Zurag paintings: Mongolia

Acquired for the Collection for inclusion in ‘The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art‘ (APT8) 21 November 2015 – 10 April 2016, are four paintings by the most inventive practitioners of contemporary Mongolian zurag. These are a fine introduction to the art being produced in one of Asia’s most exciting new artistic contexts.

APT8 marks the beginning of the Gallery’s engagement with Mongolia, with the inclusion of works by four young Mongol zurag painters who have revived a national cultural tradition by applying it to their own experiences in a rapidly changing society.

Characterised by its ultra-fine brushwork, bright colours, flattened perspective and themes drawn from everyday life, zurag is derived from Tibetan tangka painting, synthesising elements of Chinese guohua painting and the medieval equestrian art of the Khitan people. In this sense, it shares its heritage with many traditional and contemporary art forms, ranging from Persian miniatures to Chinese landscapes and Japanese nihonga painting. The most celebrated example is Balduugiin Sharav’s classic work One day in Mongolia 1911, which hangs in Ulaanbaatar’s Zanbazar Museum of Fine Arts.

After the Mongolian revolution of 1921, zurag focused on themes of secular nationalism, merging with the socialist realist painting that would dominate Mongolian culture from the bloody Stalinist purges of 1930s until the advent of democracy in the early 1990s. Since that time, Buddhist iconography and shamanic images have made an appearance, as they have in post-communist Mongolian culture more broadly. Established as a subject at the Mongolian University of Arts and Culture in the late 1990s, zurag has since been taken up by a passionate new generation of artists who find within it the means of addressing the tensions of daily Mongolian life.

Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu

Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu, Mongolia b.1979 / Path to wealth 2013 / Synthetic polymer paint on canvas / Purchased 2015 with funds from Ashby Utting through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu, Mongolia b.1979 / Path to wealth 2013 / Synthetic polymer paint on canvas / Purchased 2015 with funds from Ashby Utting through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist / View full image

Drawing on traditional patterning and the experiences of Mongolian women, Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu’s paintings combine poetic and everyday imagery, creating subtle contrasts between the manufactured and the natural or organic, and between intense detail and flat planes of colour. The graphic and symbolic qualities of Dagvasambuu’s paintings are particularly pronounced, with the inclusion recognisable motifs from traditional Buddhist painting — and East and Central Asian aesthetics in general — as well as psychologically charged imagery of contemporary life.

Gerelkhuu Ganbold

Gerelkhuu Ganbold, Mongolia b.1988 / Soldiers who don’t know themselves 2013 / Synthetic polymer paint on canvas / Triptych: 360 x 200cm (overall); 120 x 200cm (each panel) / Purchased 2015. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Grant / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

Gerelkhuu Ganbold, Mongolia b.1988 / Soldiers who don’t know themselves 2013 / Synthetic polymer paint on canvas / Triptych: 360 x 200cm (overall); 120 x 200cm (each panel) / Purchased 2015. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Grant / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist / View full image

Gerelkhuu Ganbold brings a searing dramatic sensibility to zurag painting, producing mural-sized canvases of swirling battle scenes that recall contemporary comics and science-fiction cinema, along with traditional epic painting and the Mongolian genre of equestrian art. Of particular interest to Gerelkhuu is the free and open composition that zurag offers, with an absence of vanishing-point perspective allowing all pictorial elements to be rendered with equivalent detail. His paintings of the famed mounted warriors of the Mongol Empire allegorise life in present-day Mongolia, which the artist characterises as an eternal battle, a daily struggle for money and food while the powerful fight among themselves for influence.

Nomin Bold

Nomin Bold, Mongolia b.1982 / Tomorrow 2014 / Gouache, old scripture sheets on cotton / 194 x 144cm / Purchased 2015 with funds from Ashby Utting through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

Nomin Bold, Mongolia b.1982 / Tomorrow 2014 / Gouache, old scripture sheets
on cotton / 194 x 144cm / Purchased 2015 with funds from Ashby Utting through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist / View full image

Of the four artists represented, Nomin Bold is the most emphatic in her employment of the composition, materials and techniques of tangka painting. Also notable is her use of collaged pages from Mongolian scriptures and gold-leafing, which ground her extremely fine brushwork and dynamic composition. Her stylised renderings of deities, human and animal figures, and the labyrinthine landscape of Ulaanbaatar offer a satirical edge with an ultimately uplifting tone.

Baatarzorig Batjargal

Baatarzorig Batjargal, Mongolia b.1983 / Nomads 2014 / Synthetic polymer paint on canvas / 100 x 150cm / Purchased 2015. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Grant / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © Baatarzorig Batjargal

Baatarzorig Batjargal, Mongolia b.1983 / Nomads 2014 / Synthetic polymer paint on canvas / 100 x 150cm / Purchased 2015. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Grant / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © Baatarzorig Batjargal / View full image

Baatarzorig Batjargal’s zurag paintings also possess a strong element of social criticism, betraying the influence of Chinese political pop in their use of recognisable historical figures and their juxtaposition of traditional and consumerist imagery. Aesthetically distinguished among contemporary zurag paintings by their fine shading and unusual surfaces, which are often sourced from rural furniture, they are particularly concerned with the loss of traditional heritage through a succession of regimes, from the ascetic culture of Soviet-style communism to the rising inequalities and empty consumerism of US-style capitalism. Batjargal brings epic composition and satirical humour to the serious content on his work.

These paintings, by four of the most inventive practitioners of contemporary zurag, are a fine introduction to some of the key themes and techniques in the art being produced in Mongolia, one of the most exciting new cultural contexts in Asia.

DELVE DEEPER INTO APT8 PLUS WATCH OUR BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEOS

Reuben Keehan is Curator, Contemporary Asian Art, QAGOMA
Feature image detail: Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu’s Path to wealth 2013

Related Stories

  •
    Read •

    Ground-breaking exhibition at the National Museum of Cambodia

    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.
  •
    Read •

    APT8: Brook Andrew ‘Intervening Time’ extended

    Brook Andrew’s APT8 installation, ‘Intervening Time’, is a comment on the historical and contemporary narratives that shape our understanding of the Australian landscape, people and culture — it is also a prime example of the dynamic relationship between artists and museums. Over the past several decades, the relationship between the museum and the peoples and cultures it represents has been researched and critiqued locally and internationally, especially by artists, curators, theorists and communities, from inside and outside the museum profession. Through processes of institutional critique and postcolonial reassertion of indigenous identities, traditions and continually evolving cultures, the museum is being fundamentally altered, and artists’ historical research and projects are central to this inclusive, multi-perspective museology. In a productive melding of creation and curation, artists working locally and internationally since the 1970s have been intervening in museum collections in order to rethink the processes of exhibition-making, to question existing narratives and historical positions, and to unsettle or subvert conventional displays by revealing some of the less predictable intersections between works of art and the visual and material culture of different places. Brook Andrew’s project for APT8, ‘Intervening Time’, realised in collaboration with QAGOMA curatorial staff, represents the intervention of art practice into the conventions of museum display through physical transformation. It proposes a layered, complex consideration of the encounters between indigenous and other cultures. Several of Andrew’s recent major installations and graphic works are inspired by patterns found on dendroglyphs (carved trees) and shields specific to his mother’s Wiradjuri nation (in New South Wales). He has applied his contemporary hypnotic pattern in black over the existing wall colours of the Australian collection galleries, and suspended his six-part 2012 installation, TIME, in between the works that currently hang there. One image makes a direct Australian reference: a detail from an earlytwentieth- century group photograph of an Aboriginal man with a Union Jack — the mark of empire — painted on his chest. Others include a British Raj Indian postal worker; people among the rubble of a collapsed European building during World War One; an image of a clock counting backwards to a zero hour (a reference to British atomic bomb tests in the Monte Bello Islands and Maralinga in 1952–63); and the façade of the Australian Museum in Sydney. Each work is speculatively connected to the other through signs of time and historical situations. Their enlargement to monumental dimensions also radically alters their original status as archival documents, while a surface treatment emphasises the historical patina of the original source imagery, creating a tone of remembrance. Andrew has juxtaposed these disparate pictures with works by Rupert Bunny, E Phillips Fox and Vida Lahey, among many others, to construct an open-ended narrative that provokes questions about the fragile and volatile political, social and environmental systems of our contemporary world. The existing historical display in the galleries was changed only slightly, through the inclusion of international works of historical Nepalese and Indian art, in addition to images by Goya, Warhol and Hirschfeld Mack representing states of conflict. Installations such as ‘Intervening Time’ are intended to destabilise, not only to rethink the authority of the museum and the exclusivity of its systems but also the authority of history and the systems of the modern world. By working with museum colleagues, artists declare museums open entities and critically revise the potential meaning of their objects. Watch a fascinating time-lapse of the installation of ‘Intervening Time’ Brook Andrew ‘Intervening Time’ extended to Sunday 22 May 2016 Exhibition Founding Sponsor: Queensland Government Exhibition Principal Sponsor: Audi Australia Principal Partner: Australia Council for the Arts
Loading...