose Red Basin, Smith utilises available organic matter to elegantly reveal the ecological, cultural and economic history of the emblematic bamboo and gum, and in turn the distinct connections between Australia and China. Watch | Yasmin Smith introduces Flooded Rose Red Basin 2018 Watch | Installation time-lapse Ellie Buttrose is Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA This essay draws on conversations with the artist in January and April 2020 and May 2021
  • Read

    Rigid architecture translates into soft veils of memory

    Throughout her career, Sumakshi Singh has developed a spontaneous and responsive approach to material and space. Her practice is characterised by rigorous explorations of spatial intervention that play in the gap between conditioned knowledge and direct perception, and in the spaces between physical object and illusory experience. Her works engage narratives from inner landscapes — of personal memory, metaphysical and emotive experience — as well as the history and physicality of sites. Singh’s ambitious sculptures and installations are rooted in the intimate processes of drawing and embroidery. In the artist’s recent, ongoing body of work this has focused on ‘groundless thread drawings’, which involve a laborious studio construction process that resonates with Singh’s earlier practices dedicated to materially intensive site-specific interventions. Singh started developing the threading technique around 2015 after stumbling across some of her late mother’s letters. The artist felt a sudden desire to trace their words in embroidery — a technique her mother had tried to teach her as a child — using it to tie them down to the page. Ironically, once Singh finished, the words seemed to protest this fixity, and she began to remove the fabric they were on, allowing them to float in space like fragile embroidery in air. Watch | Installation time-lapse Sumakshi Singh ‘Afterlife’ 2020–21 Memories of her grandparents’ home in Delhi led to the further development of Singh’s embroidered sculptures. Her grandparents arrived in Delhi as refugees after the Partition of India and gradually built the family home. As a child, Singh continually moved across the country, and so the old house in Delhi became her only understanding of a constant home, with its familiar surfaces, objects, stories and smells. After its long history of hosting and serving the family, the home now lies abandoned. The architectural features of the house have now become the focus of sculptural studies in thread and shadow, evolving into a series named ‘33 Link Road’ after the address of the old family home. Beginning with a series of the different gates at the entry to the house, and developing into threaded windows, doors, staircases and architectural aspects, the series captures the house frozen in time like a flower pressed between the pages of a book. Sumakshi Singh ‘Afterlife’ 2020–21 As the body of work has developed into the ‘Afterlife’ series, labyrinthine installations of various objects and threaded fragments deliberately construct interplays of spatial planes and illusory perspectives. Transparent images are subtly layered, built into voids, levitate across floors and walls, or find articulation through their shadows as they hover over surfaces. In a layered thread-drawing of brick piles, Singh also extends this idea of memory to the changing urban features of her neighbourhood, where old family homes are constantly being torn down, turned temporarily into construction sites and replaced with apartment buildings. As personal archives, Singh’s thread drawings come together to reveal ghostlike spaces where rigid architectures translate into soft veils of memory. While the forms become skeletal, fragile and adaptable, they evoke the evasive desire of the artist to tie down these fading memories, to stitch them permanently in the fabric of time. Tarun Nagesh is Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art, QAGOMA This is an edited extract from the QAGOMA publication The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art available in-store and online from the QAGOMA Store. Sumakshi Singh ‘Afterlife’ 2020–21 On display at the Gallery of Modern Art during ‘The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT10). APT10 is at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane from 4 December 2021 to 25 April 2022. Featured image: Afterlife (Drawing room window) 2020–21 / Thread / 182.8 x 121.9 cm / Purchased 2021 with funds from Tim Fairfax AC through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Sumakshi Singh / Photograph: M. Campbell © QAGOMA
Loading...