the journal of the asian arts society of australia

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the journal of the asian arts society

of australia

2o years of taasa

TAASA Review

4 Editorial:20YEarSoFtaaSa

JosefaGreen

6 BUildiNGoNtaaSa’SFoUNdatioNS

GillGreen

10 taaSarECollECtEd

JackieMenziesandHeleanorFeltham

12 aCoMMUNitYoF iNtErESt:tHEtaaSatEXtilEGroUP

14 taaSaMEMBErS’MEMoirS

20 aNiMMErSiVEEXPEriENCE: iNNoVatiVEaSiaNart

EXHiBitioNS iNaUStralia

KatherineRussell

23 20YEarSoFCoNtEMPorarYaSiaNart iNaUStralia:

aPErSoNalPErSPECtiVE

GeneSherman

26 aPttHENaNdNoW

MichaelDesmond

28 doUBlEdiP:tHEaSiaNBiENNalEaNdartFair

GinaFairley

31 PLACE.TIME.PLAY: CoNtEMPorarYartFroMtHEWESt

HEaVENStotHEMiddlEKiNGdoM

ChaitanyaSambrani

34 50,000daYSiNaSia:tHEaSialiNKartSrESidENCYProGraM

LesleyAlway

36 aNEWNaGariSiNG:CaMBodiaNCoNtEMPorarYart

DarrylCollins

38 GallErY2902&CoNtEMPorarYSiNGaPorEPHotoGraPHY

GaelNewton

42 BEYoNdFirSt iMPrESSioNS:StUdENtPErSPECtiVESoN

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PhoebeScott

44 HiNdiCiNEMaaNdtHEParadoXoFGloBaliSatioN

AdrienneMcKibbins

46 aSiaNdaNCE iNaUStralia

JillSykes

48 EarlYENCoUNtErSWitHaSia

PeterSculthorpe

50 iNPErForMaNCE:aSiaNMUSiCMaKiNGiNaUStralia

54 CUrator’SCHoiCE:aSiaNtrEaSUrEFroMaUStralia’S

PUBliCCollECtioN

60 rECENttaaSaaCtiVitiES

60 taaSaMEMBErS’diarY:DECEMBER 2011- FEBRUARY 2012

62 WHat’SoNiNaUStraliaaNdoVErSEaS:

DECEMBER 2011-FEBRUARY 2012

CompiledbyTinaBurge

C o N t E N t S

Volume 20 No. 4 December 2011

2

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TAASA REVIEW

THE ASIAN ARTS SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA INC. AbN 64093697537 • Vol. 20 No. 4, December 2011ISSN 1037.6674 Registered by Australia Post. Publication No. NBQ 4134

EdIToRIAL • email: [email protected]

General editor, Josefa Green pubLIcATIonS commITTEE

Josefa Green (convenor) • Tina burge Melanie Eastburn • Sandra Forbes • Ann MacArthur Jim Masselos • Ann Proctor • Susan Scollay Sabrina Snow • Christina Sumner

dESIgn/LAyouT

Ingo Voss, VossDesign

pRInTIng

John Fisher Printing

Published by The Asian Arts Society of Australia Inc. PO Box 996 Potts Point NSW 2011 www.taasa.org.au

Enquiries: [email protected]

TAASA Review is published quarterly and is distributed to members

of The Asian Arts Society of Australia Inc. TAASA Review welcomes

submissions of articles, notes and reviews on Asian visual and

performing arts. All articles are refereed. Additional copies and

subscription to TAASA Review are available on request.

No opinion or point of view is to be construed as the opinion of

The Asian Arts Society of Australia Inc., its staff, servants or agents.

No claim for loss or damage will be acknowledged by TAASA

Review as a result of material published within its pages or

in other material published by it. We reserve the right to alter

or omit any article or advertisements submitted and require

indemnity from the advertisers and contributors against damages

or liabilities that may arise from material published.

All reasonable efforts have been made to trace copyright holders.

TAASA mEmbERSHIp RATES

$70 Single$90 Dual$95 Libraries(inAustralia)$35 Concession(full-timestudentsunder26,pensioners

andunemployedwithID,SeniorsCardnotincluded)$115 Overseas(individualsandlibraries)

AdVERTISIng RATES

TAASAReviewwelcomes advertisements from appropriate companies, institutions and individuals. Rates below are GST inclusive.

back page $850Full inner page $725Half page horizontal $484Third page (vertical or horizontal) $364Half column $265Insert $300

Forfurtherinformationreadvertising,includingdiscountsforregularquarterlyadvertising,[email protected] dEAdLInE foR ALL ARTIcLES

fOR OuR NexT ISSue IS 15 DeCeMBeR 2011

THE dEAdLInE foR ALL AdVERTISIng

fOR OuR NexT ISSue IS 1 feBRuARY 2012

T A A S A c o m m I T T E E

gILL gREEn • PReSIDeNT

Art historian specialising in Cambodian culture

cHRISTInA SumnER • VICe PReSIDeNT

Principal Curator, Design and Society,Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

Ann guILd • TReASuReR

Former Director of the Embroiders Guild (UK)

dy AndREASEn • SeCReTARY

Has a special interest in Japanese haiku and tanka poetry

HWEI-fE’n cHEAH

Lecturer, Art History, Australian National University, with an interest in needlework

JocELyn cHEy

Visiting Professor, Department of Chinese Studies, University of Sydney; former diplomat

mATT cox

Study Room Co-ordinator, Art Gallery of New South Wales, with a particular interest in Islamic Art of Southeast Asia

pHILIp couRTEnAy

Former Professor and Rector of the Cairns Campus, James Cook University, with a special interest in Southeast Asian ceramics

LucIE foLAn

Assistant Curator, Asian Art, National Gallery of Australia

SAndRA foRbES

Editorial consultant with long-standing interest in South and Southeast Asian art

JoSEfA gREEn

General editor of TAASAReview. Collector of Chinese ceramics, with long-standing interest in East Asian art as student and traveller

mIn-Jung KIm

Curator of Asian Arts & Design at the Powerhouse Museum

Ann pRocToR

Art historian with a particular interest in Vietnam

yuKIE SATo

Former Vice President of the Oriental Ceramic Society of the Philippines with wide-ranging interest in Asian art and culture

SAbRInA SnoW

Has a long association with the Art Gallery of New South Wales and a particular interest in the arts of China

Hon. AudIToR

Rosenfeld Kant and Co

S T A T E R E p R E S E n T A T I V E S

AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY

Robyn mAxWELL

Visiting Fellow in Art History, ANU; Senior Curator of Asian Art, National Gallery of Australia

NORTHERN TERRITORY

JoAnnA bARRKmAn

Curator of Southeast Asian Art and Material Culture, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory

QUEENSLAND

RuSSELL SToRER

Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art, Queensland Art Gallery

SOUTH AUSTRALIA

JAmES bEnnETT

Curator of Asian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia

VICTORIA

cARoL cAInS

Curator Asian Art, National Gallery of Victoria International

4 TA A S A R e V I e W V O L u M e 2 0 N O . 4

E d I T o R I A L : 2 0 y E A R S o f T A A S A

JosefaGreen,Editor

As you can see, this is a very special issue of the TAASAReview, to celebrate TAASA’s 20th anniversary.

Given the central place of the TAASAReview over TAASA’s 20 year life, it seemed fitting to do something special, an idea enthusiastically supported by the Publications Committee. We felt that this was an opportunity for us to step back, not only to review TAASA’s past activities, but, more broadly, to assess developments in the Asian arts in Australia over the last 20 years to the present.

This conception has driven the approach taken in this issue. It is divided into 3 main sections. TAASA’s Legacy aims to honour the many people who have been involved with TAASA over time – committee members, service providers, supportive art institutions and members. In State of the Arts, we have commissioned a number of experts to assess developments in the Asian arts field, including performing arts, and have widened our reach beyond Australia to cover interesting developments elsewhere. Finally, in RepositoryofRiches, we have tried to give a feel for the range of Asian objects which can be found in the collections of our major arts institutions.

Our opening article in the TAASA’s Legacysection is by current TAASA President, Gill Green. In outlining TAASA’s history, she takes the opportunity to thank the many people involved in its creation and consolidation. We hope you enjoy the archival photos dug up from some of the very earliest issues of the TAASAReview.

The remaining articles in this section offer reminiscences by those who have been closely involved with TAASA over the years: ex-President Jackie Menzies and our first TAASAReview editor, Heleanor Feltham; four members of our very active Sydney based Textile Study Group and finally, the voices of a range of TAASA members who discuss how they became interested in Asian arts and involved with TAASA. We are only too conscious that space has not permitted us to include the many other Asian arts enthusiasts and loyal TAASA supporters that make up our membership.

State of the Arts is the central component of this issue. A number of articles focus on key initiatives in the Asian arts field over the last 20 years. Katherine Russell covers some of the main Asian art exhibitions we have enjoyed around Australia, convincingly arguing that, while these have not often achieved ‘blockbuster’ status, they have forged new

ground through their innovative designs and experiential approach.

One major private sector player in the Australian cultural scene since the early 1980’s has been the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF). Gene Sherman provides a personal account of what inspired her to promote contemporary Asian art with such passion, and outlines the impressive list of exhibitions and related initiatives taken by the then Irving Galleries and now SCAF. Her article also acknowledges some of the other major players in the contemporary Asian arts scene in Australia in the same period.

One major initiative mentioned by Gene Sherman is covered more fully by Michael Desmond’s article. This is the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) which was launched in 1993, with great prescience, by the Queensland Art Gallery. Michael Desmond assesses the way in which successive APTs have encouraged interest in the arts and wider culture of Asia, at the same time putting brisbane on the cultural map.

As Michael Desmond points out, the current proliferation of rival biennials in the Asian region has affected the impact of the APTs. This is illustrated by Gina Fairley’s article, which notes that around 25 of the 80 or so international biennales/triennials are now held in Asia. She examines how Asian cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong are competing to offer the ‘hottest’ shows and fairs, and wonders how artistic achievement can be critically assessed given the way in which these events have become ‘so thoroughly massaged and hyped’.

We offer three further articles on the current international contemporary arts scene – aimed more at providing a tasting menu than a comprehensive review. Chaitanya Sambrani explains the intention behind a fascinating multi-disciplinary project he co-instigated, which involved a select group of Chinese and Indian artists undertaking journeys to each other’s countries. The visual art component opened in Shanghai in 2010.

Darryl Collins provides a very useful overview of current developments in Cambodia, where we are witnessing a mushrooming of private galleries in the capital and elsewhere. Gael Newton surveys current developments in photography in Singapore, beginning with her observations while participating in the inaugural Singapore International Photography Festival in 2008.Two initiatives aimed at encouraging

engagement between Australian artists and Asia are also covered in this issue. The Director of Asialink Arts, Lesley Alway, explains the aims of its Residency program and gives tangible examples of how some have benefited from it. Phoebe Scott interviews some of our current arts students, exploring what has motivated them to learn more about Asian art and culture, and how this has affected their work to date.

TAASA has tried to maintain a commitment to cover the performing arts, and this is reflected by the remaining articles in this StateoftheArts section. Adrienne McKibbins dissects Hindi cinema, arguing that the terms ‘bollywood’ and ‘globalisation’ are both misleadingly applied to this industry. Jill Sykes offers personal insights into where Asian dance has gone in Australia over the last two decades. And we are delighted that Peter Sculthorpe has contributed a piece which describes the beginnings of his engagement with Asia, its music and ideas.

Finally, in our “In Performance” segment, four groups or individuals who currently perform Asian music in Australia are profiled: Adrian McNeil with bobby Singh; Queensland Conservatorium’s Gamelan Ensemble, the Nefes Ensemble and Riley Lee.

So to the last segment of our ‘twice the size’ TAASAReview. RepositoryofRiches dips into the treasure chest which is the Asian art collections of our public art institutions. We asked the key curators from a selection of institutions to nominate one significant piece from their collection, and to explain why it is significant both as a work of art and in the context of the wider collection. We hope you enjoy the results!

As a final comment, this issue represents, like TAASA, a community of interest. It has involved many people generously offering their time and expertise: past and present committee members, expert contributors, TAASA members and above all, members of the Publications Committee who worked hard to produce it. Thanks also to the Powerhouse Museum for its generous sponsorship of this special anniversary issue.

TAASA gratefully acknowledges the generous sponsorship provided by the Powerhouse Museum for the production of this anniversary issue of the TAASA Review.

5TA A S A R e V I e W V O L u M e 2 0 N O . 4

TAASA’S LEGACY

6

AASA emerged in 1991 as a germ of an idea stimulated by a visit to a passionate

collector’s stash of Chinese dress and accessory items. The Powerhouse Museum’s Carl Andrew and Claire Roberts, together with esteemed Chinese textile dealer Judith Rutherford, had been invited down from Sydney to view Roger Grellman’s collection (notable at the time and still growing today). While travelling, these luminaries got thinking about the necessity for a forum where private collectors and enthusiasts of Asian arts could meet to share their passions and collections with each other and a broader public. Soon after, on the occasion of the Powerhouse Museum’s MaterialWorld exhibition, a group of interested people took advantage of an exotic space installed by Ross Langlands (a Turkmen felt yurt, see p. 15) to meet and discuss the question further. Hence TAASA’s origin myth of being ‘hatched in a yurt’ (for more detail on this, see Joyce burnard’s article celebrating TAASA’s 10th anniversary in TAASAReviewVol.10/4, December 2001).

More supporters with similar interests emerged, and the first TAASA committee was set up, comprising Carl Andrew, Jackie Menzies, Paul Genney, Ian brookes, Heleanor Feltham, Ross Langlands, Jim Masselos, Claire Roberts, Adrian Snodgrass, Judith Snodgrass, Christina Sumner and John Yu. Max Davis was the Hon. Treasurer and John Morrissey the Hon. Solicitor.

The Committee set to work on the practical requirements – legal and financial - for setting up this not-for-profit, incorporated society. Paul Genney recalls that each Committee member put in $100 and that $8000 was donated by the ANZ bank. This total of nearly $10,000 became TAASA’s seed money. Other supporters gave in kind. Paperpoint donated that pale grey recycled paper on which TAASA Review was printed forits first few years. Spatchurst Design Associates set up the design template for the TAASAReview and created the logo, based on the committee’s concepts.

Needless to say a lot of thought was put into TAASA’s distinctive logo. The Committee aimed to encapsulate both the geographic spread as well as the diverse cultural spectrum of what constitutes ‘Asian arts’. This may well have seemed a daunting task. What was eventually adopted was a simple disc containing the acronym ‘TAASA’ in a white stylised font on a blue/green background. The

disc references the Japanese mon, an emblem used to decorate and identify an individual or family. Its original green colour was in time changed to a cinnabar red.

So, ready to go. With the generous cooperation of Edmund Capon, Director of the Art Gallery of NSW (subsequently declared TAASA’s first Hon. Life Member) a meeting was held at the AGNSW to launch this new Society on the national scene. A large audience packed the available space in the Gallery, of whom, according to the first issue of the TAASA Review (January 1992), more than 200 subsequently signed up for membership. Carl Andrew became TAASA’s inaugural president, followed by Jackie Menzies OAM, Judith Rutherford AM, and currently myself.

Two decades later in 2011, the current Management Committee - see listing on the

Editorial page of this (and every) issue of TAASAReview - pondered the question of whether TAASA has achieved its original aims: to provide a forum for members and to contribute to the wider Asian arts community. We believe we – and that ’we’ includes everyone who over the years has served on TAASA Committees – have achieved those aims, and over the past 20 years have created what we term a ‘community of interest’. What constitutes this ‘community’? TAASA is independent and national; we have a broad appeal to experts, collectors and enthusiasts; we cover a wide range of topics; and finally our activities provide members with the opportunity to meet and share knowledge and interests.

How, over the past 20 years, has this community of interest been achieved and what have been milestones? The TAASAReview is

6

T

b u I L d I n g o n T A A S A’ S f o u n d A T I o n S

GillGreen,TAASAPresident

TA A S A R e V I e W V O L u M e 2 0 N O . 3

LefT TO RIGHT: CARL ANDReW, KeRRY WALKeR, DR JOHN Yu, JILL SYKeS, JOHN MeRSON

AND JIM MASSeLOS AT THe LAuNCH Of TAASA, OCTOBeR 1991

LefT TO RIGHT: JACKIe MeNZIeS, JIM MASSeLOS AND ANNe fAIRBAIRN AT THe LAuNCH Of TAASA, OCTOBeR 1991


the principal avenue of communication with members. It has been published continuously since its first edition in January 1992, under the successive editorship of four dedicated members: Heleanor Feltham, Ann MacArthur, Sandra Forbes and currently Josefa Green. The quarterly cycle of publishing in March, June, September and December became the norm from 1994. From black and white, the journal morphed into principally colour from March 1998, when it sported its first full colour cover image. Since September 2003, the journal has been full colour throughout. The high level of editorship and design required for the production of the TAASAReview has resulted arguably in the most significant journal on Asian arts outside the formal academic and institutional realm published in Australia.

Relationships with supportive institutions have clearly been instrumental in facilitating TAASA’s aims. These relationships have principally been with the Art Gallery of NSW; Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, of which TAASA is an affiliated society; the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra; and the National Gallery of Victoria. In the last few years we have built a relationship with the Queensland Art Gallery through the auspices of ACAPA (Australian Centre for Asian and Pacific Art). These institutions have provided venues for TAASA seminars, as well as on occasion inviting TAASA to jointly organise seminars. New relationships are being established, most recently with the State Library of Victoria (SLV) where TAASA is a sponsor of a major event early in 2012. This is a fresh initiative which we hope will revive TAASA’s activities in Melbourne and result in an ongoing relationship with the SLV. Here it is appropriate to acknowledge the sterling efforts of the members who were instrumental in progressing TAASA’s activities in Victoria in earlier years – Marjorie Ho, bill Coaldrake, Tonia Eckfeld, Ruth Clemens, Ann Roberts and Ken Capes, to name just a few.

TAASA also has a cooperative relationship with the Sydney-based arts organisation VisAsia, the Australian Institute of Asian Culture and Visual Arts. VisAsia currently purchases copies of the TAASA Review for distribution to its members, thus further extending TAASA’s reach. TAASA has also a close relationship with the Oriental Rug Society of NSW with whom we share many members. We now have 20 academic and gallery libraries signed up as subscribers to the TAASA Review both in Australia and abroad, this being an acknowledgement of the high quality of its peer- reviewed, scholarly papers. Statutory copies of all TAASA’s printed material are deposited in the State Library of NSW and the National Library of

Australia. We have also been very lucky to have had a number of commercial galleries, bookshops and dealers nationally support our activities by providing their premises for meetings – and also, of course, by advertising in TAASAReview.

TAASA has organised many seminars and talks, some 30 since 1995, mainly in Sydney and Melbourne, but also more recently in brisbane (see list in this issue). The current Events Committee is chaired by Ann Guild and her skills in planning and attention to detail are much appreciated. Study Days on a variety of subjects have been arranged, with private viewings of institutional collections at AGNSW, National Gallery of Australia, the Australian Museum and the National Library of Australia in recent years. Curator-led walkthroughs of major exhibitions have been enjoyed at the Powerhouse Museum (which

through the generous initiative of its Director, Dr Dawn Casey, is a sponsor of this special issue of TAASAReview), the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria.

To cater further to members’ specific interests, focus groups have been set up at various times over the years. Of these, the Textile Study Group in NSW has been the longest-lived, having met on a monthly basis for the past 15 years at the Powerhouse Museum. In this issue of TAASAReview a number of long-time members of the Textile Study Group record their memories of the early days of this group and the impact it has had on them.

This year being TAASA’s 20th anniversary, the Committee decided that a ‘bumper’ edition of the TAASA Review, twice the usual size, be published. This ambitious edition could not have been attempted let

JuDITH RuTHeRfORD (RIGHT) WITH HeLeN PeRReLL IN HeLeN’S APARTMeNT IN HONG KONG, MARCH 1996

VIeTNAMeSe CeRAMICS WORKSHOP WITH KeRRY NGuYeN-LONG (RIGHT), DeCeMBeR 2000


alone produced without the manifest skills of Josefa Green, current editor of the TAASAReview. It has been a huge undertaking which Josefa has orchestrated with consummate professionalism and in which she has been ably supported by the Publications Committee members whose names appear on the Contents page.

In this 20th anniversary year, TAASA for the first time organised an essay competition with $2000 in prize money, open to undergraduate, honours and masters students at Australian universities. This initiative was undertaken to encourage students of Asian arts in their studies and is a demonstration of TAASA’s commitment to the furthering of Asian arts scholarship in Australia. A TAASA subcommittee reviewed the entries and submitted a number for scholarly review. As it eventuated, two essays were declared prize-worthy, so the prize was divided between Hannah beasley (ANU) and Matt O’Farrell (also ANU). Their essays are published as a supplement to this issue of the TAASAReview. Congratulations are due to the winners and thanks to all those who entered the competition and to the scholarly reviewers who generously gave their time.

Supporting these special initiatives, TAASA’s day-to-day activities are handled by a Management Committee. We have a wealth of expertise and depth of talent in Committee members on which we can and do call. Skills acquired professionally or through outside interests or commitments have proved invaluable in both complying with routine necessities as well as identifying interesting initiatives. All activities are undertaken

with professionalism, with goodwill and with many hours of voluntary time – as has been the case with everyone who has served on TAASA’s various Committees over the past 20 years. Here I would like to acknowledge the contribution of the current TAASA Vice President Christina Sumner, Principal Curator, Design and Society at the Powerhouse Museum. Christina was one of TAASA’s founder members and has been a tower of support over the years.

Within the current Management Committee we have expertise in database management, finance and accounting, event management, editing and publishing and legal matters. This expertise has facilitated the recent undertaking of a number of necessary updates and activities. In 2011 TAASA’s Constitution was amended in accordance with changes to the legislation of the Office of Fair Trading as well as our own requirements for plain language.

A major initiative of recent years has been the initial funding and creation, and subsequent yearly updating, of an Index covering all issues of TAASAReview since Vol.1/1 in January 1992. The index, an invaluable tool for members and other researchers, is available on TAASA’s website www.taasa.org.au, set up in 2003.

TAASA’s website is an indispensible portal for enquiries not only for members and prospective members but also as a hub for information exchange. A major overhaul is planned for 2012, which, when completed, will enable the provision of additional services for members, such as the option of paying for seminars and memberships electronically. Communication with members is now vastly

improved with the recently established email list of those 90% of members who have supplied their email address. This advance clearly saves the Committee a huge amount of time as well as making possible a substantial saving on postage costs.

The Management Committee’s activities are supported by a number of indispensible external services. Over the last decade Ingo Voss of VossDesign has worked closely and seamlessly with successive TAASA Review editors to produce the publication with its indisputable standard of excellence both in content and design. Ingo also works with seminar organisers to produce attractive brochures for TAASA activities, and is instrumental in designing and producing all TAASA stationery. TAASA’s annual accounts are currently audited by Rosenfeld Kant and Co. on a pro bono basis.

To sum up, TAASA can be proud of its achievements over the past 20 years. It can be proud that, as a not-for-profit Society run by a voluntary Committee, it has managed its affairs with professionalism and dedication and has achieved a significant presence in the Asian arts scene in Australia. The Society’s 20th Anniversary celebration on 6 December, held with the generous cooperation of the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation in Sydney, has as its principal guest speaker the Society’s first Hon. Life Member, retiring Director of the AGNSW, Edmund Capon. The publication of the December edition of the TAASAReview coincides with this celebratory event.

Gill Green is President of TAASA and an Honorary

Associate in the Department of Art History & film

Studies, university of Sydney.

THe ’YuRT-HATCHeRS’ Of TAASA. fROM LefT: HeLeANOR feLTHAM, CHRISTNA SuMNeR, CARL ANDReW AND CLAIRe ROBeRTS.

PHOTO: JeAN-fRANCOIS LANZARONe, DeCeMBeR 2001

Dee COuRT (LefT) AND GILL GReeN (CeNTRe) WITH GueST LeCTuReR

SHeILA PAINe (RIGHT) AT THe SILKeN STePPeS exHIBITION OPeNeING

AT NOMADIC RuG TRADeRS, SYDNeY, SePTeMBeR 1999


TAASA’s first lectures and seminars were held soon after its launch in 1991-92 – in fact, the President’s report to the Annual General Meeting held February 1993 reports that the Society had presented 26 events during the past 12 months. The list below is therefore by no means complete. As with many voluntary organisations, the records themselves are not comprehensive or detailed.

A fuller compilation of a record of TAASA-organised events over the past 20 years is a work in progress. If any member has information to add, or can advise on sources of information other than back issues of TAASAReview, please email us at: [email protected]. Thanks to Gill Green (Sydney) and Marjorie Ho (Melbourne) for the compilation to date.

T A A S A S E m I n A R S A n d E V E n T S S I n c E 1 9 9 5

m A J o R T A A S A S E m I n A R S

PHM = Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; AGNSW = Art Gallery of NSW; QAG=Queensland Art Gallery; GOMA=Gallery of Modern Art., SMSA = Sydney Mechanics School of Arts; COFA=College of Fine Arts, UNSW.

Other TAASA activities TAASA has organised a range of other activities for members. A number of special interest groups have been formed over the past 20 years, their survival dependent on the energy and support of members. This includes Indian and Himalayan, Ceramics, Film and Theatre, and Textile groups in Melbourne and Ceramics, Textiles, Jewellery and fine metal groups in Sydney. The Textile Study group, which meets at the PHM, is still going strong in Sydney.

Events have included weekend study trips to Canberra and most recently a visit to Opera Australia (Sydney) to view the costumes for the opera Lakmé, and a two location study day entitled ‘Drama and Delight’ to view collections at AGNSW and Australian Museum.

TAASA has launched a number of newly published books including those of Dr Pamela Gutman, Anne Warr, Gill Green, Dr Milton Osborne and Dr Solomon bard. On occasion members were offered these publications at a discount price.

TAASA has been offered preview viewings at auction houses dealing in Asian artefacts by Mossgreen Auctions (Sydney), Sotheby’s (Melbourne) and Vietnamese ceramics from the Hoi Ann Hoard supported by E-bay (Melbourne and Sydney). Special ‘walk through’ events at various Asian art exhibitions have been arranged, such as the recent JapaninSydney exhibition talk at the University Art Gallery, Sydney University.

On occasion, TAASA members in NSW have celebrated the Chinese Moon Festival at the Observatory and at Glover Cottage, Sydney. And our end of year parties in Sydney and Melbourne, including our popular bazaar in Sydney, provides us with a congenial opportunity to get together.

Textiles of NE Asia PHM 1995Textiles of the Lower Mekong PHM 1996Dancing to the Flute AGNSW 1997Cities of Asia Sotheby’s 1997Chinese Ceramics Symposium Sydney & Melb. 1997Chinese Dress 1700s to now PHM 1997Prehistoric Threads and Mummies National 1998National Tour: AGNSW, James Cook University Townsville; ANU; University of Adelaide; La Trobe University; University of Sydney; interview at AGNSW Introduction to Himalayas and India Melbourne 1998The Grand Heritage of Indian Architecture Melbourne 1998Photography and Beyond: Vestiges of the Raj Melbourne 1998On the Ashram Trail, 10 years before the Beatles Melbourne 1998The Silk Roads: Their Role in World History AGNSW 1999Silken Steppes: Textile Arts of Central Asia (with PHM 1999 Oriental Rug Society of NSW) The Traditional and the Contemporary in Japanese Art Melbourne 1999Caravanserai: Journey through Central Asian Textiles Melbourne 1999Lands of Gold: Intra-Regional Cultural Exchanges in Southeast Asia AGNSW 2000 Hats, Turbans, Topkots. The Vocabulary of Headwear in Asia COFA 2000BUDDHA: Radiant Awakening (with VisAsia) AGNSW 2001Art and Archaeology of Burma AGNSW 2001Vietnamese Arts: Tradition and Modernity PHM 2002Tradewinds and the Textiles of Southeast Asia PHM 2002

Walking with Chinese Dragons PHM 2002Foreigners in Asia PHM 2003Art and Symbolism- Five Cultures. Melbourne 2002 Travels through Asia Minor Fragrant Space Chinese Museum 2002China Trade: Insights into a Commerce that Traversed AGNSW 2003Seas, Continents and Centuries Contemporary Cambodian Culture PHM 2004Celestial Silks AGNSW 2004Shipwrecked Ceramics Melbourne 2004So You Want to be a Collector AGNSW 2005Rajput, Sons of Kings (with VisAsia) AGNSW 2005Angkor: Artefacts to Empire (with U. of Sydney.) Women’s College 2006The Great Wall of China PHM 2006Shanghai Old and New: City of Dreams PHM 2007Cities of Mainland Southeast Asia: the Lands PHM 2007Below the Winds Beijing-Xanadu: Past, Present and Future. PHM and NGV 2008Chinese Ceramics QAG 2009Asian Textiles QAG 2009Jewellery and Adornment of Asia AGNSW 2009Cities of the Silk Road PHM 2009Iranian Arts and Crafts PHM 2010City Images: A Symposium on Indian Cities SMSA 2011Innovation & influence: Ceramics of Southeast Asia PHM 2011Threads: Contemporary Textiles and the Social Fabric GoMA 2011(with ACAPA - Australian Centre of Asia Pacific Art)


y memories of TAASA are from the time I was on the Society’s Committee:

from its inception in 1991 through to 2000. When TAASA arose, there was a feeling of exhilaration and expectation: at last a platform for Asian art lovers to share rare treasures and new realms of wonder, to open the eyes of the world to tantalising and unfamiliar pleasures.

A lot of thought went into the establishment of TAASA, and members still benefit from the foundations laid by early Committee members. I remember how everyone was particularly grateful for the work done by our first Secretary, Paul Genney, who insisted on proper elections, rotation of committee members, annual audits (done gratis by Max Davis) - all the processes one would think were normal and yet are surprisingly dysfunctional in so many volunteer organisations. A big thankyou is due to Paul. Also to John Spatchurst, who designed the TAASA logo, and established the prototype layout for the Review; and to Carl Andrew, the first President, and to the members of the first Committee (listed in Gill Green’s article). Thanks too to ANZ who provided seeding funds, to Paperpoint who provided paper for the first few years for the Review and for stationery, and to those early members who believed enough in TAASA to take out life membership. I recall how grateful Committee members were to the Editors of the Reviewfor the demanding job they had volunteered to do: Heleanor Feltham (1991-1994); Ann MacArthur (1995-2000); Sandra Forbes (2001- 2007) and now Josefa Green.

Early committee meetings were passionate affairs with excessive talking, eating and drinking: suppressed genii suddenly let loose, keen to share their knowledge with the whole community, and insistent in giving priority to their particular area of interest. It was great fun as members vied for their ideas to be heard and implemented.

Right from the beginning the emphasis was on events and the Review: emphases that have been maintained. Early functions were nervous affairs as we waited to see how many members would turn up and how engaging the speaker would be; catering was done by Committee members, and there was the TAASA box of glasses which was lugged around with cartons of wine and diverse samples of Asian food. Where have the TAASA glasses gone?

It was policy that committee meetings and functions were in various venues: apart from select institutions, dealers such as Ross Langlands, bill Evans, the late Cito Cessna and others in Sydney were generous. Other fun functions were held when Paul Genney ran his Quadrivium gallery in the Queen Victoria building (1996-2002). Functions were for fund-raising as well as engagement and education. Moon-viewing to musical accompaniment and end-of-year parties/bazaars were innovative and rewarding, socially and financially.

No one predicted the success of TAASA. Members kept coming to events, and renewing their subscriptions, even though some Committee members felt so exhausted they wondered if TAASA should be allowed to quietly expire. However, TAASA and its supporters were made of tougher stuff, and it is fantastic to see how the Society continues to grow.

I remember the ambitions as well as the achievements. Personally I have many great memories: obviously other committee members will recall different events. Proud achievements were the numerous symposia: I recall particularly the two-day Dancing tothe Flute symposium in 1997, ambitiously mega and organised in conjunction with the AGNSW’s newly-formed Centre for Asian Art Studies. And the first TAASA National Tour,

in 1999, when Elizabeth barber, author of TheMummiesofUrumchi,undertook a lecture tour organised by (now President) Gill Green.

I recall the debates as to whether TAASA could afford for the Reviewtobe published in colour, and then the pride we felt at the success of the first colour issue: Vol.7 No.1, March 1998, devoted to public collections, with sponsorship I had negotiated from the newly formed Asia Society AustralAsia Centre in Melbourne. I recall the Committee’s pride in the establishment of focus groups (Textiles in 1994; Ceramics 1995; Jewellery and fine metal 1995; Indian and Himalayan 1997), and its attempts to include music and performance in its events and within the Review;and the efforts for an interim Newsletter which proved to be too high-maintenance.

Overall what I remember was the constant experimentation as we sought to give members engaging, up-to-the-moment events and articles, while constantly monitoring their responses. The continuing success of TAASA is a credit to all the past as well as the current Committees, the fantastic job they do, and the input of TAASA members. Hopefully the next 20 years are even more successful.

Jackie Menzies is Head of Asian Art at the Art Gallery of

NSW. She was President of TAASA from 1992-2000.

M

TAASA REcoLLEcTEd : W H e R e H AV e T H e TA A S A G L A S S e S G O N e ?

JackieMenzies

THREE goddESSES: JACKIe MeNZIeS (CeNTRe) AND THe LATe MARGAReT OLLeY (LefT) ADMIRe AN INDIAN SCuLPTuRe Of DuRGA ON

LOAN fROM THe VICTORIA AND ALBeRT MuSeuM, LONDON, AT THe OPeNING Of THe exHIBITION GODDESS: DIVINE ENERGY IN 2006


find it almost impossible to believe that 20 years have passed since TAASA began.

Those of us who came together to discuss the founding of an Asian Arts society in Sydney were all convinced from our differing experiences that the time was right: there were now enough people with an interest in the field to justify us gathering to celebrate the wonderful diversity which constitutes the arts of Asia. Similar societies, some with long and honourable histories, already existed in Europe, America and the Far East, and there were useful journals, Oriental Arts and Arts of Asia for instance, that covered a range of topics. Was there really enough local interest to justify not merely a newsletter, but a quality journal, and were there enough of us around to sustain an esoteric society?

Well, 20 years later, the answer is a resoundingly obvious - yes! TAASA and its accompanying journal have gone from success to success, maintaining membership, diversity of focus, and quality of scholarship.

For me personally, this has been a deeply satisfying outcome. Something I loved and wanted to share has reached a receptive audience. Now, far from being an innovator, I am more of a dinosaur and a new generation of art makers and appreciators sees nothing exotic in incorporating Asian elements and attitudes in their work, or in taking seriously areas which were largely passed over or relegated to mere decorative functionalism. This is particularly true of textiles, in many parts of Asia one of the few areas of creativity open to women, whether as tribal rugs of Central Asia or the brilliant ikats of borneo’s Iban.

TAASA’s recognition of textiles has been long-standing and significant, from the formation of the Textile Study Group to the development, with input from professional members and collectors, of major Art Gallery and Museum collections. Some individual TAASA members such as, Robin Maxwell, Christina Sumner and Gill Green, have played an active role not only in Australia, but internationally.

TAASA from its foundation has always appealed to four groups of people: the dealers, the collectors, the museum people and the academics, as well as those with a general interest in Asian arts. When we started this was rather unusual; different disciplines were much more segregated and there was often a lack of

willingness to communicate between academic and other groups. In some ways the internet has made this attitude obsolete. I am, for instance, a member of several on-line specialist associations, and there is a tremendous value in people from different disciplines – archaeologists, museum professionals, philologists, sociologists, historians – from all around the world coming together on-line to discuss different issues.

In much the same way, TAASA works together with organisations such as the Art Gallery of NSW, the Powerhouse Museum and the universities, as well as visiting specialists and local scholars and collectors, to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and knowledge. And we have been very much at the forefront of a major cultural change that has seen Asian languages, films, art, traditions and aesthetics, contemporary and traditional, expand from a minority interest to the level of acceptance that can see, for instance, over 500 students enrol for a university summer school on the Silk Road.

For me, the TAASA seminars, the TAASAReview and the textile group have always provided a wonderful motivation for my own research and the development of lectures and articles. Without that impetus, I doubt that I would have done nearly as much, let alone gone on to complete my PhD in material culture. TAASA has provided a tremendous incentive, and a great venue for the exploration of ideas. TAASAReview demands two things, a genuine depth of knowledge, checked by the editorial and peer review process, and the

ability to communicate simply and effectively within a relatively strict framework to a broad range of interests. This is not merely because we, from the start, defined ‘Asian Arts’ as broadly as possible, incorporating every time period and medium from Neolithic jades to contemporary film, and every region and culture from Iranian tribal rugs to Korean jewellery, but also because TAASA is essentially inclusive: we are all equally amateurs in one field or another and all equally scholars in some specialist area.

And not only that, but we enjoy each other’s company. Seminars, talks associated with exhibitions at venues both public and private, the Textile Study Group, the annual end-of-year party, all provide an opportunity for compatible and interesting people to get together, have a great time, and develop lasting friendships. TAASA has given me an enormous amount over the years - friendship, entertainment, specialist knowledge, a confidence in my own scholarship and my ability to communicate both through lectures and writing, a growing sense of the unity of aesthetic expression and the chance to share. May it continue to grow from strength to strength.

Heleanor feltham has a PhD in International Studies

and specialises in Central Asian material culture. A

founding member of TAASA, and founding editor of

the TAASA Review, she has published articles on a

variety of subjects, including silk, jewellery and lion

imagery. Now retired, she still lectures for the annual

uNSW Summer School on Silk Road. She is an

impassioned and eclectic collector.

I

TAASA REcoLLEcTEd : A C e L e B R AT I O N O f D I V e R S I T Y

HeleanorFeltham

HeLeANOR feLTHAM AND THe LION OF COMMAGENE, TuRKeY 2006


Eighteen years ago (1993) on one of my visits to Hong Kong, I spoke with Diana Collins about the idea of forming a textile study group in Sydney and hopefully, long term, linking up with similar groups in Southeast Asia and beyond. Diana, an Australian conservator and Hong Kong resident was in the process of forming the Hong Kong Textile Society. We both felt that such groups would assist in promotion, appreciation and understanding of

traditional textiles and so lift the profile of textiles as a formal area of study.

Looking back it seems hard to believe there was still a perception that textiles were ‘women’s work’ and not really to be considered as serious cultural works of art. One person did even ask me if I saw the group as something that would take place in my living room, and that made me even more determined not only to go ahead but also to make sure that the study group did function as professionally as possible. The first convenor of the group, Anne baker, also felt strongly that serious research and study were part of the brief, the high standard continued with subsequent convenors Dee Court and Gill Green.

One of the first decisions that had to be made was whether to have the group as a stand-alone entity or whether to link in with TAASA. It seems quite strange now that we spent so much time discussing this issue. Carl Andrew, TAASA President

at that time, was very helpful and stressed that one original concept of TAASA had been to encourage such focus groups. This relationship had many advantages, principally that bureaucratic issues would be dealt with by the TAASA executive committee. Also, as TAASA was an affiliated society of the Powerhouse Museum, this institution became the venue for meetings.

In 1995 Cathay Pacific sponsored a TAASA Textile Group tour to Hong Kong and many Study Group members and their friends took part. Here they attended one of the first international Chinese Textile Conferences held in Hong Kong organised by Diana Collins and the Hong Kong Textile Society. The Australian contingent was the largest from any country and that was a coming of age for the group. It is also interesting to note that this focus group is the only one of the original focus groups still active.

JudithRutherfordAM(Founder,TextileStudyGroup,PresidentTAASA2001–2010)

I have always loved textiles and the stories they weave, as well as the role they play in the history of societies. Imagine my joy when I joined TAASA in 1996 at the invitation of Judith Rutherford.Joining the Textile Study Group has introduced me to some amazing women

- fellow souls with a deep love of textiles. Many of these women have inspired me: the late Dee Court, Heleanor Feltham, Gill Green, Lenore blackwood and Joyce burnard. It was also at TAASA that I reconnected with a long lost friend and ex-colleague – Helen Perry.

It was Dee Court who encouraged me to share the history of my late mother’s legacy – a collection of over a thousand saris. I researched an unknown aspect of the sari history – the phenomenon of the synthetic sari (a post-war export from Japan to Southeast Asian countries). In 2002, I gave a presentation on the Malaysian sari at TAASA’s seminar ‘TradewindsandtheTextilesof Southeast Asia’. That initial interest and research into my mother’s sari collection then took me in a totally different direction. I started exploring the more than 120 ways

of wearing the sari. As a professional image consultant, this topic interested me and I have since delivered similar presentations including ‘bollywood’s Gift to the West – A Modern Take on the Traditional Sari’.

I always look forward to coming to Study Group meetings as it is a welcome experience at the end of a hard working day. My knowledge has been enriched by everyone’s contributions and I look forward to sharing many more experiences with TAASA.

SorayaRajuisPresident-elect,AssociationImageConsultantsInternational- Sydney Chapter

A communITy of InTEREST: THE TAASA TExT ILE gRoup

J u D I T H R u T H e R f O R D

S O R AYA R A J u


My grandmother was a wonderful woman who made her own lampshades, wore very stylish hats and had a weakness for glamorous silks and taffetas. Her daughter had a loom on which she used to weave tartan cloth before marriage: children left her no time for such things. She was also

a very good embroiderer and an excellent tailor and seamstress.

Unfortunately I have none of those skills and attributes but somehow or another, the gene has come through to me in the form of a love of textiles. I recall with passion a shimmering gold lamé evening dress my mother made in the fifties from fabric bought by my father on a trip to India. Or the beautiful, intense colours of the woollen fabric used in Donald Davies’ dresses of the sixties. Or the embroidered cloths from Hungary we saw in the sixties and the seventies. And I still have an exquisite black chiffon flapper’s dress embroidered with black jet that used to belong to my great aunt Vera. And then there are the wonderful woven and brightly coloured textiles from Tanzania, no longer made but sitting in my box at home along with the

exquisite fine dhoti cloth from India.

My loves rather were reading and history. I pursued my love of textiles feeling ignorant and incompetent about warp and weft, about dyeing, about quilting and embroidery. Finding the Textile Study Group though, has helped me integrate all these interests. I’m still hopeless at practical skills and indeed specialist knowledge, but being a member of the group has enabled me to be surrounded by skilful and passionate makers and collectors. Their knowledge is always placed in historical and cultural contexts. Over time my hope is that some of this passion and experience will rub off on me.

Roz Cheney was an executive producer andmanagerwithABCRadiofrom1970to2001.

When the Textile Study Group started we were a very small band, just six to a dozen disciples gathered around our guiding spirit, convener and guru, Anne baker. Drawing on her rich encyclopaedic knowledge of textiles worldwide and her pedagogic skills, Anne inspired and nurtured our studies and at the same time was always eager to learn from what we could contribute. Anne had a scholar’s approach to the study of textiles and her vision for the group was ambitious. It was to play an important educational role in the community. A crusading attitude was encouraged, if textiles had been neglected they were now to be taken out of the cupboard and given

their rightful place with other arts.

At those first meetings around a table in a small room at the Powerhouse Museum, Study Group members learnt that they were expected to be highly motivated and disciplined too, nothing slapdash or ad hoc would be acceptable. Prospective members were almost vetted for serious intention and willingness to contribute, knowledge was to be shared with the group and research undertaken, no slacking. It was quite challenging for some of us at times. There was to be no holding up of a textile treasure as a ‘piece picked up in a roadside market’, it had to be presented as if in a museum catalogue; no casual run down of a recently seen textile exhibition, a serious appraisal was required. but a word of approval from Anne brought a glow of warm satisfaction and her own enthusiasm and her interest in every aspect of textile art was infectious. Those who were once only mildly smitten became dedicated aficionados. The small room at the Powerhouse later became a larger one with a longer table but we were always ready to go nomadic, to follow Anne to a waiting Christina Sumner,

then Curator of Decorative Arts at the Powerhouse Museum and gorge ourselves on a carefully chosen selection of the almost indigestible riches in the Museum’s collection, or to sally forth for a tailored tour. We perused some of the Australian Museum’s textile collection where Anne was a volunteer, crossed the Harbour bridge to the home of group member Alex biancardi and felt wonderfully privileged as this discriminating collector opened a huge carved wooden trunk and unfolded treasure after treasure. These were responsibilities and delights for a small group. As we grew, burgeoned even, the nature of our group changed. This was, I think, part of the success of the group. The word had spread and so had the interest. Textiles were on the up and up, no longer on the back shelf. I have loved and appreciated the Textile Study Group from its inception and through all its stages. Long may it prosper. Lenore Blackwood is an avid traveller andcollectoranddealerintextiles

R O Z C H e N e Y

L e N O R e B L AC KW O O D


T A A S A m E m b E R S ’ m E m o I R S

J OYC e B u R N A R D

There was a time when my knowledge of Asia was very superficial. I traveled to various places in that part of the world without any real knowledge of their history and culture but fascinated as a tourist with the exotic atmosphere everywhere. Places I visited were Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand several times, because my brother was a New Zealand diplomat there. The only textile I bought at the time was a length of beautiful silk from Jim Thompson’s famous shop in bangkok. A visit to India was never considered – too hot, too unusual, too many people, too much curry, etc. etc.

All this changed when, back in Sydney, I received from an Australian friend living in Delhi a bunch of samples of Indian hand-loomed furnishing cottons with beautiful textures. My friend was connected with the distributing firm Fabindiaand sent them with the hope that I might become their agent or find someone who would. I showed them to some interior decorators I knew and they all pronounced them “brilliant. The prices were good, too. I decided to go ahead, thinking it would be a good hobby in addition to the free lance journalism I was already doing. In two weeks I took orders totalling l,000 m of fabric. This was l974 and there was a scarcity of good affordable furnishing fabrics. Everyone loved them, and the business, now called Ascraft Fabrics, boomed. Soon the time came when a visit to India was needed.

I loved India from the minute I arrived and was soon absorbed in the fabulous scene. I visited the village looms where my cottons were made, spoke to the weavers, one of whom told me he was a seventh generation weaver. I soon realized what history lay behind both the weaving and dyeing and began to wonder where it all began. In Delhi I marveled at the

proliferation of textiles – they were simply everywhere, not only in the colourful saris of the women but in the men’s clothes too, mainly white as it was August and very hot but with touches of colour in sashes and turbans. I researched for ten years to find out where it all came from, resulting in my book “Chintz and Cotton…..India’s Textiles Gift to the World”.

back in Sydney I wanted to talk to like-minded people about what I had discovered as well as learn something about other places in Asia. This is why I joined TAASA, the textile group in particular. I have learnt a great deal about other Asian countries from fellow members who have traveled in the area and who have given talks and written articles. Robyn Maxwell, of the department of Asian Art, National Gallery of Australia, wrote a definitive book on the textiles of Southeast Asia, and Gill Green, now President of TAASA, has written two beautifully illustrated books about Cambodian textiles and has given several excellent lectures. being a member of TAASA and learning so much about Asian culture and meeting so many interested people has been a most enriching experience.

C A R O L C A I R N S

I became the Victorian representative for TAASA when I moved to Melbourne to work in the Asian Art Department at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2003. One of the first TAASA events I attended was a walk through the South China garden at the Royal Melbourne botanic Gardens with the Southern Chinese Collection’s curator Terry Smyth. It was a freezing, rainy day, but the welcome from TAASA members was very warm, and Terry’s stories of collecting

plant material in Yunnan made us forget the cold. The experience of friendly gatherings and shared expertise continued over the next few years through various talks and gatherings around Asian art as diverse as Afghan textiles, Southeast Asian ceramics and Indian paintings. TAASA members were very generous in sharing their treasures and knowledge, and the stalwarts of the committee were, until recently, indefatigable! It has been a privilege to meet curators, collectors, gallery owners and enthusiasts through TAASA, to discuss Asian art with them and to have the opportunity to exhibit works from their collections in exhibitions at the NGV.

P H I L I P C O u R T e N AY

My interest in Asian arts, particularly Southeast Asian ceramics, evolved as a hobby during my professional work as a researcher and lecturer in the economic geography of the region. It was particularly stimulated when in 1981, my wife Pam and I visited the 14th-15th century kilns at Sukhothai in central Thailand. My association with TAASA began in 1994 when I first became aware of the Society’s contribution to expanding Asia-awareness in Australia and received my first issue, vol.3, no. 2, of the TAASAReview. This very impressive and scholarly journal was my only contact with the Society until 2003 when I corresponded with Sandra Forbes, the then editor, in relation to publishing an article.

Given the Sydney-focused emphasis of the Society, my brisbane location made it difficult to become involved in TAASA’s lectures and seminars. An enquiry as to the Queensland membership led to my being encouraged to initiate some functions in brisbane. With the generous co-operation of the Queensland Art Gallery, these have evolved slowly and led to my invitation to join the TAASA management committee. These experiences have contributed

CAROL CAINS, CuRATOR Of ASIAN ART AT THe NATIONAL GALLeRY

Of VICTORIA, TACKLeS THe GANGeS

JOYCe BuRNARD, JOuRNALIST, eNTRePReNeuR, TexTILe HISTORIAN

AND LONG TeRM TAASA MeMBeR

PHILIP COuRTeNAY AT HALONG BAY, VIeTNAM, 2006


to the development of friendships with individuals sharing similar interests in Asian arts as well as expanding my own and Pam’s knowledge and enjoyment in this wide field.

D I C K R I C H A R D S

Prior to the advent of TAASA, Asian art aficionados in Australia could only join overseas groups and societies to keep in touch with advances in scholarship and to make contact with other specialists. The arrival of TAASA brought immediate and exciting changes to our lives; suddenly we were drawn into an expanding world of Asian studies in both Australia and overseas; younger scholars found a voice and our interests were broadened to include textiles, jewellery and decorative art. TAASA’s inclusive seminars, often in support of exhibitions, have made a major contribution to the cultural life of the country, while the quarterly journal is outstanding in content and design; the policy of involving guest editors ensures that each edition is innovative and special, and the book reviews, diary and activity reports are very valuable; even the ads are enticing! TAASA 20? Wonderful!

M A R I A f R I e N D

As I live in far north Queensland, far away from the major Australian centres of debate and promotion of Asian art, TAASA is the vital link that connects me with persons of similar interest elsewhere in the country. At the same

time, it provides me with the opportunity to present to other members the outcomes of my research, especially on the textiles of Southeast Asia, as well as presenting relevant collections and activities of north Queensland. being a TAASA member has many rewards – one of them is that a feel I am a member of a family of like-minded people who share my passion and appreciation of the art of Australia’s neighbouring countries.

H e L e N H O L M e S

T=tantalizing treasuries of trans-oriental travel; thrilling tales and tempting trips by talented tutors that transfix, transform and tower triumphantly. A=articulate, animated accounts by adventurous academics and alumni. A=always amid amicable amis and associates. S=sensuous sights at soirees supplemented by splendidly stimulating sojourns to see secluded stellar stashes. A=absorbing, addictive and awakening; and an advancing and affirming advocate for Asia.

C L Au D I A H Y L e S

On what I remember as a perfect Sydney summer afternoon, a special TAASA gathering was held in a pretty room in the Art Gallery of NSW – Pam Gutman in a gorgeous garden party outfit I recall. The Committee presented foundation life members with membership cards inscribed in gold. What an auspicious start – golden weather, golden words and the start for me of many more

golden moments over twenty years. Does that sound corny? Well, I mean it! Living in Canberra means I can’t always attend TAASA events and the Review, grown smarter in all ways in two decades, is always excellent, and special issues bring a miraculous focus on a country or a region or a subject – photography and jewellery spring straight to my mind. The same magical immersion happens at the symposia and despite distance I have enjoyed many. How utterly brilliant to spend a day mentally transported to Shanghai or Central Asia, or an afternoon in four Indo-Chinese cities or a plunge into unusual aspects of India – I made great friends through that one, with whom I regularly meet in India. Thanks and congratulations TAASA and best wishes for the future.

R O S S L A N G L A N D S

20 years! Goodness gracious! How the milestones fly by and what a burgeoning of interest we have seen in Asian art. Our interest was initially in what we dealt with and knew, oriental rugs and textiles. However, you soon learn as a dealer that, while you encourage others, your own world is equally enhanced by the intensity and diversity of your clients’ passions.

TAASA and our Asian textile interest arose out of an already passionate interest in textiles from the Oriental Rug Society and the former Costume and Textile Society, ignited by the generous support of the Powerhouse Museum and the AGNSW. Without ongoing institutional generosity, such societies could not survive. There is now a resultant popular realisation that textiles are actually central to all Asian cultures. We are proud to have been founder members of TAASA conceived at the PHM in this very yurt, where the embryonic steering committee sat cross legged on a Turkmen tent main carpet, ‘chewed the fat and kicked the Asian gong around!’

DICK RICHARDS, fORMeR CuRATOR Of ASIAN ART AT THe ART

GALLeRY Of SOuTH AuSTRALIA, WITH WISTERIA SINENSIS

HeLeN HOLMeS IN DOWNTOWN YAZD, IRAN

CLAuDIA HYLeS AND SIR ROY STRONG IN CALCuTTA, 2011 –

HIS fIRST VISIT AND HeR 28TH

ROSS LANGLANDS (NOT PICTuReD) STILL OWNS THIS TuRKMeN

YuRT WHeRe (fAMOuSLY) TAASA WAS ‘HATCHeD’ IN 1991

MARIA fRIeND, TexTILe SPeCIALIST, WITH TexTILe SPeCIALIST fRIeND AT

THe WINOTOSASTRO BATIK WORKSHOP IN YOGYAKARTA, CeNTRAL JAVA



J OA N M C C L e L L A N D

I think I have been a member of TAASA for most of its 20 years, and was certainly one of the Society’s earliest members in Melbourne. Having been in the ‘business’ of Asian art for over 50 years, I continue to be constantly impressed by the wide range of information that TAASAReview provides, and would like to record how very useful I have always found it. I was also very flattered to be the subject of a profile in the Review in December 2000,written by my friend Sue Hewitt. Thank you, TAASA.

M I LTO N O S B O R N e

One of the greatest pleasures about returning to live in Sydney in 1993, after an absence of 35 years, was to find the existence of TAASA and its Review.Having become a life member, I have been a beneficiary of its seminars and its Review, and of course of the opportunity to exchange ideas with other members. It is a tribute to those who have been so active in promoting the Society’s activities that it is today such a vibrant organization, a fact splendidly reflected in the high quality and interest that TAASA Review has maintained. That such a publication has been produced on a voluntary basis is little short of a miracle and deserves our admiration and gratitude.

M A R J O R I e H O

Until 1997, the Asian Arts Society of Australia (TAASA) had been very active in Sydney but not Victoria. To fill this gap, TAASA in Victoria was launched on May 28th 1997 with a very active committee drawn from academia, business and the art world. Members included Professor William Coaldrake, Freda Frieberg, Sybille Noras, Julia Lim, Robert van de Groenekan, Robert bezuijen, Deborah Hambleton, Wendy Doolan, Robert bradlow, Tonia Eckfield and myself. Over 8 years, seminars and talks were held to spread the culture and art of the East to Victoria.

Our first seminar was “Cities of Asia” in 1997, followed by “Mummies of Xinjiang” starring Elizabeth barber from the USA. It was an astounding success with people seated on the floor and others turned away. In 1998 TAASA formed four focus groups which ran monthly meetings for members with shared interests in a particular art form or geographic region: Indian and Himalayan, ceramics, film and theatre, and textile group. Each group presented seminars on their subject areas, and a series of prominent experts were invited to address these meetings.

Coinciding with the Japanese Film Festival, a film group was launched in May 1999 to hold screenings and lectures by film scholars and film makers. A seminar covering aspects of Japanese art was convened that year, and the textile group was very active, holding meetings on both Central Asian and Southeast Asian textiles. 2001 saw a major seminar addressed by Sylvia Fraser Lu on burmese lacquer, and in 2002 lectures were heard from curators and scholars on Chinese painting, from bird and flower symbolism to Tang murals from the Palace of Prince Li Xian. In the seminar ‘Art and symbolism – five cultures, travels through Asia Minor’, lectures were heard from experts on subjects from Indonesian textiles and Arab women’s costumes to Tibetan sculptures and Vietnamese ceramics.

In 2004 a major symposium was held on ‘The Binh Thuan Shipwreck’,which contained

a sunken cargo of Chinese Ming dynasty 17th century ceramics. Speakers included Dr Roxanna brown, Dr Michael Fletcher and Roger McElroy. Melbourne had never seen so many ceramics before!

Many more seminars followed, often in cooperation with other Asia-oriented organisations such as Asialink, the Asia Society of Australia, and the Chinese Museum. TAASA brought together anyone keen to learn about Asia; my gallery East and West Art, which deals in Asian art and antiques, with other Asian dealers promoting their speciality, and new faces from all walks of life – linking student to teacher, academics to housewives – TAASA in Victoria came alive! We had a hard time keeping up with the keenness generated; there were several changes in the committee over the years, and it finally found a home at the National Gallery of Victoria under a new co-ordinator, Carol Cains in 2003.

Members from Victoria have long been able to benefit by attending the many seminars and talks held by TAASA in Sydney – where TAASA’s national management committee is based. A great exchange of ideas is owed to the organising abilities of this overseeing committee, which includes representatives from national museums and art galleries in the various Australian states.

Asian art today has a changing membership as contemporary society influences art and culture, but there will always be people who love history and we can keep them informed. Thank you for starting TAASA in New South Wales, it means so much to me as a Chinese from Singapore witnessing the spread of Asian art and culture in Australia.

Y VO N N e T e N PA S

TAASA has opened a window for me on the East bringing me in contact with some very knowledgeable and wonderful experts, as well as the pleasure of shared interests with many of the members. The committee has been very generous with their time

JOAN MCCLeLLAND IN HeR OffICe AT THe JOSHuA MCCLeLLAND

PRINT ROOM, MeLBOuRNe, IN 2011

MARJORIe HO, DIReCTOR Of THe eAST & WeST ART GALLeRY

IN eAST KeW, MeLBOuRNe

LONG TeRM TAASA MeMBeR, YVONNe TeN PAS

MILTON OSBORNe IS A PuBLISHeD SCHOLAR, IN PARTICuLAR

IN THe HISTORY AND CuLTuRe Of CAMBODIA



in organising wonderful and informative seminars, providing so many happy happenings (I remember a Canberra visit with Robin Maxwell as guide of the Indonesia exhibition); and TAASA would not be TAASA if it did not publish its beautifully illustrated magazine, TAASAReview.

S u S A N S C O L L AY

For people like me with very specialised areas of interest within the general field of the arts of Asia, TAASA has been the proverbial godsend – for two main reasons. Firstly, after returning to Australia after lengthy periods of living and working in the thick of things overseas, the gap in institutional collections and curatorial focus in some areas of Asian art in Australia could seem insurmountable. This has seemed at times especially so in my own field of Islamic art and culture. Yet somehow the regular issues of TAASA Review, the variety of seminars and occasional individual lectures have managed over the years to keep both fledgling and more developed interests

in non-mainstream topics alive, whetting appetites for more and, quite often, delivering unexpected extras.

Secondly, as a by-product of delivering this remarkable range of activities and topics, especially in the last 10 years, TAASA has opened up delightful new worlds of interest and aesthetic experience to many who might otherwise have never ventured far beyond their chosen fields. I count myself in this category, and extend my thanks to the admirable mix of scholars, curators, writers, photographers and informed enthusiasts who have made, and continue to make, TAASA the vital organisation it is today.

J A M e S H AY e S

I became ‘hooked’ on Asia during my National Service when serving in Korea from June to November 1953. After nearly two months, when the fighting stopped, I was able to take local leave, visiting the derelict palaces in the capital and old monasteries in the hills behind the coast. These sparked off a love affair which

soon embraced China, Japan, and Vietnam, their history and culture. It was given a more practical outlet when I lived and worked in Hong Kong between 1956 and 1990, before moving to Sydney.

I joined TAASA in its early years and served on the Committee in the 1990s. During this time, I arranged various visits to places around the Sydney area with an Asian connection, organised the talks program, participated in symposia, and contributed to the Review. As a long time Council member of the Royal Asiatic Society in Hong Kong, I had been similarly engaged over many years. It was almost second nature for me to follow on, and I felt privileged to do so.

There was a need for TAASA at that time. Australia was becoming more involved in the Asia-Pacific region, and we could assist in spreading knowledge and promoting understanding, in a modest way. Fortunately, our membership has always provided the means and the zeal! Many Australians have lived and worked in Asia, and some collect in a variety of fields. TAASA has provided a focal point, and an outlet, not least through the Review.

We have been able to do much in the past 20 years, but since the ongoing study of Asia represents both a heritage and a task, our work is never done: we must reach out to the now far larger Asian communities, expand our membership among them, and enlist their skills to boost our own.

ART HISTORIAN, SuSAN SCOLLAY, IN A DuST STORM AT RASAfA

IN THe CeNTRAL SYRIAN DeSeRT, 2006. PHOTO: DR fIONA HILL.

JAMeS HAYeS IN HONG KONG, 1991.

Nomadic Rug TRadeRscoNgRaTuLaTioNs Taasa oN 20 good YeaRs

Detail: Phaa Sabai, Shaman’s healing cloth, Tai Deng people, Laos, 19th century

123 Harris street Pyrmont Tel 612 9660 3753 [email protected] www.nomadicrugtraders.com


STATE OF THE ARTS


he concept of the ‘blockbuster’ exhibition has been with us since at least the 1960s

and is most closely linked with either ancient Near-Eastern art (for instance TutankhamunandthegoldenageofthePharaohs) or European ‘Old Masters’. In other words, exhibitions that offer, as art historian Andrew McClellan puts it, ‘[a] steady diet of impressionism, mummies, and anything with “gold” in the title’ (2008: 184-85), and which are heavily promoted to generate high visitor numbers.

Major exhibitions of Asian art in Australia have differed quite markedly from this approach, and yet have forged new paths based on the need to engage visitors with largely unfamiliar images and ideas. Through considered display, scholarly catalogues and international symposia, as well as innovative related programs, over the last two decades these exhibitions have made a significant contribution to increasing public awareness and altering perceptions of Asian art.

Described as ‘the most significant portent for the future of art exhibitions in Australia’ (Turner 2011), TheChineseExhibition:aselectionof recent archaeological finds of the People’sRepublicofChina travelled to a number of state galleries in 1977. The Chinese Exhibition had unprecedented drawing power, attracting

595,000 visitors, with many indicating through surveys that more exhibitions with ‘Chinese/oriental’ themes would appeal if offered in the future.

Throughout the 1980s momentum was building for the surge of Asian art exhibitions, developed by Australian curators for Australian audiences and drawing on local scholarship, that began in earnest in the 1990s. If indeed there was any doubt as to Australian audiences’ hunger for Asian art, then the tour of TheEntombedWarriors (major state galleries 1982-3), should have put those fears to rest, with over 200,000 visitors at AGNSW and 50,000 people visiting the exhibition in only nine days when it was shown at the then new National Gallery of Australia (NGA) (Turner 2011).

Extraordinarily swift in its genesis, TheAgeofAngkor: treasures from the National Museum ofCambodia (NGA 1992) came about as part of Australia’s diplomatic efforts in Cambodia spearheaded by then Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans, coupled with the NGA’s interest in Asian art and offer of conservation assistance to the National Museum of the war-ravaged country. Consisting of examples of ancient Khmer sculpture and curated by Michael brand and Chuch Phoeurn, Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology, University of Fine Arts,

Phnom Penh, TheAgeofAngkor enabled 30,000 plus visitors to the NGA to witness exquisite examples of the art of this unique culture.

The firstAsia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) at the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) in 1993 and subsequent exhibitions and events in the series have set the direction of QAG’s engagement with contemporary Asian art. While not an exclusively Asian art event the APT phenomenon has had a broad impact on the arena of Asian art exhibitions, and demonstrates the increasing level of public interest in art from Asia. Since its inception, more than 1.8 million people have visited the APT, peaking with more than 700,000 visitors to APT5 at the new Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) and QAG in 2006. APT6 in 2009/10 was listed in The Art Newspaper (April 2011) as one of the top ten most visited contemporary art exhibitions in the world for 2010.

Organised in collaboration with the National Museum of India in New Delhi, Vision ofKings:ArtandExperienceinIndia (NGA 1995), also curated by brand, was Australia’s first major exhibition of Indian art. VisionofKings dealt with the sacred and royal imagery of India’s rich visual cultures. The exhibition’s public program reflected the art’s diversity with a Makar Sankranti Hindu religious observance within the show, Indian cooking classes, a film festival, children’s workshops, concerts and a plethora of interpretive talks. The innovative installation of the exhibition, stylistically recreating the architectural spaces (niches and pedestals) in which the works would have been originally viewed, along with dramatic lighting, underscored the exhibition’s theme of the experiential nature of Indian art. The elaborate design and ambitious scale of the exhibition, along with its comprehensive public program demonstrated the institution’s faith in the ability of Asian art to attract audiences.

T

A n I m m E R S I V E E x p E R I E n c E : I n n oVAT I V E A S I A n A R T E x H I b I T I o n S I n Au S T R A L I A

KatherineRussellSeNATOR HON. GAReTH eVANS, NGA DIReCTOR BeTTY CHuRCHeR

AND MR PICH KeO (DIReCTOR, NATIONAL MuSeuM Of CAMBODIA)

WITH BuDDHIST MONKS AT THe AGE OF ANGKOR MeDIA LAuNCH,

1992. PHOTO: NATIONAL GALLeRY Of AuSTRALIA

INSTALLATION Of THe VISION OF KINGS: ART AND EXPERIENCE IN INDIA exHIBITION, NATIONAL GALLeRY Of AuSTRALIA, 1995.

PHOTO: NATIONAL GALLeRY Of AuSTRALIA


The 1997 exhibition, Dancingtotheflute:musicanddanceinIndianart at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), curated by Jackie Menzies, Jim Masselos and Pratapaditya Pal, took the combination of immersive exhibition content, design and programming to another level. Music, dance and ritual from Indian classical and folk traditions brought the exhibition to life from within, through a dedicated public programs space inside the exhibition plus activities, symposia, film and performances throughout the Gallery. A space in the exhibition was given over to performers to demonstrate the diverse dance and music traditions of the subcontinent. Also within the exhibition, on significant days in the Hindu calendar, puja rituals were performed and explained to visitors by a Hindu priest.

One innovative way to ensure that an Asian art exhibition can achieve ‘blockbuster’ status was demonstrated by Monet & Japan (NGA 2001). Curated by Virginia Spate and Gary Hickey, this scholarly exhibition explored the link between the work of the ever popular French Impressionist artist Claude Monet (1840-1926) and the Japanese aesthetic through examples of Monet’s paintings and the Japanese woodblock prints, screens and painted scrolls which influenced his work. Monet & Japan attracted a total of 227,872 visitors in Canberra, then travelled to the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) in Perth where it received a further 173,892 visitors, a record for the Western Australian gallery.

BUDDHA:RadiantAwakening (AGNSW, 2001), curated by Jackie Menzies, was an ambitious exhibition of the highest calibre of buddhist art from across Asia. Achieving high impact through an engaging exhibition design, music piped from a specially commissioned recording (an approach also used with Dancing to theFlute), and an accompanying public program, it demonstrated that myriad forms of buddhism were indeed alive in contemporary Sydney. This was achieved, for the most part, through The Wisdom Room: a dedicated space within the exhibition where every week a different buddhist group or organisation demonstrated aspects of their particular tradition. Activities ranged from the folding of paper lotuses to chanting and gong playing.

The exhibition was aligned astutely with simultaneous buddhist events in Sydney, including the Mind body Spirit Festival and buddhist blessings in the Domain – part of the Sydney Festival. Lunchtime seminars with AbC Radio National’s Rachael Kohn were extremely popular, as were dance performances, curator’s talks, an international symposium, evening meditation, films and

children’s workshops. The Gyuto Monks of Tibet were in residence at AGNSW for three weeks, during which they created the richly coloured Sand Mandala of Guhyasamja, culminating in a dissolution ceremony. One of the most important programs initiated during BUDDHA was Community Ambassadors – a program of volunteer guides from non-English speaking backgrounds who provided tours of the BUDDHA exhibition in Asian languages. Ambassadors now conduct tours of the entire AGNSW collection in several Asian languages.

Crescent Moon: Islamic Art and Civilisation inSoutheast Asia curated by James bennett of the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) was shown in both Adelaide and Canberra in 2005-6 and made a significant contribution to Australian audiences’ understanding of Asian cultures. Crescent Moon was a collaborative exhibition bringing together works of art from collections in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and brunei as well as Australia. In profiling Islamic art from the faith’s most populous

region, the exhibition was a vehicle for cultural exchange and remains so beyond the period of the exhibition, with the substantial catalogue presented in English, Indonesian and Malay.

Goddess: Divine Energy (AGNSW 2006), also curated by Menzies with assistance from Chaya Chandrasekhar, was the first major exhibition in Australia to address the ‘divine female’ in Hindu and buddhist art, with works of art ranging from c. 2000 bCE through to the 20th century, from India to Tibet and from Hinduism to Tibetan buddhism. Like BUDDHA, the exhibition was divided into brightly coloured rooms, with a ‘room goddess’ image selected for each space. Lighting ranged from subtle patterned effects to theatrically darkened spaces that placed a dramatic focus on the sculptural works. Animated popular contemporary goddess imagery was projected onto the upper wall of one gallery in the exhibition – adding a celestial dimension to the experience.

VISITORS eNJOYING THe BUDDHA: RADIANT AWAKENING exHIBITION, 2001. PHOTO: KATHeRINe RuSSeLL

THe GODDeSS DuRGA IS CeLeBRATeD IN A TRADITIONAL HINDu CeReMONY DuRING THe GODDESS: DIVINE ENERGY exHIBITION, 2007.

PHOTO: ART GALLeRY Of NeW SOuTH WALeS


The public program of talks, dance demonstrations, workshops and film also featured a month-long installation related to the Hindu goddess Durga. Craftsmen from the Crafts Council of bengal in Calcutta created traditional sculptural icons in the public spaces of the Gallery, with the resultant Goddess figures blessed with offerings of flowers and sweets in an elaborate ceremony culminating in the figures’ immersion in the Parramatta River.

Curated by Robyn Maxwell, Life, Death andMagic: 2000 years of Southeast Asian ancestralart (NGA 2010) focused on the animist art practice of Southeast Asia, ancestral traditions that have been maintained alongside peoples’ adoption of Hinduism, buddhism and later Islam and Christianity. Life, Deathand Magic was particularly notable for its dramatic installation of sculptural works and extraordinary lighting effects achieved through the creation of shadows of the sculptures on the walls in the otherwise completely darkened exhibition space.

Attendance at recent exhibitions of Asian art, such as The First Emperor (AGNSW 2010), curated by Liu Yang and Edmund Capon, following the success of the british Museum show curated by Jane Portal, then curated at the british Museum, with 305,000 visitors, have proven beyond doubt that Asian art can draw large numbers of visitors. The ancillary elements that enhance engagement with works of art, and that initially set major Asian art exhibitions apart from other

conventional ‘blockbusters’, have allowed curators, educators and designers of these shows greater flexibility in two main areas: display and public participation. These two crucial aspects of Asian art exhibitions are now often incorporated into exhibitions of all genres. The example set by major Asian art exhibitions in Australia over the last 20 years has encouraged curators in all disciplines, as well as exhibition and lighting designers, to use unorthodox colours and overt display devices within exhibitions to enhance engagement with the works on display. These elements now provide the immersive experience people have come to expect of art exhibitions. The public programs pioneered as part of Asian art exhibitions, with an emphasis on performance, have set the current standard for major exhibition programming.

AGNSW’s Art After Hours program has grown from late-night openings and a number of celebrity talks during the BUDDHA exhibition into a continuing institutional commitment every week of the year – with significant interpretive licence to attract people who might not otherwise go to the Gallery. They come in their thousands, lured to art by the hook of celebrity. The NGV also has its Art After Dark program, which runs during temporary exhibitions. Thanks to the lead taken by Asian exhibitions, major Australian art institutions routinely schedule a full suite of programs for large exhibitions, encompassing performance, symposia, film, talks and celebrity events – the public now simply expects this level of programming. The Wisdom Room within the

BUDDHA exhibition and the performance space in Dancing to the Flute provided the precursor concept for a programming space within paid exhibitions. This model has been embraced by QAG GoMA in their Children’s Art Centre, and more recently in the dedicated children’s spaces within all major temporary exhibitions at the NGA.

It is the pioneering, experimental and most importantly, experiential nature of Asian art exhibitions through which new pathways have been forged for major temporary exhibitions in this country. Asian art curators, along with their design and public programming colleagues in Australian galleries and museums, should be applauded for their prescience.

Katherine Russell is the Manager of Learning and

Access Programs at the NGA. Her previous roles

include work in the education and Public Programs

sections of the AGNSW and the National Portrait

Gallery. She has recently completed an MA in

Learning and Visitor Studies at the university of

Leicester in the uK.

REfEREncESMcClellan, A. (2008). The art museum from Boullee to Bilbao. Berkeley,

Calif. university of California Press, London.

Turner, C. (2011). International exhibitions. Understanding Museums:

Australian Museums and Museology. D. Griffin and L. Paroissien, National

Museum of Australia. http://www.nma.gov.au/research/understanding-

museums/CTurner_2011.html

THe DRAMATIC INSTALLATION Of LIFE DEATH AND MAGIC: 2000 YEARS OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN ANCESTRAL ART, 2010. PHOTO: NATIONAL GALLeRY Of AuSTRALIA


hy has Asia’s cultural infrastructure and overall development been such a driving

force in my professional journey? Why make 43 trips to Japan, some seven or eight to China and four to both Taiwan and Korea? Why include the Middle East, and what was the relevance of those cultural forays? These are some of the questions that I seek to explore here whilst paying tribute to TAASA and the magazine’s 20 year publishing history.

My interest in diverse cultures was sparked in childhood. My extended family was multilingual and geographically dispersed. Languages spoken include Russian, Lithuanian, German, Yiddish, French, Dutch, Afrikaans, Hebrew and English. A middle class Jewish family with a clear focus on art, literature and music, as well as medicine, law and business, inevitably produced practitioners in these areas.

I turned to French literature, completing a doctorate in 1980, only to find that in Australia, my newly adopted country since 1976, university French departments

nationwide were in serious decline, while their Asian counterparts were vigorously increasing student numbers. After a six-year stint running the modern languages department of a Sydney private girls’ school, I turned to my parallel interest – art.

Contemporary art galleries need a core sensibility that signals the soul of the operation and guides visitors and collectors as to the nature of the art they might encounter. Sherman Galleries’ first emphasis was on sculpture (started in Sydney in 1981 as the Irving Sculpture Gallery) but the necessity to broaden the terrain became evident to me after two years. With Asia clearly on the horizon, I made a decision to work with artists from Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East.

Japan was my first port of call. In 1987 several of my represented sculptors had been invited to participate in an exhibition at the Saitama Museum of Modern Art on the outskirts of Tokyo. Doug Hall, then newly appointed Director of the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG),

was hugely generous with advice and with his guidance I found myself in Japan for the first time. The trip proved seminal and paved the way for twice- or thrice-yearly explorations of Japanese contemporary art, opportunities for Australian artists in Japan, and the formation of a contemporary Japanese fashion collection now in Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum.

China followed, starting with Hong Kong and moving to the mainland, as did Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Turkey and Israel. I found I was in my element. I read the translated literature of the countries I explored, mounted exhibitions in far-flung places, as well as in Australia of course, and learned about a whole new world whose religions, histories, social and cultural life had hitherto been in the margins of my consciousness.

The world of contemporary Asian art was rich in material and diverse in scope. Irving Galleries’ (the renamed Irving Sculpture Gallery, 1988–1992) reputation in this field is, I believe, directly linked to the staging of two modestly scaled but key exhibitions:

W

2 0 y E A R S o f c o n T E m p o R A R y A S I A n A R T I n Au S T R A L I A : A p E R S o n A L p E R S p E c T I V E

GeneSherman

THROUGH, 2007-8, AI WeIWeI (INSTALLATION VIeW), IRON WOOD (TIeLI WOOD), QING DYNASTY (1644- 1911), TABLeS, BeAMS AND PILLARS fROM DISMANTLeD QING DYNASTY TeMPLeS.

COMMISSIONeD BY SHeRMAN CONTeMPORARY ART fOuNDATION, 2008. PHOTO: PAuL GReeN


Echoes of China: From Behind the BambooCurtain – Three Contemporary Chinese Artists (1991) and Orient-ations: The Emperor’s NewClothes (1992) curated by Claire Roberts, then Curator of Asian Decorative Arts at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum. There were works by Guan Wei, Ah Xian, Liu Xiao Xian (the three artists in the 1991 show), Shen Shao Min (now amongst Asia’s art stars), Tang Song and Xiao Lu (fresh from their 1989 pistol-shot performance at the National Museum of Fine Arts in beijing and their subsequent flight from China), Ren Hua and Jia Yong.

The pace rapidly quickened. Around 22 shows per year in two distinct spaces in Paddington allowed the renamed Sherman Galleries to accommodate artists who stand today amongst the most potent and successful international artists of our time. Wenda Gu (From Ink Kingdom to BiologicalMillennium, 4 October – 17 November 2001), Xu bing (Reading the Landscape (after JohnGlover)in Austral-AsiaZeroThree, 27 February – 22 March 2003) and Cai Guo Qiang (StillLife Performance, biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of NSW, 22–29 May 2000, supported and produced by Sherman Galleries) were amongst those artists we invited to Australia.

They were top-tier practitioners who exhibited early in their professional lives under the auspices of our energetic private gallery in Sydney. Each one left China, ultimately arriving in the United States, and each one has subsequently returned to their country of origin, keeping studios, bases and hard-won connections operating in both East and West.

On the State gallery front at this time a grand movement was seeded and continues to flourish unabated. QAG, under then Director Doug Hall and Deputy Director Dr Caroline Turner, established Australia’s most significant and influential Asia–Australia visual cultural event. The Asia Pacific Triennials launched in1993 represent, in the view of many, best practice in our

cultural relationship with Asia. Cross-regional museum directors, curators, writers, academics and editors have worked collaboratively to raise aesthetic, intellectual and collegial awareness in and between the many countries that make up the Pacific basin. Stunning displays, scholarly publications, robust seminars and fabulous parties bring people together as never before – and an initially wary broader public began looking at our neighbours afresh with opened eyes and minds.

At around this time two important publications were initiated: TAASA Review in 1992 and ArtAsiaPacific (an Art&Australia sister magazine) in 1993. ArtAsiaPacificis now based in Hong Kong. With savvy editorship, focused agendas and expert advisory boards, both publications continue to contribute to cultivating new knowledge and perspectives on the visual practice and cultures of our region. Under Elaine Ng’s leadership, in tandem with world wide growing interest in the region, ArtAsiaPacific has built on its Australian origins going from strength to strength.

From the mid-90s Sherman Galleries embarked on what was perhaps, at the time, a little understood plan to connect Australia with Asia. We curated and raised funds for two multi-city international touring exhibitions. The 12-person exhibition Systems End:Contemporary Art in Australia (1996–97) was co-curated by Takeshi Kanazawa, formerly of the Hara Museum and a key player in Edgeto Edge: Contemporary Australian Art (1988), which had toured Japan, and William Wright, then Sherman Galleries’ Curatorial Director.

Systems End toured to Osaka (Oxy Gallery), Hakone (Hakone Open Air Museum), Seoul (Dong Ah Gallery) and Taiwan (Kaohsiung Museum) – a challenging task but one that assisted the exploration of cross-cultural East/West connections. Artists travelled, curators shared ideas, writers worked with translators and editors, meals were shared and cuisines compared. On-the-ground experiences between Australian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese creative and cultural industry people brought a richness and depth to the dialogue that enhanced understanding and left many with lifelong colleagues and friends.

That first tour set a precedent. In 1999–2000, Sherman Galleries set to work on an even more ambitious venture. The Rose Crossing, inspired by Nick Jose’s novel of the same name set within a fictitious 17th century East–West naval crossing, was comprised of work by 13 artists, at least half of whom were Australians of Asian origin. Laos-born

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, My Le Thi from Vietnam, Iranian-born Hossein Valamanesh, beijing-born Guan Wei, and John Young and Felicia Kahn, both from Hong Kong, were among the artists selected. A six-venue tour followed, taking in brisbane City Gallery, the Hong Kong Arts Centre, the Singapore Art Museum, the Holmes à Court Gallery in Perth, the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney and the Campbelltown City bicentennial Art Galley (opened in 2002 and now called Campbelltown Arts Centre). An elegant and richly illustrated catalogue with supplements in simplified and complex Chinese characters accompanied the show.

Other galleries sprang up. Gallery 4A, opened in 1997, has clearly proven a longstanding, valuable player in the Asian-Australian contemporary art world. Originally in a tiny upstairs Sydney Chinatown space, the gallery moved a few years later to a refurbished Heritage Council building in Hay Street. Inaugural Director Melissa Chiu has gone on to lead New York’s Asia Society and is in demand for many Asia-focused shows, catalogues and forums. Current 4A Director Aaron Seeto continues the original emphasis on Asian-Australian artists and exhibitions are reaching increasingly large national and regional audiences. Artist-to-artist grassroots connections are encouraged and the gallery’s financial health seems at last to have been strengthened with longer term government support, a coterie of enthusiastic private patrons and a sound-thinking board.

Individuals, too, continue to play key roles in the Asian contemporary art arena. Professor John Clark from the University of Sydney has, over many years, added serious art-historical scholarship to the equation, as have Dr Claire Roberts, Dr Caroline Turner from the Australian National University and Suhanya Raffel, Deputy Director of the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art. New kids on the block include National Portrait Gallery curator Christine Clark, with her informed, succinct and visually compelling 2011 touring exhibition Beyond the Self:ContemporaryPortraiturefromAsia. Asia-savvy young architects are leading the way too, with Koichi Takada, Kiong Lee and Chris bosse following in the footsteps of exemplary, multi-award winning, Asia-inspired and Asia-busy architect Richard Johnson.

The rigorous and robust writer and sinologist, Linda Jaivin, continues to add her experienced voice to the conversation and the formidable scholar Professor Geremie barmé recently launched and now directs the $35 million Australian Centre on China in the World at the

KUZUYO SEJIMA + RYUE NISHIZAWA/SANAA, 2009,

ACRYLIC, SANAA ORIGINAL RABBIT CHAIRS, DIMeNSIONS VARIABLe.

COMMISSIONeD BY SHeRMAN CONTeMPORARY ART

fOuNDATION, 2009. PHOTO: PAuL GReeN


Australian National University, an initiative of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

There are far too many players and far too little space to document the varied contributions of Australia’s contemporary Asia-literate cultural community. best get back to base, to familiar personal territory and the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, launched in 2008.

The not-for-profit Foundation commissions three large-scale projects each year, occasionally mounting exceptional pre-existing work never seen on our side of the world. The projects are focused on Australian and Asian visual practitioners, bringing together the two strands that have underpinned my thinking and fuelled my interest for the last 25 years. Artists, architects, designers, filmmakers and visual practitioners of all persuasions from Australia and Asia are allocated a $100,000 project grant out of which a scholarly, visually compelling catalogue (with an approximate $20,000 budget) must be funded. A ‘dream work’ is the hoped-for outcome; a work that could not or would not have been possible to create within commercial or museum spaces where tighter budgetary considerations, bureaucratic requirements and marketing agendas may prevail.

Two out of three substantial annual projects are devoted to practitioners from Asia, including China, Japan, India, Vietnam and the Philippines. In addition, the program encompasses projects from further afield, including West Asia, as the Middle East is

now often described. Ai Weiwei’s UnderConstruction launched the Foundation in 2008 and in 2012 we are looking forward to Janet Laurence’s AfterEden (working title), a major new installation by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, and About Face: Portraits fromthe Uli Sigg Collection, curated by Dr Claire Roberts and mounted by SCAF in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.

Each commission reigns supreme in the Foundation space for approximately 10 weeks, and during that time Culture+Ideas Forums take place, exploring via interviews, conversations and panel discussions various issues raised by the work. Margaret Throsby, our key cultural investigator, interviews the artist, scholar, academic or curator. broadcaster and journalist Caroline baum curates her own writers’ interview – directly or indirectly related to the project at hand – and I moderate or speak at a third panel where participants draw on their expertise from outside the art world.

In 2011, I took on two new roles which have allowed me to build on the 25-year link we have developed with our Asian neighbours. I had the honour of being invited to join the Tate Asian Acquisitions Committee which meets twice yearly - once in London and once in the region itself - to formulate policy and identify key work for the institution’s growing collection of Asian contemporary art.

I have also intensified my connections with Asialink, Melbourne University’s Asia-focused think-tank and advocacy body by

participating in the recently set up Asia Literacy Ambassador program. The program encourages Asia literate companies and individuals to share their enthusiasm with senior school students and young adults. I now spend regular time with interested girls at Randwick High, and the students participate in the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation’s longstanding Asian cultural projects, exhibitions and events.

Clearly, the Tate and Asialink initiatives, together with many others projects and programs organised worldwide, bear testimony to the fast-growing interest in Asia by Australian and international policy makers and cultural institutions. In tandem with the Gene and brian Sherman private Asian and Australian art collection currently being honed, toned and more rigorously shaped, I hope the Foundation’s work will continue to make a small contribution to the conversation we as Australians must all have: a conversation with our neighbours that transcends trade issues and relies on tolerance, common ground and the curiosity in diversity that makes for a stimulating and harmonious world.

Dr Gene Sherman is Chairman and executive Director

of the Sherman Contemporary Art foundation, Sydney.

REfEREncESfor details of the Sherman Contemporary Art foundation’s

exhibitions, events and publications to date see www.sherman-scaf.

org.au

for the work of Sherman Galleries see www.shermangalleries.com.au

ERASURE, 2011, DINH Q. LÊ, (INSTALLATION VIeW), 2K HD VIDeO, fOuND PHOTOGRAPHS, WOODeN BOAT fRAGMeNTS, DeSK, COMPuTeR, SCANNeR, DeDICATeD WeBSITe, SANDSTONe.

PHOTOGRAPH: AARON De SOuZA. COMMISSIONeD BY SHeRMAN CONTeMPORARY ART fOuNDATION. PROuDLY SuPPORTeD BY NICHOLAS AND ANGeLA CuRTIS.


nder the Keating government at the beginning of the 1990s, Australia asked

itself what it might be like to be an Asian country, or at least, a culture within the Asian region rather than an outpost of the West. Keating spoke of the ‘big picture’, envisaging Australia as part of a global society. Looking beyond Australia’s traditional relationships to incorporate Asia as a neighbour has profoundly reshaped our cultural perspective.

The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT), inaugurated at the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) in 1993 was part of this Zeitgeist. There had been smaller exhibitions of contemporary Asian art in Australia – Change and Modernism in Thai Art at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space in 1991 for instance – but perhaps it was the discussions held at the Australian National University to coincide with this exhibition that brought together many key art historians, curators and Asian specialists, including Apinan Poshyanada and John Clark. The example of the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in showing contemporary art from the Asian region in the 1980s was also inspiring.

Doug Hall, Director of the QAG, was astute enough to see this as an opportunity for a major and regular review of contemporary developments in Asian and Australian art. The first APT included Dadang Christanto, Montien boonma and bul Lee among others and ratified their careers as international stars. Effectively, this exhibition established QAG as a new force – for the first time brisbane became a nationally prominent cultural centre. This APT also made Australia an international player, as the world recognised its leadership role in bringing contemporary Asian and Western art together in significant depth.

The first APT was magic: it seemed like all at the opening, subsequent performances and talks sensed this was history in the making. There was an astonishing and democratic intimacy, and a club-like atmosphere of conviviality. Works shown at the APT entered public collections – Montien boonma’s LotusSound 1992 (with the work of 14 other artists) was purchased for QAG and the lively display of new works gave renewed energy to Asian collections in Australian galleries which had previously favoured historical objects. Galleries in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney followed, albeit to a lesser degree.

The animated contemporary works reflected the emerging Asian ‘Tiger’ economies, whose ongoing development can in a sense be traced by succeeding APTs. The integration of Asian art into an Australian context also reflected Australia’s changing demography.

The second APT in 1996 was superb, expanded and better branded as the Queensland team’s expertise came into play. Audiences doubled from 60,000 to 120,000, eager to see Cai Guo Qiang, Takashi Murakami, N. N. Rimzon and other hot artists.

The 1999 APT remains a classic with a line up of artists, works and themes that still excite

today. Xu bing’s A book from the sky 1987-91 lifted us into the realm of poetry, Cai Guo Qiang bridged (metaphorically and physically) the QAG watermall, Michael Parekowei thrilled and brought us down to earth with his TenGuitars. This third triennial also produced the Kids APT – for the first time the gallery added a seriously good children’s section. Kids APT was not about talking down to small people, was not a debased and compacted version of the main game but an independent section with its own logic, appeal and specially commissioned works of art.

by this time the excitement had spread: biennials sprang up all over Asia, and are

A p T T H E n A n d n o W

MichaelDesmond

UINSTALLATION VIeW Of APT 6, GALLeRY Of MODeRN ART 2009. COuRTeSY: QueeNSLAND ART GALLeRY


now in Singapore, Fukuoka, Shanghai, Yokohama, Taiwan and Gwangju. The newest festival of international contemporary art, the Indian Kochi-Muziris biennale for 2012, was announced a few months ago. Asian artists have their own circuit now, and, with the rise of the market for contemporary art, especially Chinese, their superstars – Ai Wei Wei being perhaps best known. Displaying contemporary art has become expected and more competitive. Art itself is becoming less local and increasingly geared to the international circuit.

The 2002 APT took this into account by including fewer artists but showing them in depth, tracing the ancestry of new art through major figures such as Lee U Fan, Yayoi Kusama and Nam June Paik. APT 5 in 2006 coincided with the opening of GoMA (Gallery of Modern Art), and took into account technological changes in art, with greater emphasis on screen-based work as well as performance. The seminars that had supported the APT in the past were effectively replaced by short talks and a long party.

APT 6 in 2009 was grand, the biggest display of Asian and Pacific art ever seen in Australia. There was no shortage of powerful works and a greater geographic spread than ever before with artists from isolated enclaves such as Tibet and North Korea, middle eastern countries Turkey and Iran, and smaller Asian nations Cambodia and Myanmar (burma). Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich was a standout, his bamboo forms both suggestive

and literal in defining the shape of an idea. The inclusion of North Korean works was a triumph of politics over aesthetics but brought home the importance of cultural diplomacy that underlies the whole enterprise. I recall meeting colleagues at the Los Angeles County Museum soon after the second APT. For the first time, American curators were asking about events in Australia, specifically brisbane. There was a buzz. The Triennials gave prominence to Australia and Australian art, reaching a high point during the third APT in 1999. Its impact has somewhat diminished since then with the proliferation of rival biennials in the Asian region and the inclusion of much travelled and increasingly familiar art world stars – artists not chosen by curators in Australia but by world acclaim and the market. As the 2012 APT approaches, signalling 20 years of engaging visual dialogue, selection of works is still by country, rather like an Arts Olympics – though the 2002 APT had trialled an alternative approach, by focusing on significant artists in depth.

The thesis of the first triennial, announced in the catalogue by Caroline Turner, then QAG Deputy Director, ‘that Euro-Americentric perspectives are no longer valid as a formula for evaluating the art of this region’ is undoubtedly proven. It’s fair to say this was more by evolution than revolution, if the look of Australian art today, still resolutely an oil and water combination of Western and Indigenous, is any guide. Major themes that dominated Western art remain –

questions of gender and identity, a concern with the environment – though with local idiosyncrasies. However, there are more voices in the art world than two decades ago and many major artists of the present are from Asian countries, China in particular. Some of the artists shown at the APTs compete internationally while others have primarily local loyalties. There is no agreed standard in the ‘world art’ now shown in international biennales. There is a broader spectrum of art styles and greater opportunities for artists, Asian and Australian. The succession of APTs enabled the creation of new networks not previously possible.

The interest in the contemporary art of Asia and the broader culture of this region marked a significant cultural shift. Australia now has a substantial population with Asian connections and a greater understanding of non-Western cultures. The economies north of Australia are flourishing and the importance of the Asia Pacific region is recognised as part of an international cultural engagement. The exoticism of the first triennial is now remote, almost lost: the APT has become simply an exhibition of contemporary art, admittedly with a particular bent to encompass the art of Australia and its neighbours. The global has become local.

Michael Desmond is Deputy Director at the National

Portrait Gallery, Canberra. He previously worked at

the National Gallery of Australia and the Powerhouse

Museum. He is currently planning an exhibition of

Neo Gothic art and literature.

BRIDGE CROSSING, 1999 CAI GuO QIANG, INSTALLATION VIeW fROM ‘APT 1999’. COuRTeSY: QueeNSLAND ART GALLeRY

OPeNING Of APT6 AT THe GALLeRY Of MODeRN ART 2009.

COuRTeSY: QueeNSLAND ART GALLeRY


d o u b L E d I p : T H E A S I A n b I E n n A L E A n d A R T f A I R

GinaFairley

here are over 80 international biennials and triennials today, an overwhelming

number of which began during the 1990s; 25 of them held in Asia. These events have not only brought significant international art and artists to Asian cities, but also fostered a new regional contemporary art identity, first through an awareness of localised activities and secondly by uniting artists and providing a platform for dialogue on shared issues.

between 2000-08, the number of Asian biennales doubled in parallel with Asia’s growing prosperity. If you add the growth of art fairs across East, South and Southeast Asia – a staggering 35 new fairs since 2000 and counting – the numbers collectively say more about these individual locations than the art they are showing. As the sociologist Pascal Gielen (2009) observes, the biennale “...fits easily in a neo-liberal city marketing strategy of so-called ‘creative cities’.”

Most of Asia’s biennales are funded by governments eager to promote themselves as developed cultural destinations and increasingly aware of the global nature of their market. New museums devoted to contemporary art have sprung up across

Asia, many of them linked to or hosting these biennales. Governments are offering tax incentives and attractive packages for international galleries to choose their art fair over others, or invest in these enterprises themselves as key stakeholders, such as Singapore’s Art Stage, significantly backed by the Economic Development board and Singapore Tourism board.

These composite activities have emerged as an intoxicating cultural/economic cocktail, answering a local hunger which parallels the current global enchantment for the market brand of ‘Contemporary Asian Art’. It has even been touted that the art fair is the new biennale within Asia, perhaps a more comfortable fit with the kind of consumerist expansionism at play.

Clearly the circuits of recognition and distribution have shifted. In the past it was about the ‘arrival’ of an Asian modernity within the international museum frame; now it is the affirmation of an extremely diverse and articulate contemporary Asian art directed largely from within and speaking a new language of cultural tourism and economics. benson Puah of Singapore’s National Art

Council concurs: “...art and culture can also be the lubricant and the genesis of an economically vibrant and cultured society.” (Kolesnikov-Jessop 2010).

To understand this new ‘geography’ we need to step back to the historical biennale model. We know the biennale was born with Venice in 1895. However, its pedigree or Euro-centricity is not of interest here; rather its roots

T

TImE muSEum, SATeLLITe VeNue fOR THIRD

GuANGZHOu TRIeNNIAL, 2008. PHOTO: GINA fAIRLeY

cIgE ART fAIR, BeIJING 2009. IMAGe COuRTeSY THe DRAWING ROOM, MANILA.

29TA A S A R e V I e W V O L u M e 2 0 N O . 4 29

as a tourism initiative of-the-day offers the greater legacy to the Asian biennale. Korean critic Jinsang Yoo makes the alert observation: “Global politics and economies are already being led by cities, not countries…Therefore, it has become important for local cities to enhance brand values and showcase their original cultural capacities. The most effective tool for them is contemporary art, which is a kind of common language that enables universal understanding and satisfies cultural and intellectual demands of both the East and the West.” (Yoo 2008:60)

In understanding this new model of the Asian biennale we need to recognise that the traditional Western curatorial model was based on the paradigm of ‘nation’. In our times of post-nation existence, regional inflections or nodes of productivity increasingly define culture. I suppose the simple analogy is the fake Louis Vuitton handbag, its signature design embraced, appropriated, and morphed into a version that is more reflective of local tastes and aspirations than its ‘native’ self.

Several Asian biennales have shifted from local survey exhibitions to international multi-dimensional events. Shanghai, Guangzhou, Taipei, busan, Gwangju, and Yogyakarta have all made this shift, the most recent being the 2009 Jakarta biennale, despite starting in the1960s as a painting show. In an interview with Indonesian curator Ade Darmawanhe, he points out that: “This international context is very important for us because we are

inviting, not just being invited. We need to see ourselves in a global context.”

This adaptation is taking place with extraordinary rapidity and flexibility. Visiting the Shanghai biennale (2008) I was astounded to see crowds snaking their way around the museum waiting to get in just days after SHcontemporary art fair hit record attendances. One can only surmise that the biennale audience today sits primarily outside the vernissage art caravan and, in China in particular, addresses an imploding domestic tourism industry. What currency, then, does the voice of the ‘super-curator’ have to this local population where he or she steps centre stage for a short moment to then disappear? It is a swift shift from art world rhetoric to mobile-phone-moments snapped with ’the art’, later to be posted on Facebook, the local quickly usurping ownership of the event once the art entourage has passed. It is a very Asian sensibility.

What has struck me repeatedly visiting Asia’s biennale are the numbers clustered around the video installations, diligently watching them from start to finish. They are hungry for this media. Technology functions as a universal language that enables communication across geography, ethnicity, age and religion and, for this singular reason, affirms its place within the biennale genre. Further, it indicates a growing affluence within Asian localities; mobile phones and computers are ubiquitous today. The medium itself offers the entry point to engagement rather than a curatorial

premise. It is an interesting consideration, this parallel of technology flavoring how art is made with the ‘biennalisation’ of Asia.

Lee (2009) believes the needs and local desires of individual nations are driving this beast. Take China for example. before 1996 it didn’t have a single biennale - it reportedly now has seven. ArtZineChina further reports: “Four years ago there was only one art district - the 798 in beijing; now seven cities around this country have art districts and beijing alone enjoys nine art districts...Art Galleries grew from less than 30 five years ago to at least 300 at present…70% of all [Chinese] collectors have emerged in only the last two years.” (Gi 2008:158) This explosion is not specific to China. between 2006 and 2008, the number of art fairs across Asia multiplied as rapidly as the prices for the art itself. Over 50 major fairs where held in 2008 and 21 of those were hosted by Asian cities.

As the price of Asian art continues to escalate, the world sits eagerly speculating if, and when, the bubble will burst. If the ongoing impact of the Global Economic Crisis continues to be weathered by these shows, this will be evidence of their sustainability as the new curatorial model. Local popular interest in contemporary art continues with ferocious appetite across Asia. How these biennales and fairs morph and fuse to cater to popular demands and imbue their western formulaic frame with local relevance will be watched with great interest globally.

INSTALLATION VIeW “BeST Of DISCOVeRY”, SHCONTeMPORARY08 ART fAIR, SHANGHAI. PHOTO: GINA fAIRLeY


Two ways already proving successful in staging these dialogues are the use of the satellite venue and bringing the biennale closer to the art market by timing them alongside fairs. Using raw (un)familiar sites has increasingly become a marketing chip for attracting local and international audiences. They usher the pedestrian public to a more level playing ground, a place unfamiliar to us all and yet one that carries the residue of a city: its history, its collective memory, its trade and contemporary gentrification.

For example, the inaugural Singapore biennale (2006) used religious sites under its theme Belief, stating it was taking contemporary art to places that were comfortable and familiar for locals. The Third Guangzhou Triennial (2008) chose a half-built residential development in the commuter suburb of Guangdong, and XIII Jakarta biennale (2009) located artworks within the ritzy Western-styled Grand Indonesia Mall, commenting on the profusion of Asian mall-culture and the commodification of art. What these satellite sites say about the development and embedding of these art events within their own communities is a more revealing conversation than the artworks themselves that collectively take on ‘biennale sameness’. Today this very locality is key to growing biennales rather than the antiquated concept of the nation-based survey.

Such tactics beg the question: what is the more accurate narrative - the contemporary reality of the site or the reality constructed by the artworks? One might even ask whether the biennale has become so thoroughly massaged and hyped that it has backed itself into a corner of staged dialogues allowing art fairs to fill the fissures.

Layer that with the trend to package these exhibitions with other events and, understandably, their critical edge starts to blur. It pivots on the marketing concept of ‘added value’, where the sincere idealism of curatorial themes has been sidelined by opportunism. Is this simply an equation of accountability in today’s climate, where funding sponsors and governments hold the ultimate strings? Or is it a more astute understanding of their primary audience post-vernissage?

It is not surprising that the commercial art world lurks in the shadows of biennales, especially given that relatively few curators are in a position to ‘discover’ relatively unexposed artists. (Clarke 2002:45) The art fair, conveniently timed alongside the biennale, opens up the profiling of emergent talent, a kind of one-stop-shop of now.

The most obvious is Art basel with the Venice biennale, which started the trend. Art Dubai coincides with Sharjah biennale, SHContemporary opens within days of Shanghai biennale, the 4th Korean International Art Fair changed its dates to relate to three major biennales: Gwangju, busan and the Seoul International Media Art biennale. And if the boundaries weren’t blurred enough: “...the Swiss MCH Group organizers of Art basel and Art basel Miami beach announced that they have acquired a majority stake in Art HK” (AAPEditors 2011:39). The competitive jostling between these events has become manic and, with the in-bed advantage assigned to biennale curatoriums of the past flowing into art fairs as the real geographic power-brokers of the day, Asia is at the forefront of this push.

What is perhaps more interesting than these power structures, is the way art fairs are redefining themselves with curated components and commissioned works by ‘celebrity artists’ featured within their selling halls. SHContemporary’s Best of Discoverysays it all: blatantly hijacking the biennale’s platform for announcing ‘the state of now’. Art Stage Singapore in its inaugural event this year was rumored to have muscled exhibitors over what they showed on the grounds of presenting a curatorially fresh fair. Similarly, Asia’s hottest fair of the moment, Art HK, presented AsiaOne, a new section made up of 47 galleries from Asia presenting solo shows of Asian artists as well as its Art Futures section, which had grown to include 45 newly established galleries.

With its attendances up 38% on last year, it ratchets up the old competitive challenge to Singapore, vying for the position as Asia’s leading cultural hub. both cities are heavily invested in this position with what could be described in marketing terms as ‘a mix’ of museums, arts fairs, biennales, auctions, and education – a billion dollar investment. Hong Kong’s high hopes for its new cultural district of West Kowloon and contemporary museum M+, aligned with Singapore’s Economic Development board’s Creative Services Development Plan, its new Free Port (a government developed free-trade zone dedicated to high-end art storage), and The National Art Gallery of Singapore (TNAGS) scheduled to open in 2015, are challenging China’s success in catching the global eye.

How do we navigate this cultural expansion contest? It has become virtually impossible to accurately map this landscape due to its pace and spread but, more alarmingly, to assess it with a level of criticality. Reviews remain

trained on established international events and, with the lack of art critics on the ground in Asia to gauge these events, as well as their currency with local and regional audiences, the greater danger is not the economic burn-out of these events but rather our inability to assess contemporary Asian art outside the endorsement of the market. I return again to the fake Louis Vuitton handbag and the question: is what we are witnessing real or is what we are told the more real?

A former arts manager in America and Australia,

Gina fairley is a freelance curator and writer

specialising in contemporary Southeast Asian art. She

is Regional Contributing editor for Asian Art News

and World Sculpture News [Hong Kong], and lives in

Sydney and Manila.

REfEREncESAAP editors 2011. ‘Pecking Order: Art fair Report’, Art Asia Pacific,

Issue 74, July/August, p 36

The Asian Art Archive, Hong Kong - survey of Asian Biennales (2008)

at: http://www.aaa.org.hk/onlineprojects/bitri/en/index.aspx

CLARKe, David 2002. ‘Contemporary Asian Art and its Western

Reception’, Site + Sight: Translating Cultures, earl Lu Gallery,

Singapore

GI, Zhu. 2008. ArtZineChina, Art in Asia, (Korea), No 8,

November Issue

GIeLeN, Pascal. 2009. ‘The Biennale: A Post-Institution for Immaterial

Labour’, Open16 ‘The Art Biennale as a Global Phenomenon.

Strategies in Neo-Political Times, (Netherlands), Vol. 16

KOLeSNIKOV-JeSSOP, Sonia. 2010. ‘Singapore looks for a softer

side of growth’, New York Times (America), 19 february

Lee, Yongwoo, 2009. ‘Discourse production frame and biennale

culture, Art in Asia (Korea), January Issue

universes in universe - documented biennale published by

Dr. Gerhard Haupt & Pat Binder at <http://universes-in-universe.

de/english.htm>

YOO, Jinsang. 2008. ‘Biennales of the city itself, of the genre

itself’, Art in Asia (Korea), No. 8, November Issue

JACK TILTON GALLeRY PACKING uP xIANG JING’S SCuLPTuRe

“AND YOu?”(2005), PAINTeD fIBReGLASS 163 x 60 x 64.5 INCHeS.

SHCONTeMPORARY08 ART fAIR, SHANGHAI. PHOTO: GINA fAIRLeY


t is one of the enduring ironies of contemporary Asian art that most intra-

Asian conversations are mediated via non-Asian locations such as Australia and the USA. As a post-graduate student in an “Asian” country (I studied Art Criticism at the Faculty of Fine Arts in baroda, India over 1992-95), I found scarce mention of modernist or contemporary art in the Asian region in the syllabus. We were aware of the history of modern art in India, and we were schooled in the history of what we called “modern art” by which was understood the history of modern art in Europe and the USA. I first encountered modern and contemporary “Asian” art in Australia.

We are now well aware of the hyperreality of Asia as a cognitive category. Teaching courses on modern and contemporary Asian art, I have come to realise the relatively recent advent of modern and contemporary Asian art as a scholarly field, which simultaneously emerged in eastern Australia and the east coast of the USA in the early 1990s. In 1991, John Clark (then at ANU) convened a conference on modernity in Asian art [Clark, ed., 1992]. In 1992, Vishakha Desai (Asia Society, New York), convened a round-table with eminent curators and artists from Asia.

The Queensland Art Gallery, brisbane, embarked on the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 1993. In 1993, Art andAustralia sprouted a supplement called Artand Asia Pacific, the predecessor of Art AsiaPacific. Notwithstanding traditions of writing on modern and contemporary art within national boundaries and with the exception of the Asian Art Shows at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (1977-), the “invention” of contemporary Asian art took place outside Asia. Poshyananda and Clarke have written incisively about this phenomenon (Poshyananda, 1993, Clarke, 2002).

Recent years have seen the gradual undoing of this situation via various commercial exhibitions and museum projects. Japanese organisations have again taken the lead, with the Japan Foundation’s project UnderConstruction: New Dimensions of Asian Art (2003) involving eight young curators from seven Asian countries. The first major exhibition of Indian art in China took place in 2006, sponsored by the Korean-owned Arario Gallery. It was clear that the trade in contemporary “Asian” art was no longer a

matter of selling works domestically, or else in Euroamerican venues. Intra-Asian commerce had become viable.

The West Heavens projectI met Johnson Chang at my lecture on a previous project, Edge ofDesire:Recent art inIndia (Sambrani et.al. 2005) at the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong in 2008. I knew of Chang as a co-founder of the Asia Art Archive and a curator and scholar who had contributed to the international emergence of contemporary Chinese art. Chang wanted to know how contemporary Chinese artistic and academic cultures might benefit from interactions with their Indian counterparts. We arrived at the idea of inviting a select group of Indian and Chinese artists to undertake journeys to each other’s countries, to engage in dialogue, and produce work as a result of these interactions. The overall project name ‘West Heavens’ came from the ancient Chinese name for India, as the place where the buddha was born, lived and attained enlightenment.

West Heavens (www.westheavens.net) has since developed into a multi-disciplinary project incorporating visual art, social theory and film. Place.Time.Play: India-China Contemporary Art was the visual art component of this larger project. We travelled to various locations in India with a group of Chinese artists and curators in March 2010. In April 2010 Indian artists travelled to Shanghai, Hangzhou, Yiwu and other places of interest in the Yangtze delta and

further afield, including imperial sites and buddhist retreats. In both countries, we took the opportunity to convene “moving forums” that brought the travellers together with local artists in extended conversations.

Place.Time.Play: the exhibitionPlace signals geography, time speaks of history, and play invokes the volition of artists to work with, or subvert, the given rules of the game. Reckonings with place imply an understanding of contextual difference, and an attempt to enter another site or location. Taking time is both a requirement of this process, and an opportunity to encounter a different sense of historical flux, and for artists to think about the formidable burdens of tradition as well as current economic, political and artistic conditions. The invitation to play was extended on the premise that the ludic instinct, a fundamentally life-affirming gesture, is too often lost in the quest for topical issues. Through the invitation to indulge in a basic human activity, we hoped for an enduring series of relationships between art communities across the two nations.

Despite market interest in the contemporary art of these two countries, there has been little interaction between the two art cultures in recent times. For artists in India or China, awareness of each other’s art practice has largely been limited to occasional encounters at biennales and art fairs in different parts of the world. For all their historical connections, what did contemporary artists from either country really know of each other’s work?

I

P L A C E . T I M E . P L A Y : c o n T E m p o R A R y A R T f R o m T H E W E S T H E A V E n S

T o T H E m I d d L E K I n g d o m

ChaitanyaSambrani RAILWAY FROM LHASA TO KATHMANDU, QIu ZHIJIe, 2010, INSTALLATION INCLuDING

STeeL., THANG-KA PAINTINGS, PHOTOGRAPHY, AND WOOD. PHOTO: THOMAS fueSSeR


In choosing which artists to invite, we first considered ongoing concerns within the artists’ work. Work that crossed boundaries; that aspired to speak to audiences other than the accustomed binary of local self and Euroamerican other was especially interesting. We were impatient with intra-Asian contact being routed via Western Europe, North America and Australia, fed by the growing ambitions and strengths of the Chinese and Indian (art) economies.

We understood the aspirations of artists who insistently straddled continents and cultures in their work, confounding inherited structures of belonging. We debated the display of specific national or regional characteristics that marked an artist’s work as being an authentic representation of an original culture. Who would this display be for? Was a display of “Indian” or “Chinese” authenticity more valid when it appealed to Western desires? What characteristics would the work display if it were aimed at a Chinese (or Indian) audience? As an exhibition, Place.Time.Play sought to address these questions and throw up new questions about the possibilities and limits of artistic conversation across major art cultures.

We also considered which artists we felt would be willing and able to accommodate within their work the challenges of interaction with a parallel civilisation: a civilisation that seemed historically so well known, so inextricably linked with ones own, and yet so far removed in modern experience, except in an adversarial role. National histories and traditions, especially in their authorised guises, were a frequent feature of the conversations.

In what was constituted an “Indian” view of Indian tradition? How did contemporary Chinese artists situate their tradition - an ancient history of learning and international contact - and the modern world with Euroamerican colonisation and Japanese imperialism added to the destruction wrought during the Cultural Revolution? What were the gains and losses in understanding shared and divergent histories in recent times? India and China, in addition to being regarded as the two major economic growth engines of the current decade, are also participants in long-running border disputes, and are competing for primacy over the resources of poorer Asian and African nations. The cash registers of auction houses are ringing with big sales achieved for the work of superstar artists from one country or another. What then might it mean for artists from these countries to indulge in mutual congress?

Ultimately, what did we have to learn from each other? As curator, I do not hold that the works in the exhibition necessarily lend themselves to this entire range of inquiry. In a process-driven and exploratory exhibition, it would be futile to expect every work to address intractable issues of inter-cultural communication, especially among countries such as China and India.

The exhibition opened in three non-gallery spaces in Shanghai from October to December 2010 and was greeted with much enthusiasm in Shanghai and in the international press. (Turner, 2011). A reciprocal exhibition in India has not yet materialised, though the continuation of the overall West Heavens project into 2011 indicates a hunger among

the Chinese art community to continue its Indian engagement. A few projects from the exhibition are featured below to give the reader a sense of the variety of responses from artists to the possibilities and impossibilities of working across China and India. Driven by a wanderlust that is at once deeply personal and profoundly political, Qiu Zhijie enacted in 2006-07 a journey on foot from Lhasa to Kathmandu. The trigger for this project came from the inauguration in July 2006 of the Golmud-Lhasa railway line, the latest in a series of invasions of the mythical Shangri-La, hermetic realm of spirituality and peace but also a geopolitical prize fought over by the british and Chinese empires. His research into the “discovery” of Tibet led him to Nain Singh, an Indian soldier in the british army sent into Tibet to chart its topography in 1866. Qiu Zhijie set about replicating Nain Singh’s journey in reverse, using the same technology for navigation and measurement (including wearing steel shackles to mimic Nain Singh’s measured footsteps of precisely 33 inches). The idea of Tibet as an object of desire sandwiched between british India and Imperial China, and its fate in the 20th and 21st centuries was presented through photographs, a video, a series of thangka-like paintings and railway tracks made from melted objects of ritual, musical and religious purpose that Qiu collected on his journey.

Another kind of journey was performed by Tushar Joag who rode from Mumbai to Shanghai on a 1950s-designed Enfield bullet motorcycle. His Quixotic overland quest from the West Heavens to the Middle Kingdom was punctuated by halts at the Sardar Sarovar project on the Narmada river in India and the Three Gorges on the Yangtze in China, both nation-building projects involving huge dams and power plants that have been executed despite massive destruction of communities and natural habitats. Joag has in the past worked in collaboration with activists from the Narmada bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Agitation) who sought to highlight the plight of displaced indigenous communities. Joag’s journey to Shanghai followed in reverse earlier journeys such as that of the monk Xuanzang who journeyed to India to retrieve original buddhist sutras, and also made reference to the buddha’s journey of renunciation on his horse Kanthaka, and ‘Che’ Guevara’s travels of self-discovery in Latin America. Having reached Shanghai, Joag dismantled his motorcycle to make from it a sculptural installation immersed in water from the Yangtze.

Qiu Anxiong’s cubic globes allude to ancient Chinese understandings of the cosmos (a

THE REALISATION OF KANTHAKA, TuSHAR JOAG, 2010, MAPS, MOTORCYCLe SPARe PARTS AND TOOLS,

DIMeNSIONS VARIABLe. PHOTO: THOMAS fueSSeR

33TA A S A R e V I e W V O L u M e 2 0 N O . 4 33

round Heaven and a square Earth) to suggest a subversion of contemporary geopolitical lineaments. His five cubic earths elaborate on topographical, geological, climatic and political ramifications of this alternate configuration of the world. Qiu’s cubical earths question the relations of power and marginality between as well as within nations. Tying into adventurous traversals in the works of Tushar Joag and Qiu Zhijie, Qiu Anxiong’s flat-faced earths propose their own theory of distance, spatial relationships, and positions of centrality and peripherality. As the ongoing realignment of global power and looming battles over resources re-draw the political and economic landscape, Qiu Anxiong’s work asks for a new vantage point, perhaps situated on one of the pointed corners of his new worlds, looking with fear and desire towards one of the three visible facets. Ours then would be the position of the forever marginal, always doomed to live on the edge and in danger of being flung into space as the new earths rotate.

Gigi Scaria’s concerns with the successes and failures of physical and philosophical modernisation extend to an investigation of the meanings associated with cultural icons and historically significant figures. With NoParallels, Scaria chose to focus on the incongruence between the political careers of Mahatma Gandhi and Chairman Mao, their political philosophies and personae. And yet, they have in common the status of national icons, symbols of liberation who committed their lives to the emancipation of their peoples, and whose lives continue to be churned out in a series of set poses through authorised photographs. In every case though, there is a sense of a fleeting essence being resuscitated on the screen, even as the flipping panels of the animation in No

Parallels reveal sometimes touching, and often, conflicting juxtapositions between the careers of the Mahatma and the Chairman.

Place.Time.Play was but the beginning of a process that looks set to continue. Already a commercial gallery in Shanghai has hosted another India-China exhibition (Pearl Lam Galleries, Shanghai, Window in the Wall:India and China—Imaginary Conversations, co-curated by Gao Minglu and Gayatri Sinha, 9 September to 9 November 2011). The WestHeavens project has continued into an independent cinema festival You Don’tBelong,featuring the work of video artists and filmmakers from India in beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Kunming under the curatorship of Ashish Rajadhyaksha (http://westheavens.net). A much-needed space for intra-Asian dialogue and an internationalism not modulated by the West would seem to be in the offing.

Chaitanya Sambrani is Senior Lecturer in Art Theory

at the Australian National university School of Art,

and an independent curator.

REfEREncESClark, John, ed., 1992. Modernity in Asian Art, Wild Peony Press,

Sydney.

Clarke, David, 2002. “Contemporary Asian Art and its Western

Reception”, Third Text, Vol 16, Issue 3, pp. 323-242.

Poshyananda, Apinan, 1993. “The future: Post-Cold War,

Postmodernism, Postmarginalia (Playing with Slippery Lubricants)”

in Caroline Turner, ed., Tradition and Change: Contemporary Art of

Asia and the Pacific, Queensland university Press, Brisbane

Sambrani, Chaitanya, et.al.2005. Edge of Desire: Recent Art in

India, Philip Wilson Publishers, London

Turner, Caroline, 2011. “There is also the West Heavens: A

Chinese Indian Conversation”

Art Monthly Australia, Issue 238, April 2011.

CUBIC GLOBE, QIu ANxIONG, 2010, INSTALLATION (WOOD), 120x60x60CM x 5 PIeCeS. PHOTO: THOMAS fueSSeR

15 May – 08 June 2012Archaeologists believe that people first arrived in Madagascar from Indonesia and Malaya about

2000 years ago. Before this, Madagascar evolved over millions of years in isolation. The result is a country like no other, an incongruous mixture of wildlife and culture with an unparalleled array of

plants and animals found nowhere else. Dr Steven Goodman, resident since 1989, recognised expert in Malagasy biodiversity and perhaps the country’s

finest field biologist, is our program leader.Land Only cost per person twinshare

ex Antananarivo $6800

26 October – 14 November 2012Few people have immersed themselves as

deeply in Burma as TAASA contributor Dr Bob Hudson. His longstanding annual Burma program

features extended stays in medieval Mrauk U, capital of the lost ancient kingdom of Arakan

(now Rakhine State) and Bagan, rivalling Angkor Wat as Southeast Asia’s richest archaeological

precinct. Exciting experiences in Yangon, Inle Lake, Mandalay and a private cruise down the mighty

Ayeyarwady are also included.Land Only cost per person twinshare

ex Yangon $3990

28 October – 14 November 2012Angkor’s timeless grandeur is unmissable. Yet

Cambodia offers a host of other important cultural and travel experiences: outstanding ancient, vernacular and French colonial architecture;

spectacular riverine environments; a revitalising urban capital in Phnom Penh; interesting cuisine and beautiful countryside. Gill Green, President

of TAASA, art historian and author specialising in Cambodian culture and Darryl Collins, prominent Australian expatriate university lecturer, museum curator, and author who has lived and worked in Cambodia for over twenty years, have designed

and co-host this annual program.Land Only cost per person twinshare

ex Phnom Penh $4600

To register your interest, reserve a place or for further information contact Ray Boniface

PO Box U237 University of Wollongong NSW 2500 Australia

p: +61 2 4228 3887 m: 0409 927 129e: [email protected]

ABN 21 071 079 859 Lic No TAG1747

H E R I TA G E D E S T I N A T I O N SN AT U R E • B U I L D I N G S • P E O P L E • T R A V E L L E R S

MADAGASCAR: A WORLD APART

INSIDE BURMA: THE ESSENTIAL EXPERIENCE

CAMBODIA: ANGKOR WAT AND BEYOND


rtist in Residence’ is a term for an artist who lives and practices their art for

a period of time with a host organization, away from their usual environment. Asialink residencies have contributed significantly to the health and vibrancy of the arts community in Asia and provided extraordinary creative stimulation to Australian artists, writers, performers and arts managers who have worked in Asia.

The Asialink Arts Residency program currently sends at least 30 performers, writers and arts managers from Australia to Asia each year. Originally established in 1989 by the Australia Council with three Visual Arts/Craft residencies in Thailand and Malaysia, the residency program was devolved to Asialink in 1991. Asialink has managed the program since then, expanding it into the areas of Performing Arts and Arts Management in 1996 and Writing in 1997.

Resident artists, writers, performers and arts managers spend up to three months or more, working on projects they have devised. Each resident is hosted by an arts organisation or tertiary institution and the interaction between the resident and the host is an important aspect of the program. Residents commonly present talks and workshops or engage in formal teaching. Many also direct performances, organise events, exhibit in solo and group shows and perform readings. To date, there have been residencies in over 20 countries including Japan, China, Singapore, India, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Mongolia.

The experiences of residents often stimulate profound changes in artistic direction and career. Some recent examples are illuminating not only in terms of experiences for the artists, but also for the contribution made to their host organisation and country.

A residency may provide increased opportunities for arts practitioners to continue working in the Asian region. Kate ben-Tovim combined her academic background in music performance and international relations with her interest in cultural exchange by working on projects in China, London, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia over the last 12 years. Her recent projects in Indonesia grew out of her 2009 residency there. The

project “Volcanic Winds” comprised three projects: ILMU: Hiphop and electronic music festival, Jogjakarta, September, 2010; Tropis//Subsonics: Sound and Image Program Jogjakarta, January 2011, and a tour of the Senyaya, experimental music duo to Australia in July 2011.

In her residency report, Kate noted that: “My Asialink Residency gave me a point of focus, a host, and an easily understood ‘reason for being’ in Indonesia that I was then able to leverage and expand upon in to other areas of professional interest and with other artists and organizations”. During 2010 Kate also completed the Asialink Leaders Program and is now based at the Australian High Commission in Delhi working on the 2012 Australia/India cultural program for 2012.

A residency may be a catalyst for ongoing involvement with the host country. Newcastle-based Catherine Croll is a community cultural development specialist with a great skill for matching people and projects and bridging cultural divides. In 2010 Catherine undertook a residency with Redgate studios and Gallery in beijing to work on the 10th anniversary of their residency program and a series of exhibitions held in China as part of ‘Imagine: The Year of Australian Culture in China’. These included an exhibition titled “Hard Sleeper” based on a train journey by six Australian artists to artist colonies and studios in Chengdu, Chonqing, Lhasa and beijing. Catherine is currently working on a 20th anniversary Redgate Gallery tour of Chinese contemporary art through both China and Australia in 2011 and 2012. Her networks of the Chinese contemporary art scene are invaluable for artists and managers wanting to work in China.

The residency experience may result in further exchanges, collaborative projects, reciprocal residencies and institutional links. Steve Eland, Director of 24HR Art in the Northern Territory, undertook a residency in China in 2009 and has since developed projects both there and with Indonesia and the Philippines. In his ‘First Life Residency’ Project, he developed an exchange project with three Australian and three Chinese artists who journeyed together throughout Arnhem Land and Tibet. The Australian artists Tony Lloyd, ben Armstrong and Sam Leach then returned to beijing for the opening of the exhibition arising from their partnership with Chinese artists Wu Daxin, Shi Jinsong and Cang Xin.

Through 24HR Art, Steve also initiated a new residency program in beijing that gives priority to artists from regional Australia, supported by both the Australia Council and Asialink. At the same time, Steve is working with curators Sudjud Dartanto, Yogyakarta and Norberto Roldan, Manila, on the project ‘Immemorial: reaching back beyond memory’ that offers an extraordinary collaboration and dialogue between Northern Territory, Indonesian and Filipino artists. ‘Immemorial’ was exhibited at the Chan Contemporary Art Space in Darwin in late October 2011.

Steve’s extensive experience in Asia has given him a deep understanding of cultural exchange issues. He notes that: “Australia’s funding agencies need to seriously address the issue of reciprocity if they wish to continue encouraging the exportation of Australia’s culture northward as ‘cultural exchange’. I applaud opportunities enabling us to generate and sustain artistic friendships and partners in Asia - it would be nice to have the means to invite these friends to ‘our homes’ occasionally.”

A

5 0 , 0 0 0 d A y S I n A S I A : T H E A S I A L I n K A R T S R E S I d E n c y p R o g R A m

LesleyAlway

OPeNING Of THe exHIBITION, HARD SLeePeR AT ReDGATe GALLeRY, BeIJING. OCTOBeR 2010. PHOTO: CATHeRINe CROLL


The Asialink residency program has also provided an alumnus of experienced arts practitioners who can assist with contemporary cultural initiatives in Asia. In 2010, Catriona Mitchell, with previous experience at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival, The Melbourne Writer’s Festival and the Melbourne International Film Festival, undertook a residency with the Indian project group Teamwork Production to assist with the planning and delivery of the Jaipur Literary Festival. This broadened her programming, managerial and production experience to develop her career as a Literary Programmer. Her experience has proven invaluable for planning of a writer’s exchange program through Asialink for Jaipur in 2012 funded through the Literature board of the Australia Council and the Australia International Culture Council.

Catriona reflects that: “In terms of achieving my objectives, my research into contemporary Indian literature was so rich and informative and useful, and the willingness of the writers to participate so helpful, … it took me way beyond where I had expected to go”.

Residents can have an impact in their host community. Sydney arts lawyer and curator, Cass Mathews had previously studied at Yamanashi University and returned to Japan in 2009 to work with the fourth Echigo Tsumari Arts Triennial, which is located north of Tokyo and focuses on strong community engagement with leading international and local artists. While artist in residence, Cass worked with the Australian Embassy in Tokyo to establish “Australia House” in an old farmhouse as a residency space and showcase for Australian artists. Unfortunately, Australia House was destroyed in the Japan disaster in early 2011 and the Australian Embassy in Tokyo is currently raising funds and undertaking a design competition to build a new one, hopefully in time for the fifth Echigo Tsumari in late 2012. Ulanda blair, the curator at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, worked on three projects for the Setouchi International Festival in 2010 and will return to Japan to work on the 2012 Echigo Tsumari Festival as an Asialink Arts Management resident.

Residencies provide the stimulus for new creative work. based in Korea in 2010, visual artist Locust Jones made a series of large-scale ink drawings incorporating Korean news imagery. He chose Korea because of its rich paper making culture and used the fibrous Hanji paper, made in rolls from the mulberry tree and perfectly suited for his large-scale drawings. A number of these works were successfully exhibited and sold at the Hong

Kong Art Fair in May 2011. One large-scale work from this series was included in an exhibition at Carriageworks, Sydney in 2010.

While Asialink’s emphasis has been on sending Australian artists to Asia, there is increasing demand for reciprocal and collaborative exchanges. Asialink currently has three reciprocal exchanges: between Taipei Artist Village/Fremantle Arts Centre; Changdong Art Studio, Seoul/Artspace, Sydney and Tokyo Wonder Site with Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne.

Japanese artist Midori Mitamura creates installations from photographs, videos and found and recycled objects. Trained in fashion and photography, she has held residencies in Finland and London and exhibited extensively in Asia and Europe. In residence at the Monash University Museum of Art in early 2012, Midori continued her ‘Art & breakfast’ project, initiated in Stockholm and continued in Tokyo and berlin. Midori hosted breakfast for visitors in the gallery space and transforms her memories, observations and breakfast objects into dramatic visual narratives.

Korean artist Yongseouk Oh undertook a residency at Artspace, Sydney in 2011. He stitches together film excerpts and stills to reconstruct reality in video works that confuse the past and present by amalgamating real and imagined places. In combining personal and found imagery, he examines the boundary where individual and collective memories collide. With funding from the Australia Korean Foundation (AKF) Asialink was able to assist Yongseouk with an exhibition on the digital screen in the Atrium at Federation Square in Melbourne. The title of his project, “Square by Square”, references the multiple viewpoints offered by the artist’s video works and the physical reality of being screened at Federation Square.

AKF funding also supported a project ‘body Request’ by Guy benfield, Australian artist in

residence at Changdong Art Studio in Seoul, at the Korea International Art Fair in September 2011 where Australia was the focus country.

The theory behind artist residencies is that an immersive experience in another culture and place can be a stimulus to an artist’s or arts manager’s practice. Asialink residencies are ‘engaged’ residencies rather than ‘studio’ based residencies where the objective is to find time and space to work on one’s own projects. For Asialink residents, the place and culture are all important and they must actively engage with their local and/or arts communities. The process is often transformational, personally and professionally.

Given the emphasis in the proposed new National Cultural Policy on linking the arts to other areas of government activities and the importance of Asia for Australia’s future prosperity, Asialink residencies join many of the dots across the portfolios of arts, trade, foreign affairs, education, communications, and community development. However, to keep at the forefront of residency models and practice, Australia needs to increase its investment in this area. There are many new residency models to explore such as utilising technology to create ‘virtual’ and ‘green’ residencies as well as developing ‘multilateral’ residencies and investing in the necessary infrastructure to enable Australia to host more reciprocal residencies.

because Asia is ‘hot’ we can no longer take our geographic proximity for granted. Europe, the United Kingdom and increasingly the USA are targeting Asia and making serious investments in cultural engagement. The ball is currently in Australia’s court – but not for long.

Lesley Alway is Director of Asialink Arts. She has

experience across the government, non-profit and

commercial art sectors. Her previous roles include

Managing Director, Sotheby’s Australia; Director and

CeO, Heide Museum of Modern Art; Director of Arts

Victoria and Director, Artbank.

LOCuST JONeS, OPeN STuDIO IN SeOuL KOReA, 2010


y all measures, contemporary art in Cambodia is a young and vibrant

offspring, rising Naga-like from the chaos of the 70s and 80s. A first glimpse was provided by New Art Gallery (now under new management), whose inaugural exhibition ‘New Style for a New Subject’ was held in January 1994, featuring self-taught artist Svay Ken (1933–2008). Within five years, Svay was to be one of the first internationally recognised Cambodian artists featured in the prestigious Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Japan.

Whether by neglect or intention, there are few avid Cambodian collectors of contemporary art works and little government interest shown in young emerging artists, with no public museum or national gallery spaces dedicated to forming permanent collections. Collectors who purchase from local exhibition spaces tend to belong to the international expatriate community and important modern works of art inevitably leave the country when members return to their countries of origin. The Singapore Art Museum (SAM) is a leading institutional collector of contemporary Cambodian art, as is the Queensland Art Gallery through the on-going ‘Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ – the most recent showing included four Khmer artists (Svay Ken, Rithy Panh, Vandy Rattana and Sopheap Pich). Hong Kong collectors also snap up Cambodian works from commercial galleries.

Acting as a counterpoise to the neighbouring popular Cambodian painting shops in ‘Art Street’, Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture (established 1998), comprising a gallery and research centre, was founded by Ly Daravuth and Ingrid Muan (1964–2005). Several survey shows titled ‘Visions of the Future’ and ‘Through Our Eyes’ featured contemporary artists; while ‘Painted Stories’ was devoted to paternal figure, Svay Ken. Svay was at every show in Phnom Penh he could manage to attend: first with his walking stick and at his last public appearance in a wheelchair at the bophana Centre tribute exhibition. His quiet presence offered assurance to countless artists from a new generation. ‘Sharing Knowledge’ was dedicated to his ambition – to record his memories of what his friend Dana Langlois fitfully dubbed, ‘a life less ordinary.’

Java Arts (established 2000) by Dana Langlois, has proved to be an important venue for both emerging and established Khmer artists.

Dana recently observed that local artists are growing in stature. In the past she nurtured emerging artists by covering exhibition costs and by not charging commission but since 2008 her prices reflect commercial interests, the quality of mature artists’ work and an added influx of international buyers. A number of Phnom Penh curators and gallery owners now support artists on contract.

Popil Gallery (now closed) with founding photographer-director, Stéphane Janin opened its doors in 2005 to provide access to photography through classes, an elegant gallery and reference library space for interested gallery goers. Photography as a medium with immediacy quickly found favour with young Cambodian artists and an important component of Janin’s legacy are members of the Sa Sa (Stiev Silapak) group. Robert Turnbull writing for the NewYork Times in June 2009 reported on the history of recent photographers in an article entitled ‘Cambodians Take back the Lens’. He noted: “The other significant change has been the advent of photo festivals. Following the Angkor Photography Festival in Siem Reap, PhotoPhnomPenh was inaugurated in November 2008.”

The VAO or Visual Arts Open was inaugurated in 2006. besides showcasing artists throughout the capital, this event, which developed links

with the 2008 Architecture+Urban Design month and is involved with ecological issues in relation to development projects, is now a lively multifaceted arts event.

Artist Leang Seckon has commented that artists are ‘growing’ and finding their way with increasing experience. He noted that the interest shown by international collectors contributes to a rise in professional standards and observed that Cambodia is still ‘a sometimes exciting taste’ for visiting collectors of contemporary art. Seckon is an extremely committed artist who is concerned for the fragile balance between the past, development and the environment. Since 2006 he has instigated several incarnations of the ‘The Rubbish Project’ with Fleur bourgeois Smith, featuring everything from creative fashion (apparel created from recycled plastic), to a highly acclaimed installation of a 225 m long Naga serpent which ‘appeared’ in the Siem Reap river to herald World Water Day in 2008.

A more recent explosion of Southeast Asian and international art contacts, electronic and print media, artists’ networks and art exchanges has resulted in overseas art exhibitions and enabled Cambodian artists to visit Europe, Japan, the United Kingdom, United States, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong, propelling local artists into the international arts arena. In January

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A n E W n A g A R I S I n g : c A m b o d I A n c o n T E m p o R A R y A R T

DarrylCollins

SOLDIERS ARRIVE AT THE PALACE, 2010, LeANG SeCKON, COLLAGe, MIxeD MeDIA ON PAPeR. IMAGe © COuRTeSY THe ARTIST


2010 Michelle Vachon, arts journalist for the Cambodia Daily reported: “Acclaimed contemporary artist Leang Seckon shipped his latest series of art works to London ... for a one-man show... at Rossi & Rossi, a gallery specializing in Himalayan and Asian art located in London’s fashionable Mayfair district.” The show opened on March 30 and was a spectacular success. Marine Ky has returned from Singapore where ‘theatres on the bay’ hosted her ambitious installation ‘L’Epiderme de la Terre & Mekong (Peace)’ - an Esplanade Commission exhibited during March-April 2011 in the entrance concourse.

In May 2011, an exhibition at Java Cafe & Gallery celebrated the work of Meas Sokhorn, an artist focusing on art produced from discarded possessions simply titled ‘Pore’. ‘Pore’, as Natalie Pace, independent curator has noted: “refers to the production of sweat during physical labour; the works acknowledge the declining ability of craftsmanship to provide a sustainable livelihood due to a reduction in demand and motivation …‘Pore’ is a lament to the creativity and physicality of diminished craftsmanship.”

In an earlier exhibition, an installation by Khorn at Java entitled ‘Contemporary Art Museum’ (2010) was created “to highlight the fact that Cambodia has no contemporary art museum despite the fact there are a number of artists creating work now”. He continued: “We lack such a place, we’re showing in shops and galleries, we need it because we are limited to small pieces.”

Private galleries are mushrooming in the capital and elsewhere: an obviously healthy sign for the growth of contemporary arts in all fields. During June 2011 the crop included new spaces at ‘Romeet’ (Phare Ponleu Selpak: arts & performance based in battambang) and ‘Teo+Namfah Gallery’, as well as the new Sa Sa bassac art space, which opened in Phnom Penh on the first floor of a 50s apartment building at a prime location near the National Museum of Cambodia and within sight of the Royal Palace.

Siem Reap, the city adjacent to the Angkor temple complex, has an important growing arts community with contemporary young Cambodian artists’ works exhibited in the Arts Lounge at Hotel de la Paix and the newer Thev Gallery under the curatorship of Sasha Constable. Occasional shows of work by young Cambodian photographers are held at John McDermott galleries. The less frenetic life style and pleasant surroundings coupled with the influx of international tourists has given the retro epithet ‘cool’ to describe some

of these architectural forays into new gallery spaces in Siem Reap.

There is a growing tendency for young artists to use installation and performance works to comment on the contrasting past and present, international affiliations throughout Southeast Asia, Cambodian society, disadvantaged groups, heritage and development issues. Discussing the preoccupations of the art collective Stiev Selapak, Francesca Sonara, a graduate from the Center for Curatorial Studies at bard College, NY, has written:

“At the very least, Stiev Selapak and the increasing number of concerned and inspired young artists engaging in contemporary practices are creating a record of the community threatened by the New Phnom Penh. Even if this city, like so many others, has lost itself, their art has inherited it and will bear the burden of sharing this story with the world and the increasingly sterile future.” (‘Stiev Selapak: Retelling Cambodia’s Story’, posted online at: http://Interventionsjournal.net, September 2011).

Erin Gleeson, curator and consultant, said in ‘The Presence of the Past: Contemporary Art from Cambodia’ for the International Lecture Series, 6th Annual Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2009):

“Deeply affected by war’s legacy of absence, the artists express a sense of obligation to preserving and continuing a national and cultural identity. Survivors are often incredibly adaptable and creative with little means. This is exemplified by generations of Cambodians and most recently by a great resourcefulness seen in contemporary art practices.”

During an interview in Phnom Penh, she confided that many resident Cambodian artists still suffer from under-exposure in the international market, in the main due to the paucity of documentation outside the country. This should be remedied by the publication of ‘Art Watch: Contemporary Art from Cambodia’ to be released in mid-2012 authored by Erin with detailed illustrated entries and sponsored by Monique burger of the burger Collection.

The rapidly approaching New York, NY salute Seasons of Cambodia festival planned for the spring of 2013 will also surely promote co-development of artist, gallery and performance, reappraisals and a whole new international critical eye for what will certainly be an amazing debut – the Naga should certainly rise to the occasion. Darryl Collins first journeyed to Cambodia in 1994 with

a team from the National Gallery of Australia, to assist

the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. He

has lectured at the Department of Archaeology, Royal

university of fine Arts, Phnom Penh and resides in

Siem Reap since 2007, where, together with architect,

Hok Sokol, he has relocated and restored a number of

traditional Khmer wooden houses.

SELEcT ARTS WEbSITES In cAmbodIA:

phnom penh

http://www.canbypublications.com/phnompenh/ppsouven.htm

http://www.ccf-cambodge.org/index.php?q=km

http://www.javaarts.org

http://www.meta-house.com

http://www.reyum.org

http://www.phareps.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=

category&layout=blog&id=65&Itemid=201&lang=en

http://www.sasaart.info

http://sasabassac.com/about.htm

http://www.teonamfahgallery.com/

Siem Reap

http://www.canbypublications.com/siemreap/srshopping.htm

http://www.the1961.com/

http://www.hoteldelapaixangkor.com/en/arts_lounge/

http://www.asiaphotos.net/

THOAMADA (17 MAY - 12 JUNE, 2011), VuTH LYNO, INSTALLATION VIeW. IMAGe COuRTeSY THe ARTIST AND SA SA BASSAC.


n October 2008 I found colleagues and friends were rather blank about my

upcoming two-week holiday in Singapore, two days of which were allocated to participating in the inaugural Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF). The greater merits of the ancient monuments and exotic street life of India, Thailand or Cambodia, the beauties of Vietnam or pampered boat cruises up the Mekong, were all warmly recommended to me as alternatives.

An invitation had come to me to participate in the SIPF initially via Zhuang Wubin, a young Singaporean documentary photographer, researcher, writer and curator. He wrote on behalf of Festival Director Gwen Lee, director of 2902 Gallery, then the only exclusive photoart gallery in Singapore and the largest in Southeast Asia.

Arriving in Singapore the heat was no surprise; the art of short forays from the hotel soon mastered. Singaporeans seemed equally surprised when my partner and I mentioned we were in town for a fortnight. Yet everything about Singapore’s cultural situation was interesting, especially in comparing attitudes and achievements of this small island nation of 5.8 million against my own land approaching 23 million.

A significant number of international curators and photography teachers had come to SIPF unfunded. I merely gave a talk on the Asia-Pacific collection at the NGA and participated in a forum with key figures such as photojournalist Alex Moh from Kuala Lumpur, who is currently working towards a history of photography on Southeast Asia, and Thai photomedia and video artist

Manti Sriwanichpoom - one of the greats of Southeast Asian art whose work has been seen in the Asia Pacific Triennial in brisbane and acquired by the Queensland Art Gallery.

The National Museum of Singapore (NMS) and Singapore Art Museum (SAM) are the peak high arts government bodies. both have collections of Southeast Asian and select holdings of foreign art. NMS has a cinematheque which can runs programs of past and present forms of the moving image. A range of energetic cooperatives, alternative and government agencies exist, some with a performance arts base. These are the Centre for the Arts and art Museum at the National University of Singapore, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, and Lasalle College of the Arts where the esteemed Australian art historian, contemporary art curator and critic Dr Charles Merewether is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art.

Coinciding with the SIPF, the National Museum launched its first Season of Photography with Doubleness: Photography ofChangChien-Chi put together by their curator Wong Hwei Lian in collaboration with Chang, a Taiwanese member of the elite European photoagency, Magnum. The exhibition had a well-produced catalogue published by Didier Millet of Editions Millet, Singapore. The other two shows in the Museum’s season were of foreign multimedia artists: Mexican Pedro Meyer and American choreographer composer /scenarist Robert Wilson.

A good account of the evolution of the regional art scene can be found in the SAM catalogue, Negotiatinghomehistoryandnation:twodecadesofcontemporaryartinsoutheastAsia1991-2011,

in which an essay by Susie Lingham, an artist, co-founder and director of 5th Passage Artists Ltd in Singapore, gives an admirably lucid and detailed account of the history of contemporary art since the late 80s and the impact of the Singapore Government’s ‘Renaissance City’ plan of 2000 which has directed energy from business to the arts. In a recent conversation, however, Charles Merewether disputed the premise behind the concept of ‘Southeast Asian art’, citing the greater differences between the countries and cultures that make up the region.

The acknowledged dominance of performance and installation art in Singapore referred to by SAM catalogue contributors is borne out in relation to photomedia. While conceptual photoworks by important figures Manit Sriwanichpoom, Sabah-born Malaysian Yee I-Lann and Singaporeans Lee Wen and

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c o n T E m p o R A R y S I n g A p o R E p H o T o g R A p H y: A S u R V E y

GaelNewton

ORANG BESAR SERIES: A ROUSING ACCOUNT OF MIGRATION IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE SEA, Yee I-LAN, 2010, eD 2/8 TRIPTYCH,

TYPe-C COLOuR PHOTOGRAPHS, COLLeCTION NATIONAL GALLeRY Of AuSTRALIA, © THe ARTIST

MASTERS, MANIT SRIWANICHPOOM, 2009, THAILAND,

GeLATIN SILVeR PHOTOGRAPHS, COuRTeSY VALeNTINe

WILLIe fINe ART, SINGAPORe


Amanda Heng, are included, there are no works by photographers making documentary or tableaux /staged imagery as such. International post-modern themes of hybridity and cross-gender appear but representation of the local vibrant Peranakan (Chinese-Malay-Indonesian) culture seems wan.

Peranakan cultural heritage nurtured over the same period and extending beyond the Straits, has been treated directly by Chris Yap Wooi-Hoe’s Of Fingerbowls & Hankies series, a commission from the National University of Singapore shown at their baba House museum. The Peranakan Museum is a must-visit in the arts quarter of Singapore.

The SIPF acts to provide a depth of engagement with photography’s many lives as art and illustration, promotion, witness, propaganda and provocateur. This wider gamut of engagement is also at the core of programs at SIPF Director Gwen Lee’s own photoart gallery 2902,named for its start date in a leap year in 2008. It is housed in the Mount Sophia Old School arts studio space though headed for a new city space in the near future.

Lee manages a diverse program which recognises photography as art, craft and business that needs exposure and marketing. Following the program of exhibitions through the Gallery’s website introduces a strong core of local artists as well as adventurous choices of pan Asian and foreign artists. These include award winning John Clang (Ang Choon Leng) who also works out of New York. Clang studied at the Lasalle College of the Arts and had his first gallery shows with 2902 and SAM in 2009.

Dealer galleries are not over abundant in Singapore and few support photomedia to any large degree. Kuala Lumpur and Singapore based Valentine Willie Fine Art (VWFA) was founded in 1996 by lawyer and collector Valentine Willie and Asian art specialist Mee-Seen Loong as a gallery venue and force for appreciation of modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art. It shows several photomedia artists: Manit Sriwanichpoom and Yee I-Lann, video artist Emil Goh and performance artist Melati Suryodarmo.

Singaporean and Southeast Asian photographers, photocurators and photohistorians are often found working simultaneously across commercial, reportage and art projects destined for local and international museums, commercial galleries and Festival venues. Art School courses are well established and, while photohistory is not a discipline, photographer-lecturers like Lasalle’s Gilles Massot offer course content, while Chris

Yap combines professional and personal work as a photographer and educator at his Light Editions print workshop and gallery, started in 2002. Yap has added historical shows to his program most recently work by his Pictorialist uncle TM Chau, acquired by the Singapore Museum and the National Gallery of Australia.

A different point of view from those artists bridging professional, commercial and contemporary staged photography as a necessity in Singapore is taken by Zhuang Wubin, a third generation Chinese Singaporean whose website zhuangwubin.posterous.com contains his extensive work on Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and personal commitment to a research based documentary photography.

Many local photomedia artists have been educated at art schools at home and abroad and are based between EuroAmerica and their homeland. This is increasingly an

international trend where once permanent exile was the only real career option.

Historical photographs which are outside the scope of this article, are served in Singapore by a permanent display in the National Museum and by a few high and low end antique dealers across Singapore (prices are however, at international levels). A number of private collectors, European and local, hold world-class Asian collections and quietly continue to build their collections. What is lacking is ready access to classic international historic photographers’ works that have formed much of the history of the medium, at least as written in Western photohistories, or even the regional works of famed 19th and 20th century foreign photographers at work in Asia, such as Felice beato and John Thomson, whose career started in Singapore.

My own photographic interests are broad church to eccentric. I found all fronts were

THE ILLEGITIMATE CROSS-DRESSING SON, TWO PRINCESSES AND THE ROYAL COOK, CHRIS YAP, 2009,

fROM THe fIVe TABLeAux ON THe CHANGING LIVeS Of A PeRNAKAN fAMILY OVeR THRee GeNeRATIONS, COLOuR GICLee PRINT,

© THe ARTIST AND THe NATIONAL uNIVeRSITY SINGAPORe MuSeuM


catered for in Singapore’s photomedia venues and antique dealers. I left a fortnight later as a fan of Singapore city and its astute infrastructure development in the face of some mighty economic and political challenges, with its sophisticated arts community feeling its way under a new and more supportive government arts policy. I have returned since on three more visits. My initial response was a heightened sense of the robustness of

art making - artists do not need a forty page manual to ‘get’ a new idea, even one from overseas - but also a recognition that art writing can fall behind.

As I walked around the galleries and observed the extraordinary transformation of a city even to its Disneyesque Sentosa Island resort and new Marina bay casino mall, I was aware that the other viewers were largely Asians - most likely

bi if not tri-lingual, balancing living tradition and high tech futures, versed in Eastern and Western culture, familiar with buddhist and Muslim religious traditions as well as local Indigenous animist beliefs. I could not hope to share this rich mix of background and experience, yet the texts I read were all couched in such familiar language and concepts, word perfect for London or New York or Australia, that this raises the question: how can this material reflect the very different perspectives that informed the making of the art it describes?

Valentine Willie’s ‘An introduction to South East Asian Art’ on the VWFA website meets the claim that Asia is too diverse and inchoate to encapsulate meaningfully by affirming that: “…the cultural and civilisational brilliance of the region (and the rationale of much Southeast Asian contemporary art) lies in the way its people have been able to make the foreign and the alien familiar - shaping, for example, a localised Nusantara response to the great global faiths”. The Masters degree in contemporary Asian art now offered at Lasalle College will perhaps produce new generations of writers able to send melded culture messages in bottles back to sea to reach foreign shores.

Gael Newton is Senior Curator of Photography,

National Gallery of Australia.

ON THE EVE OF THE CHINESE NEW YEAR, ZHuANG WuBIN, 2008, A YOuNG VISITOR TO CHINATOWN IS SeeN HuGGING A MANNeQuIN

THAT HAS BeeN PuT uP fOR THe feSTIVAL,TYPe C COLOuR PHOTOGRAPH, COuRTeSY THe ARTIST AND THe CHINeSe HeRITAGe CeNTRe

TIME (CHINATOWN), JOHN CLANG, 2009, fINe ART ARCHIVAL PRINT. COuRTeSY Of THe ARTIST


or students in Australia, there are many sources of exposure to Asian art. It

only takes a cursory look at the art world in Australia to see that Asian art has an important place in it. In Sydney alone this year, there has been a diverse range of exhibitions, from the blockbuster TheFirstEmperor at the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW), to Dinh Q. Le’s installation at the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. Important shifts within the discipline of art history have also challenged arts educators to look beyond the ‘Western canon’ and explore the possibility of global art histories.

but what are the particular reasons that students in Australia choose to study Asian art? What are some of the obstacles and challenges of undertaking that study? What impact does undertaking those studies have? being both a student of Asian art (studying for a PhD) and recently beginning to teach in the area at the National Art School, Sydney, these questions are close to my heart, personally and professionally. To reflect on these issues, I spoke to some of my fellow PhD students in Asian art at the University of Sydney as well as some of the students who have taken my courses at the National Art School, many of whom also study aspects of Asian art as part of their studio practice.

For many of the students, the initial motivation to learn more about Asian art came from having a personal or emotional response to the art objects. Tim Corne, now a painting student at the National Art School, recalled his first visits to the AGNSW, where he was drawn to the Asian art section: “I found it really peaceful, serene and refined. It had a sophisticated aesthetic that wasn’t cluttered or contrived.” Taking up Asian art as a field of study was a means of building on this initial subjective attraction.

Many students also became interested in Asian art because of their travel in Asia. Says Sophie Hopmeier: “It’s so easy to travel to Asia, so that has made me feel emotionally closer to Asia than Europe.” As a result of her travels, Sophie has been particularly inspired by the Japanese sculptor Enku (1632–1695), Indian sculpture and the Cham art of Vietnam. For ceramics student Anne-Marie Jackson, her travels in China exposed her not only to entirely new art objects, but also a new canon of value: “It was really interesting to see the different things that were valued over

there. I went to an exhibition which was an entire room of carved seals. At that time, I didn’t really understand what I was looking at, and I didn’t understand the importance of calligraphy within that culture. So then it was interesting to study it later on and understand more about the status of those objects.”

Other students saw the connection between their interest in studying Asian art and their experiences growing up in Australia’s culturally-diverse society. Rosemarie bilyk, now a painting student at the National Art School, commented that growing up in Southwest Sydney, she noticed a disconnection between the art curriculum at her school, and the multicultural environment she experienced every day: “We still studied traditional Western art. Even though perhaps half the class had Asian heritage, there was no attempt to make a connection between what we were learning and our daily reality. I didn’t get exposed to Asian culture in my studies at that time, not until I pursued it at university level.”

Ruth Li, now studying ceramics at the National Art School, grew up in Australia and New Zealand, but was interested in learning more about Asian art and culture because of her Chinese heritage: “My parents don’t talk about Asian culture that much…so it’s fascinating for me to learn about my heritage, my roots.” Other students said that because of the global nature of contemporary life, it was important to them not to ignore the diversity

of world culture. These students studied Asian art as part of a broad program of study that might also include European, American, African or indigenous Australian art.

For me, the motivation to study Asian art was related to a sense of Australia’s place in the world and a conviction that Australia’s growing engagement with Asia should be coupled with a deeper cultural understanding. Rhiannon Paget, in her first year of a PhD at the University of Sydney in the field of modern Japanese art, agrees. She commented that: “Studying Asian art can make you feel connected to the region. It can help you to understand the region better, but it also makes you aware of your own ignorance, by revealing how much there is to know.”

For programs of study that require language training and periods of in-country research, this sense of connection takes very practical forms. It is also important to acknowledge the significant place of international students studying art history in Australia. Simon Soon and Yvonne Low moved to Australia to study because opportunities to study art history at tertiary level were relatively limited in their home countries (Malaysia and Singapore respectively). both are now first-year PhD students at the University of Sydney, with Simon making a study of social installation and the transition to the contemporary in Southeast Asian art, while Yvonne is writing on women’s art in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. With many researchers working

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b E y o n d f I R S T I m p R E S S I o n S : S T u d E n T p E R S p E c T I V E S o n A S I A n A R T

PhoebeScott

ANNe-MARIe JACKSON, 2011, BOWL WITH IRON BASeD GLAZe, STONeWARe, (H) 9CM, (D) 12.5CM. PHOTO: ANNe-MARIe JACKSON


between Australia and different Asian locations, one of the benefits of study in this field is the strong sense of being part of a regional community of scholars.

What, then, are the challenges of studying Asian art? The undergraduate students generally agreed that the biggest challenge was coming to terms with the large body of contextual knowledge needed to fully appreciate the art objects: history, geography and religion in particular. Very few had studied any Asian history at high school, although some students had studied aspects of Asian art in their high school art course, especially in contemporary art. The students described themselves as coming to Asian art ‘without points of reference’ or ‘without any markers.’ This can be daunting. Overcoming the students’ sense of disorientation without diluting the material is a profound teaching challenge in this area.

The students also noted that lack of familiarity with Asian languages made it harder for them to recall names and terms. The challenge of the language barrier also exists at a different level for students approaching PhD studies, who often need to acquire new language skills for their research. Yvonne Low for instance, although already bilingual (in English and Chinese) is also learning bahasa Indonesian for her comparative research project. Among the Asian art PhD students, there was the wish that serious Asian language study could be more widely available in Australian high schools, and that more support was available for research-level language training as part of postgraduate studies.

but despite these challenges, the study of Asian art was seen as rewarding. According to ceramics student blossom Young: “You learn history through art, and it’s a beautiful way to learn history.” For some students at the National Art School, learning about Asian techniques was also central to their working practice. Ceramics student Anne-Marie Jackson’s works were inspired by the ‘hare’s fur’ and ‘oil spot’ iron glaze techniques of Chinese Jian ware bowls of the Song dynasty (960-1279). Evoking the complex visual effects of these glazes was a technical feat, especially given the different kiln and clay types accessible in Australia.

The ceramics students were also struck by the connoisseurship of ceramic art within traditional Asian culture, as demonstrated by the reverence given to ceramics in the Japanese tea ceremony. More than any particular technique, it was this sense of value and respect for the object that they most associated

with their study of Asian art. Sophie Hopmeier, who has studied Japanese art history, echoed this sentiment, commenting that she was most influenced by “the awareness of the qualities of the materials, and respecting those qualities, not trying to hide them with illusion.” Jason Cheng, from the painting department at the National Art School, said that: “I think it improves your artwork, because you think more, it opens your mind and you don’t just keep doing one type of thing, you look at other perspectives.”

Cecilia Jackson had studied Asian printmaking techniques as background research to her work, but commented that: “I personally don’t feel comfortable copying an Asian motif in my work, because I don’t have a relationship to that culture, I don’t want to take something that’s not mine to use.” Cecilia’s comment represented a general feeling among the students - having studied Asian art, they would be unlikely to make use of superficially ‘Asian’ elements. For many students, it was an ongoing process of experimentation, reflection and consideration to decide if aspects of Asian art that they had encountered in their studies could, or should, become part of their art practice.

These students reflect diverse perspectives - different levels and types of study, different disciplinary backgrounds and different connections to the subject matter. While it is difficult to draw any overall principles from the experiences of such a small and diverse group, perhaps one common thread was the fact that all the students had come to Asian art through a multi-faceted program of studies in visual art, rather than seeing it as a discrete area of specialisation.

If this is generally the case, then perhaps it is important to consider how to teach Asian art in the integrative context in which students encounter it. The challenge may be to present thematic connections which resonate across different areas of art history, while still maintaining the sense of the historical and cultural particularities of Asian art. For Jason Cheng, who grew up in Taiwan before moving to Sydney for his university studies, such connections are already apparent: “I like to see the similarities between Asian and Western art. There are different points of view, but also some of the same issues, some of the same visual language…it’s fun to see that.”

Phoebe Scott is a PhD candidate at the university of

Sydney, researching Vietnamese art between 1925-

54. She also lectures in Asian art at the National Art

School, Sydney.

BLOSSOM YOuNG, 2011, SeLf PORTRAIT AS COSMIC WOMAN

(DeTAIL), PeNCIL AND DIGITAL COLOuRING ON PAPeR,

(W) 15CM, (L) 42CM. PHOTO: BLOSSOM YOuNG


ince India’s rise as an economic force there has been considerable discussion

in various forums, both within and outside the Hindi film industry, about what has been termed the globalisation of Indian cinema (although actually referring to Hindi or, as it is popularly known, bollywood film).

both terms – globalisation and bollywood – are controversial. The term bollywood is disliked by many in the Hindi film industry as it is felt that it carries derogatory baggage. This is further complicated by the fact that outside India the word bollywood is commonly seen as representing all Indian cinema. What does the term globalisation mean when it is used to describe Hindi cinema? Does it mean that bollywood has become international, has been adopted on a truly global scale? Do the many changes that have occurred in Hindi cinema actually constitute globalisation? And, importantly, should this be seen as a positive or negative development? For some, globalisation is seen as a threat whereby national cinemas become homogenised, and national entertainment industries are absorbed by the dominant industries of the developed countries. The Hindi film industry, which is as old as cinema itself, and even predates Hollywood, has long had an international presence. Raj Kapoor’s Awara (1950), for instance, was enormously popular in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and Mehboob Khan’s Aan (1952) had a French release following its London premiere in the early fifties, while his epic MotherIndia (1957) was the first Hindi film to be nominated for an Oscar. Along with Sholay (1975), MotherIndia is perhaps the most famous of Hindi films. As far back as 1926, Light of Asia was the first Indo-German co-production. but it’s really since the advent of DVD, the internet and digital technology that the reach of Hindi cinema has expanded so dramatically. Since the enormous success of DilwaleDulhania Le Jayenge (1995), set partly in London and Switzerland, many Hindi films are being filmed in overseas locations. Yash Chopra has shot sequences for his films, usually the musical sequences, in Switzerland for so many years that there is a Swiss lake named after him. He was the most noted director to venture overseas before this recent flood, with Australia, South Africa, America,

the UK, and Malaysia used as locations over the last ten years. While film budgets continue to grow, the cost of filming on the streets of bombay (Mumbai) is increasing, making it likely that more films will be shot outside the city. Unlike other national cinemas, Hindi filmmakers have the advantage of using the English language, making it easy for a Hindi crew to work overseas and international technicians to work on Hindi films. Since 2002, Indian movie exports are estimated to have grown by about 60 percent, with the USA and Canada accounting for much of this increase, followed by the UK, Mauritius (a favourite location for Hindi films), Dubai and other markets like South Africa, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, some middle eastern countries, and now Germany, which has a growing love affair with bollywood. Hindi films have seen a substantial transformation over this period, not only in financing and production, but also in content. Outside India, the perception of a traditional bollywood film is of a colourful song and dance extravaganza with melodrama, thriller elements and epic love stories (referred to as Masala cinema), and noted for their length. More recently, many Hindi films are made with niche audiences in mind, and are shorter, with the song and dance elements cut down or even done away with, and much more political and edgy storylines. Not that the so-

called traditional film has disappeared, films with the requisite song and dance sequences such as Veer-Zaara (2004), Band Baaja Baarat(2011), and RabneBanadeJodi(2008), continue to be enormously popular both inside and outside India. Opinions are now divided on films shot in ‘exotic’ locations outside India. Audiences in the diaspora appear keen to see Indian locations, while the Indian audience looks to more exotic places for holiday ideas (and the tourism aspect is one reason filmmakers get such good location deals). So what has brought about this discussion of globalisation? Hindi films have certainly begun to feature much more in international film festivals and competitions. There is Lagaan (2001), with its Oscar nomination, Devdas (2002) shown in a special presentation at Cannes, and KalHoNaaHo (2004) and OmShantiOm (2007) presented in berlin. The Toronto Film Festival has also premiered a number of Hindi films, London had a ‘bollywood Week’, and at least three Hindi stars now take their place in London’s Madam Tussauds – Amitabh bachchan, Aishwarya Rai and Shah Rukh Khan. There are also regular Indian film festivals in the US, the UK and Germany, while the Australian bollywood Film Festival, which started in 2004, has now become ‘The Indian Film Festival – bollywood and beyond’. Does the number of academic and popular books on bollywood that have appeared in

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H I n d I c I n E m A A n d T H E pA R A d o x o f g L o b A L I S A T I o n

AdrienneMcKibbins

SHAH RuKH KHAN & KAReeNA KAPOOR IN BILLU (2009), STILL COuRTeSY eROS AuSTRALIA


the last ten years provide more evidence of this so called globalisation, especially as most of the academic books actually use the word ‘globalisation’ in their titles? Some stars of Hindi cinema are internationally recognised. Aishwarya Rai has appeared on the red carpet at Cannes every year since 2002 (sometimes in her other role as the global face of L’Oreal). She appears on US television talk shows and has made several forays into English-speaking cinema. Frieda Pinto, the young female star of SlumdogMillionaire, now has a number of international films on her plate. Another female star, Shilpa Shetty, made a notable impression in 2007 when she appeared on and won CelebrityBigBrother in the UK. Although some Indian actors have been working in international cinema for years, this is an exception rather than the rule. Most ‘big stars’ in the Hindi industry (or indeed in other regional Indian cinemas) have no wish to move outside their own domain. They already have a billion strong audience, far larger than that enjoyed by the biggest Hollywood stars. Globalisation may of course be coming from a different direction. US film companies, which have for some time been trying to make inroads into India, where a Hindi or Tamil film easily out-grosses an American blockbuster, have more recently started investing in Indian productions and releasing the films worldwide. A notable example is My Name is Khan, which had money from Fox Searchlight and Fox Star Productions and was filmed entirely in America. Unlike most Hindi films, MyNameisKhan had a staggered release, with selected previews and with the director, Karan Johar, and his stars, Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, doing saturation publicity

in the US and UK. Little of this international publicity made much of an impression in Australia, and while My Name is Khan did become the highest-grossing Hindi film in the overseas market, it didn’t really attract a huge western audience. So the big question is whether this supposed globalisation of Hindi cinema has any effect on western media, and subsequently the western audience? Does the general public know anything about Hindi cinema, its stars and its films? The size of both their fan base and actual audience numbers, both within and outside India, may provide Hindi stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukerjee, or Amitabh bachchan (voted Star of the Millennium in a bbC Poll) with global recognition , but does that only indicate the extent of the ever-increasing NRI (non-resident Indian) audience? bollywood cinema is certainly more recognised and written about worldwide, and there is a growing non-Indian audience watching and enjoying these films, but to suggest it is a truly globalised cinema like that of all-pervasive Hollywood is surely stretching this concept. Hindi films have been released in Australia since 2001 through two major distributors and the number of Indian films screened is the highest of foreign films released in this country. When Hindi films are released to all venues on Fridays, the prints often only leave India on the previous Monday, allowing a very limited window in which to clear customs, be classified and shipped to the multiplexes. This allows no time for preview screenings, so how do these films regularly make it to the box office top ten on the week of opening, and how do people actually know anything about the film, and even if it’s on? It’s those loyal and

local Indian audiences. Whether in London, Sydney or Melbourne, the films are heavily promoted through the local Indian press and Indian stores, and there are a multitude of on-line sites full of news of coming films and their release dates. Films rarely stay on the box office list for long, however, as pirated DVDs are available in local Indian stores within four or five days. There is no doubt that Hindi films are being more widely distributed: even Australian public libraries have started adding Hindi DVDs to their collections. For Hindi cinema to get a truly global audience, to be really known outside the Indian diaspora, the current release pattern will have to change so that the media can learn more about the films, can provide advance information, and local reviewers can attend previews and write their reviews.

Non-Indian background film people may know who Satyajit Ray is, but do they know of Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, Yash Chopra, or even know the name of the director of Lagaan?When Lagaan was nominated for an Oscar in the best Foreign Language category in 2002, it opened a door of interest in the west. Some film academics and a few western film critics took notice, articles about Hindi cinema appeared, and there was a flurry of publication - but the door is still only half open. There is a long way to go before the attractions of Hindi cinema are fully appreciated outside its national audience.

Adrienne McKibbins is the executive Officer and Awards

Manager of the film Critics Circle of Australia and Chair

of features Selection Panel for the Asia Pacific Screen

Awards. She is a long time researcher and writer on

Asian Cinema, specialising in Indian cinema.

AISHWARYA RAI BACHCHAN IN JODHAA AKBAR 2008 -

STILL uTV MOTION PICTuReSSHAH RuKH KHAN - INDIAN GLOBAL SuPeRSTAR - STILL BILLu 2009 STILL, COuRTeSY eROS AuSTRALIA


nce upon a time, many years before TAASA was born, there was a feeling

of deep sadness among some newcomers to Australia that the general population knew them only through their national dance and music, and not through their poetry, prose, painting and more intellectual pursuits. Then we Australians of Anglo extraction discovered their food, and so-called ‘ethnic restaurants’ sprang up everywhere. The earlier disappointment probably turned into despair.

Yet, in the last couple of decades, so much has changed. Think of books like Shaun Tan’s The Arrival and Nam Le’s The boat. Artists like Guan Wei and Ah Xian. The hopes of that earlier immigrant generation have been realised in ways they would never have imagined.

At the same time, dance enthusiasts have been rationed. When I began thinking about this article, I was quite downcast at the thought that the profusion of dance from other parts of the world – Asian countries in particular – wasn’t like it had been in ‘the old days’. This wasn’t going to be a ‘good news’ piece.

but my analysis of the changing times led to a different conclusion. Circumstances, perceptions and expectations are different. We have built on the traditional dance we were seeing decades ago from imported companies in arts festivals. The dance has changed and so have we. It has become part of us.

Growing up in Adelaide, my performing arts world was expanded beyond my youthful imagination by the Adelaide Festival: dance from India – probably bharata natyam – and bunraku puppets from Japan are among my earliest memories of the arts of Asia. The sheer exoticism – a word I dare use today because it reflects what I felt at the time – of these touring groups made an enormous impact. It almost certainly gave the impression that there were more of them than was actually the case.

Even so, the popularity and profusion in Australia of dance groups from Asia and Southeast Asia in the mid to late decades of the 20th century was considerable. Arts festival directors and entrepreneurs found them attractive because there was no language barrier between performers and audiences, they had broad general appeal, and they didn’t cost as much to bring as a large company from, say, Europe or the USA.

Meanwhile, Australians were travelling overseas in greater numbers than ever before, especially in Asia. We were getting the chance to see the dance of other cultures on its home ground. Our familiarity, knowledge and understanding of our neighbours grew in a variety of ways.

One of the reasons for this was the arrival of our geographical neighbours to the house

next door or around the corner. The enormous influx of Asian migrants has reverberated through what was originally an Anglo population, spiced up with Europeans after World War II.

So, as the first wave of visiting national dance companies subsided, Australian groups with their artistic roots in Asia and Southeast Asia were growing up around the country. While traditional dance styles sustained most of them, they were reaching out in different ways to an audience that didn’t have the ‘baggage’ of the past and was therefore more open to change.

In the 1980s, Chandrabhanu in Melbourne, Padma Menon in Canberra and Anandavalli in Sydney led the charge of the Indian classical dance practitioners with bharata natyam and Odissi as the main dance forms.

Striking out quite differently, the Penang-born Chinese architectural student Kai Tai Chan discovered contemporary dance, founded a company and created an utterly fascinating body of work, both Chinese and Australian in its sensibilities, the two cultures inextricably intertwined. One Extra Company flourished under his direction from 1979 to 1991, employing the talents and ideas of black, white and Asian performers in socio-political situations that constantly asked questions and explored ideas in a continuing dialogue with its audiences.

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A S I A n d A n c E I n A u S T R A L I A

JillSykes

A SCeNe fROM RASA UNMASKED, A COLLABORATION IN 2009 BeTWeeN SYDNeY'S LINGALAYAM DANCe COMPANY AND KuALA LuMPuR'S SuTRA DANCe THeATRe. PHOTO BY SIVARAJAH NATARAJAN


There has been no one else like Kai Tai Chan in the past 20 years – the life of TAASA – though there have been many other interesting dance creators and performers. Tony Yap, also of Chinese Malay background, came to Australia to study graphic art and continues to make strongly individual, more introspective dance pieces in Melbourne, drawing on Malaysian trance dance and tai chi amongst a cross-section of movement styles. He has been involved in collaborations across cultures at home and overseas.

butoh, the Japanese dance style that comes in various forms even in its home country, struck a chord with Australian audiences in the times when we had more Asian visiting companies through our arts festivals. It’s a bond that has grown through Australian resident butoh performers such as Yumi Umiumare, based in Melbourne, who once recalled in a public speaking engagement that when she returned to Japan after living in Australia for some years, her friends thought she had grown larger. On the contrary, she worked out, it was just that her gestures and sense of space had expanded in sympathy with her new home.

Tess de Quincey works out of Sydney, touring nationally and internationally with the ‘body weather’ style of butoh that was developed in Japan, but which she has taken further as a form of individual expression in her Australian surroundings. De Quincey Co, founded in 2000, often creates performances in unusual sites – outback at Lake Mungo and near Alice Springs or, most recently, in the centre of Sydney on the square outside St Mary’s Cathedral. Her work can be monumental and expansive in wide open spaces – and engrossingly intense when it is concentrated down to its essence, as it was in The Stirring, an astonishing exploration of industrial architecture that makes up the Sydney performing arts complex, CarriageWorks.

Although she declares she has retired as a performer, Anandavalli is reaching out in interesting ways as a director of her Indian classical dance company Lingalayam. Her current project is a collaboration with the taiko drumming group, TaikOz, bringing together dance and music traditions from India and Japan.

In 2009, she worked with Malaysia-based Ramli Ibrahim, best known in Australia in the 1980s as an Odissi soloist and a member of the Sydney Dance Company, but now artistic director of Sutra Dance Theatre in Kuala Lumpur. They both danced, choreographed and directed Rasa Unmasked for their combined companies, with music

composed and performed by Alex Dea. It was an extraordinary, riveting event of classical and contemporary styles that crossed cultures and kilometres through performances in Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and India.

So you can’t say we are lacking adventurous events in Asian dance, despite being few and far between. At least, those on a large scale. We are more likely to see small scale, meticulously prepared dance presentations such as those at the Art Gallery of NSW, shown free by the Gallery as companion pieces to exhibitions.

And that is where you might have seen some of Sydney’s superbly costumed and precisely rehearsed Chinese dancers – whom you will almost certainly see in larger numbers in events that welcome the lunar new year around Sydney late in January. They are great performers and proud purveyors of their traditions.

And just to complete the circle in this overview of where Asian dance has gone in Australia over the past two decades, there have been a couple of recent large touring companies. One came from China in 2011 on a government exchange to launch the year of Chinese culture in Australia: The Legendof Shangri La was an engaging show in its focus on folk dance traditions from Yunnan province, less so in its final stages that were replete with Hollywood gestures and other western influences.

The other was one of the most memorable visiting productions ever to come from South Asia: The Killing of Dushasana, a Kathakali

presentation from Kerala, its story drawn from the Mahabharata and its traditions from the 14th century. It was brought to Melbourne and Sydney in 2010 by the indefatigable Mohindar Dhillon to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his Nataraj Cultural Centre, source of the best in touring Indian musicians and dance artists.

This production was a glorious mix of raw and sophisticated, its larger-than-life characters elaborately costumed and symbolically designated with makeup that is a form of artwork which is animated by the jumping eyebrows, rolling eyes and cheek tics. The eloquent body language of the performers, the theatricality of music ranging from whisper sweet to warlike pounding, and the glorious simplicity of the staging, made it another benchmark of dance in this country.

So, how lucky we Australian audiences have been – and still are. The events mentioned are just a sample of what has been on show over many years. And while there may not be as many now as there were, most of them are well worth seeing. This has turned out to be a ‘good news’ piece after all.

Jill Sykes AM is dance critic for The Sydney Morning

Herald. She has been a freelance arts journalist most

of her career, writing about theatre, music and the

visual arts as well as dance. She is editor of Look, the

membership magazine of the Art Gallery Society of

NSW, author of the book Sydney Opera House – From

The Outside In and editor of the book of the TV series

Wine Lovers’ Guide to Australia.

CHINeSe YOuTH LeAGue MeMBeRS, WHO OfTeN PeRfORM AT THe AGNSW, AT THe 2011

MCDONALD'S SYDNeY eISTeDDfOD. PHOTO: COuRTeSY WINKIPOP MeDIA


n 1938, on a visit to Melbourne with my mother, I met Percy Grainger. He was

strolling in the botanical Gardens with Professor W.A. Laver, who taught at the University Conservatorium of Music. I’d come to know Professor Laver from his visits to Launceston as a music examiner for Trinity College, London. He always seemed enthusiastic about my early attempts at composition.

I told Percy Grainger that, when I grew up, I, too, would be a composer. ‘My boy,’ he proclaimed, ‘You must look north, to the islands!’ At the time, I thought he was referring to islands immediately north of Australia. Much later, it became clear that he meant Java and bali, the Philippines and the islands of Japan. As it turned out, I followed his advice, perhaps without realizing it.

During my childhood, I did have some contact with things Asian. Friends of an aunt and uncle often went on a cruise to Japan. They always returned home with exotic presents for my cousins, Helen and Geoff. The grown-ups in the family scoffed a little: in those days, anything labelled ‘Made in Japan’ was regarded as cheap and nasty.

One present from Japan was a cardboard cut-out castle. It remains vividly in my memory. Everywhere there were watchtowers, the upper levels diminishing in size, topped by countless curving gables. Inner citadels enclosed inner fortresses, and these enclosed armouries and even a small palace. It was probably the one at Nagoya, later destroyed in an air raid during World War II. Unlike anything in the Celtic recesses of my imagination, it would hardly have suited King Arthur.

We also delighted in a much-thumbed children’s version of TheTalesofGenji. Geoff and I loved reading about Genji’s deeds as a warrior: his bow was eight feet long. I still treasure the book, having persuaded my cousins to give it to me. I wish I’d persuaded them to give me the cardboard cut-out castle as well.

Around that time, in the mid 1930s, I even had contact with Asian music. The very first live concerts I heard were of Chinese folk songs. Once a week, my father took me with him to a Chinese market garden outside Launceston. There, he’d buy fresh vegetables to sell in his general store. Sometimes, open-

air performances would be mounted for our benefit. I was captivated by the strangeness of the nasal singing, and the twanging and thudding of the stringed instruments. I don’t think my father enjoyed the music very much, but he was careful not to spoil my own enjoyment of it.

A little later, my mother took me to a concert of orchestral music in Launceston’s National Theatre. After the concerts in the market

garden, I didn’t find it particularly engaging. I asked one of my mother’s friends why all the music was from Austria and Germany. ‘because it’s the best!’ she declared.

My experience in the Chinese market garden was not as uncommon as one might think. When very young, in Melbourne, Percy Grainger visited a Japanese bazaar. He later wrote excitedly about it, and about the music he heard there. He maintained that much of his own music stemmed from that experience. In his teens, Grainger delighted in shocking his piano teacher in Frankfurt. He announced that, if he won the prestigious Mendelssohn Prize, he’d spend the money studying Chinese music in China. His teacher told him that the prize was ‘not for idiots’, whereupon Grainger refused to have anything more to do with it.

In 1935, Percy Grainger wrote a piano piece based upon the Chinese folk song BeautifulFresh Flower. Many years later, I arranged it for orchestra. It was in homage to him.

My first opera has a Chinese subject. Written when I was about nine, it’s based on a play called The Golden Fisherman. I wrote the words for the arias myself, but the content isn’t at all Chinese. One of the so-called arias begins with what seems to be a description of Minchinbury Sparkling burgundy, which was

I

E A R Ly E n c o u n T E R S W I T H A S I A

PeterSculthorpe

OPeNING Of BEAUTIFUL FRESH FLOWER

‘WINe, WINe, SPARKLING WINe,’ fROM THE GOLDEN FISHERMAN

pETER ScuLTHoRpE. PHOTO: BRIDGeT eLLIOT, 2009


then very fashionable. Its buoyant melody was clearly inspired by Mozart. I still like the alliteration of the words.

Several years later, I discarded the work. I also discarded a second opera, for which I’d written the entire libretto. Some of the arias are in rhyming schoolboy French. This opera sings of crime, passion, and mistaken identity at the time of the French Revolution. I’ll always be grateful to my brother for retrieving these two works from the rubbish heap, and for withholding them from me until I finished secondary school.

At school in Launceston, it was almost as if Asia simply didn’t exist. For that matter, Australia itself was regarded as of little importance. The world was Western Europe, and its history more or less came to an end just after World War 1. The library at Launceston Grammar did contain a few books about Asia, mostly biographies of such men as brooke of borneo and Thomas Stamford Raffles. These were catalogued under English History. At least the Near East of Kinglake and burton, and the Africa of Livingstone, were better represented. The library did, however, contain an illustrated monograph on a Japanese potter. I often considered stealing it. One day somebody else did.

I imagine it was an early love for the writings of Joseph Conrad that stimulated my interest in South East Asia. One of my boyhood ambitions was to be a gun-runner in the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea. The closest I came to this was when, for a time in

the 1950s, I became a partner with my brother Roger in a gun shop in Launceston. Josef Conrad is still one of my favourite writers. Over the years, I’ve made pilgrimages to some of his ports of call in South East Asia, one to Surabaya. I found no trace of him. In his time, there was a concert hall in one of the town’s hotels. It boasted of an orchestra made up of women and conducted by a certain Maestro Zangiacomo. If it still exists, it also eluded me.

At one stage in Surabaya I was caught in a student riot. The police used several taxis, including the one that I’d hired, as shields. Pelted with rocks, all the driver and I could do was crouch on the floor. It wasn’t the time to wave a white handkerchief. The driver, who spoke not a word of English, seemed to be more afraid of the police than he was of the students. A week or so later, the Suharto Government was overturned.

While Conrad didn’t visit Tasmania, an important part of his life is there. His last and happiest days at sea were spent working on the sailing ship, the Torrens. built in 1875, at a cost of 27 pounds, the cutter made a number of voyages to Australia. Later sold, the new owner finally abandoned it near Hobart, on the banks of the River Derwent. When I was growing up, I loved excursions to see the remains of the Torrens.

In the year that World War II came to an end, I left Tasmania to study in Melbourne at the University Conservatorium of Music. Asian music barely existed there, just as Asia itself barely existed at school. When I was at Oxford

in the late 1950s, the situation was much the same. I’d hoped to learn about all the musics of the human race. Perhaps I should have been an anthropologist.

Like Oxford, the teaching in Melbourne was devoted to the music of Western Europe. At least I’d grown to care for a great deal of it, especially music from the time of Palestrina and bach. Writing in the style of Palestrina was one of my many joys. I was less enthusiastic about the 19th century. Wagner, for instance, had published an anti-Semitic manifesto later adopted by Hitler. It was impossible to like anything about him. I was told to keep my views to myself.

Next-door to the Conservatorium is the Grainger Museum. In planning it, one of Grainger’s stated intentions was to make it:

”…a centre for the preservation and study of the folk-music

of the English-speaking world and of the art-musics and

primitive musics of countries adjacent to Australia, the South

Seas, Java, etc.”

Unfortunately, exploring the museum was out of the question. It was always closed. One day, in the student library, I came across a recording of an orchestral arrangement of Japanese court music. It was Etenraku, Music from Heaven. Aptly named, it changed my life. Along with Indonesian gamelan music and Aboriginal chant, Japanese court music became one of the most powerful influences on my own music. Gregorian chant, one of the great achievements of Western culture, exerted an equally powerful influence.

I treasure my time in Melbourne and the friends that I made there. As I became more aware of Australia’s place in the world, I felt far-removed from the turbulence of postwar Europe, and the attendant intellectual climate. Certainly, I didn’t feel a need to erase my past and build some kind of future, as my European peers did. I didn’t have much of a past to erase.

Rather than look to Europe, I began to look towards Australia and Asia. When I first incorporated Asian musics and ideas into my work, I was accused of writing ‘Susie Wong Music’. That, however, is a story of other encounters, other journeys.

Peter Sculthorpe was born in Tasmania in 1929. He

is emeritus Professor of Music, university of Sydney,

and one of Australia’s 100 Living National Treasures.

OPeNING Of ETENRAKU


A SHAREd pASSIon: HInduSTAnI muSIc of AdRIAn mcnEIL And bobby SIngH

AdrianMcNeil

When I first heard the sound of the sarod in 1980, I sensed there was going to be trouble. The experience had a profound impact on me, but little did I realise just how much of a dramatic turn my life was to take because of it. bobby Singh and I have been practising and professionally performing Hindustani music together for just on two decades now. bobby performs extensively in Australia in many intercultural and fusion ensembles, popular as well as traditional, and is a prominent figure in Australia’s contemporary music scene. I perform Hindustani music with other tabla players both here and in India. Somehow this long shared history of Hindustani music has created a mutual creative bond, respect and understanding between us.

My training on the sarod started in the early 1980s and from the beginning followed traditional precepts, involving staying with my teacher, Ashok Roy, for around six years in India and in Australia while undertaking doctoral research on the sarod tradition. Ashok Roy was a senior student of the legendary Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and a very well respected musician in India. He came permanently to Australia in 1987 to teach at the University of Melbourne, after earlier stints at Monash University where I first met him. I continued to learn from him until he passed away in 2007.

Through this intensive contact, I was able to listen to Ashok Roy practice most days, accompany him to concerts, receive almost daily individual lessons and have my own practice supervised. I ended up leaving the guitar, an instrument that I had played since I was young and had studied at Monash University.

My initial three year post-doctoral research fellowship at Jadavpur University in Kolkata in 1996 stretched out to almost six. In the process of writing a book on the cultural history of the sarod, I became completely immersed in the city’s vibrant and inspiring musical and intellectual life. Eventually I left for Mumbai, with the help of an Australia Council grant, to learn from Ashok Roy’s uncle, the late Professor Sachindra Nath Roy, and from the well-known vocalist and musicologist, the late Dr Ashok Ranade.

bobby started his training on tabla in Mumbai when he was seven. He studied at the music institution, Sangeet Mahabharati, set up by the legendary tabla player and educator Nikhil Ghosh, later continuing his formal instruction as a disciple of Aneesh Pradhan. He also took guidance from, and performed with, Ashok Roy in Australia. In recent years bobby has performed with some of the most well known names in the music industry and in 2010 his work was deservedly recognised by the conferral of an ARIA (Australian Record Industry Association) award.

bobby and I are regularly invited to perform

in Kolkata, Delhi, and Mumbai where we receive a lot of guidance and encouragement from our colleagues and friends. both of us are committed to developing sustainable creative collaborations between musicians of both countries.See bobbysingh.com.au; adrianmcneil.com; underscorerecords.com. Adrian McNeil convenes the Masters Improvisation

Program at Macquarie university, Sydney and

runs a doctoral research program in intercultural

improvisation. His book, Inventing the Sarod

(Seagull Publishers 2004) is widely regarded as the

authoritative text on the sarod tradition. His latest CD

with Aneesh Pradhan was released by underscore

Records, New Delhi in 2008.

QuEEnSLAnd conSERVAToRIum’S gAmELAn EnSEmbLE

PhilipCourtenayandGreggHoward

In 2007 Griffith University’s Queensland Conservatorium acquired the use of a fine set of Central Javanese bronze gamelan instruments that were constructed in Solo specifically for a member of the Conservatorium staff. The complete set is impressive, with its golden bronze instruments: a particularly fine example of the art of bronze-working, set in intricately carved and gilded wooden cases.

Gamelan is the collective term for an ensemble of Indonesian instruments. It is derived from the word gamel meaning a hammer or beater with which some of the instruments are sounded. Throughout Indonesia, there are many different regional kinds of gamelan ensembles, such balinese or Javanese. The Conservatorium’s ensemble is a classical or court gamelan and plays a repertoire associated with the royal courts in the Central Javanese cities of Solo and Yogyakarta.

Its repertoire typically provides stand-alone instrumental pieces, the music used in the wayang kulit or shadow-puppet theatre, and dance accompaniments. Within the ensemble, the instruments may be grouped according to function:

Those playing a basic melody which is the foundation of the piece;Punctuating instruments situated in the back row, particularly gongs, which mark

I n p E R f o R m A n c E : A S I A n m u S I c m A K I n g I n A u S T R A L I A

BOBBY SINGH (L) AND ADRIAN MCNeIL IN KOLKATA, JANuARY 2011. PHOTO: ANINDYA BANeRJee


off and subdivide rhythmic cycles within a piece; Elaborating instruments, including the rebab or bowed fiddle, which ornament, elaborate and develop polyphonic patterns; Drums which lead the ensemble and direct the progress of each piece, changes of tempo, movement from section to section and the conclusion; andVoices, including solo female vocalists and a group chorus of male voices, which sing traditional, classic verses involving subtle word play.

Music for gamelan is classified according to its cyclic structure. Each cycle of 8, 16, 32, 64 or 128 beats is subdivided by the punctuating instruments in a defined rhythmic pattern and is further marked off by the sounding of the large gong on the final beat of the cycle. The large gong is the spiritual heart of the gamelan, with the increasingly complex elaborations of each of the other instruments expanding out from it.

Griffith University’s Queensland Conservatorium’s gamelan ensemble is made up of 15 enrolled Conservatorium students, members of the local Indonesian community and the Conservatorium’s gamelan lecturer. Visiting master musicians from Indonesia visit regularly to teach and lead performances and gamelan concerts are given several times a year.

Philip Courtenay was formerly Professor and Rector

of the Cairns Campus, James Cook university. Gregg

Howard is Senior Lecturer in Music at the Queensland

Conservatorium and Director of the Gamelan

nEfES EnSEmbLE: InSpIRIng muSIcAL coLLAboRATIonS In mELbouRnE

SusanScollay

Melbourne music lovers recently enjoyed a unique fusion of classical western music and the sounds and atmosphere of Asia. The Nefes Ensemble, who perform the music of the Ottoman court and the music of the Sufis, joined musicians from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in presenting the TheFourSeasonsandthe1001Nights.

Antonio Vivaldi’s well-known four concertos, LeQuattroStagioni, first published in 1725 were embellished by a solo improvisation (taksım) on a different Ottoman/Turkish instrument

at the beginning of each season. The sound of the long-necked lute (yaylı tanbur) played by Seher Cagin was particularly evocative in its setting of the mood of winter. Other Nefes musicians enriched the western baroque sound of Vivaldi’s masterwork, sensitively led by solo violinist, Işin Çakmakçioğlu. Here Rachel Atkinson’s cello moved seamlessly between west and east, at times creating a sound that was as redolent of Inner Asia as bulkan Sevun Evcimen’s reed flute (ney) and Salih Resitoğlou’s consistently light touch on kanun (plucked zither).

Nefes Ensemble’s repertoire ranges across 500 years of Ottoman history, including the 13th century music of the sema, or spiritual ceremony of the Mevlevi Sufis, widely known in the west as the ‘Whirling Dervishes.’ As well, the group plays court music enjoyed by Süleyman the Magnificent in the Topkapi Palace during the 16th century, and works from the so-called ‘Tulip Age’ in the reign of Sultan Ahmet III in the early 18th century when the Ottoman court rivalled that of Versailles for its lavish parties and entertainments.

The group’s next exciting collaboration is with the Victorian Youth Opera under the direction of Richard Gill. Nefes musicians will join the first ever performance in Australia of ThePlayofDaniel, a medieval miracle play considered a forerunner of opera. Sung in Latin and English, it tells the story of the prophet Daniel and his encounter with Darius, a character based on the figure of an ancient Persian king.

The short season of only 5 performances will be held in the State Library of Victoria, whose historic interiors are ideally suited for such a work. Even more so on this occasion, as the season has been planned in conjunction

MuSICIANS Of THe NefeS eNSeMBLe AND MeLBOuRNe SYMPHONY ORCHeSTRA AT THe MeLBOuRNe ReCITAL CeNTRe,

PeRfORMING THE FOUR SEASONS AND THE 1001 NIGHTS. PHOTO: KATIe ATKINSON

QueeNSLAND CONSeRVATORIuM’S GAMeLAN eNSeMBLe. PHOTO: SANDRA BANTICK, 2011


with the Library’s major international loan exhibition of Persian manuscripts (9 March -1 July, 2012) and conference (12-14 April), presented in partnership with the bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. See: www.victorianopera.com.au and www.slv.vic.gov.au.

Susan Scollay is an independent art historian

specialising in the arts and culture of the Islamic

world. She is guest co-curator of Love and Devotion:

From Persia and Beyond at the SLV.

AuSTRALIA’S SHAKuHAcHI gRAnd mASTER

RileyLee

TAASA is not the only entity celebrating an anniversary. Twenty-five years ago, in 1986, my family generously agreed to leave our home and friends in Hawai’i, so that I could pursue a PhD degree at Sydney University.

I gave my first shakuhachi concert in Sydney in the spring of that year. To my amazement, it was attended by a full house, and the respected music critic, the late Fred blanks, favourably reviewed the concert, in the Sydney Morning Herald no less!

My career as a shakuhachi performer and teacher, and shakuhachi music in general, has thrived in Australia since that auspicious beginning. So much so, that I can imagine a time when the shakuhachi will be considered as much a part of the Australian musical scene as more well-known instruments.

That sentiment was expressed in the title of a concert held in Sydney in 2008, called AsAustralianasaShakuhachi. The concert was part of the Sydney World Shakuhachi Festival 2008, for which I was Producer and Artistic Director. WSF08 featured numerous compositions by Australians, many commissioned for the Festival. A future CD of mine for shakuhachi and string quartet, will feature some of these Australian compositions.

In early 2011, AbC Classics released a CD of Ross Edwards’ orchestral music, including his ethereal HeartofNight, which I performed (2005) and recorded (2008) with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. I also performed HeartofNight with the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra in Perth in 2006.

In 2007, together with TaikOz, I performed in a season at the Sydney Opera House of music and dance in Kaidan- a Ghost Story, choreographed by Meryl Tankard. That production deserves a second run. In 2008, in

an orchestral piece by Gerard brophy called BookofClouds with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, TaikOz and Synergy Percussion, I began playing my shakuhachi solo part in the audience, walking slowly to my final position near the conductor. In 2009, also with TaikOz, I helped to compose, and performed at the Melbourne Arts Centre, the music for the bell Shakespeare Company production of Pericles.

In August 2011, I performed on the main stage at Korea’s Jecheon International Music and Film Festival, playing music of my own composition to accompany two classic silent films: PassingFancy and IWasBorn,But…, by Japanese director OzuYasujirō (1903–1963).

As for the present, a collaborative work with Ian Cleworth, Artistic Director for

TaikOz, and Anandavalli, Artistic Director for Sydney’s Lingalayam Dance Company will be premiered in 2012. This cross-cultural and cross-media performance will integrate Lingalayam’s South Indian dance and music with TaikOz’s unique brand of taiko music and movement and my shakuhachi and shinobue music. It will be a performance worth waiting for.

Riley Lee became the first ever non-Japanese

Shakuhachi dai shihan (Grand Master) in 1980. He

co-founded TaikOz in 1997, performs extensively

world wide and teaches at the Sydney Conservatorium

of Music.

RILeY Lee IN KAIDAN, A TAIKOZ/MeRYL TANKARD CO-PRODuCTION. PHOTO: RuDI VAN STARRex, 2009


REPOSITORY OF RICHES


This elegant gilt bronze sculpture is an outstanding example of Avalokitesvara, the most revered bodhisattva in the buddhist pantheon, variously known as Padmapani (Lotus-bearer), the bodhisattva of Mercy and, most poetically, the Luminous Lord of Infinite Compassion. Acquisition of this sculpture accorded with the AGNSW’s aims to represent the great traditions of buddhism with exceptional examples - a policy increasingly difficult to implement because rare and beautiful old pieces rarely appear on the market and, when they do, they understandably are very expensive. Accordingly the Gallery is most grateful to those donors who made possible acquisition of this piece which has pride of place in the Gallery’s Asian displays.

The figure once held a lotus in his left hand, while his right hand with a diamond incised on the palm faces the viewer in the wish-granting gesture (varadamudra). Avalokitesvara is regarded as an emanation of the buddha Amitabha who reigns over the Western Paradise of Sukhavati, the Land of bliss, and a small image of whom appears on the top of his tall chignon which is styled in the distinctive dreadlocks of an ascetic. His broad, kind face with soft features and wide-spaced eyes emanates compassionate understanding, sympathy, and an all-embracing spirituality. Cast in the lost wax method (cireperdue) and finished by hand, this sculpture is unusually large. The gilding, representative of the radiance emitted by buddhas’ and bodhisattvas’ bodies that fills the universe with light, was the last part of the production process. While originally it was rubies and emeralds that enriched his costume, over time these have been replaced with coloured glass.

Jackie Menzies, Head Curator, Asian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales

c u R AT o R S ’ c H o I c E : A S I A n T R E A S u R E S f R o m A u S T R A L I A’ S p u b L I c c o L L E c T I o n S

A R T G A L L e R Y O f N e W S O u T H W A L e S

THE LUMINOUS LORD OF INFINITE COMPASSION, NePAL,

C. 13TH CeNTuRY. GILT COPPeR, LAPIS LAZuLI, GeMS, GLASS,

HT 91.4 CM. COLLeCTION ART GALLeRY Of NeW SOuTH WALeS,

PuRCHASeD 2010 WITH fuNDS fROM THe AGNSW fOuNDATION,

THe ART GALLeRY SOCIeTY Of NSW COLLeCTION CIRCLe, THe

ASIAN BeNefACTORS' fuND AND INDIVIDuAL DONORS

The Hamzanama was one of the earliest important commissions by the third Mughal emperor Akbar (r.1556-1605). It tells the story of the adventures of Amir Hamza, the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, and in its original form consisted of approximately 1400 folios. These were unusual for their large format and because they were painted on cotton cloth rather than paper. Each page had a painting on one side and text on the other, and the paintings were unique in their bold composition, rich palette and ornamentation.

Only about 200 pages of the Hamzanama are extant, many famously discovered in the 19th century lining the windows of a Kashmiri teashop. Therefore the NGV is extremely fortunate to have this folio in the collection. It not only illustrates the genesis of Mughal painting, and thus complements the Gallery’s important collection of Indian court paintings, but also represents the pan-Asian tradition of oral storytelling, which has informed art throughout the region in all media. The Hamzanama was one of the most popular of the epics recited by bards across the Indo-Islamic world: its characters, plots and rollicking style have provided inspiration for many stories subsequently visualised in Asian art.

The production of the folios was an enormous undertaking for Akbar’s atelier, and several eminent Persian artists were employed to work on the project. They introduced the artistic conventions of Persianate Islamic Central Asia to Hindu Indian painting, and created a new, distinctive Mughal style which eventually influenced artistic styles through the subcontinent.

Carol Cains, CuratorAsian Art, National Gallery of Victoria International

N AT I O N A L G A L L e R Y O f V I C TO R I A I N T e R N AT I O N A L

pAgE fRom THE DASTAN-I AMIR HAMZA (HAMZANAMA),

INDIA, C. 1567-1582. OPAQue WATeRCOLOuR AND GOLD

PAINT ON COTTON, 66.0 x 49.3CM (IMAGe), 67.8 x 50.8CM

(SHeeT). COLLeCTION NATIONAL GALLeRY Of VICTORIA,

feLTON BeQueST 1978 (AS12-1978)


Hamilton Art Gallery is known for its outstanding collection of European and Oriental decorative arts, in particular, ceramics. In recent years, the Gallery has sought to extend its collection of Meiji period ceramics to include Meiji period metalwork.

This pair of vases came from an Australian collection, which, together with their date, suggests they may have come from one of the Melbourne International Exhibitions held 1880 and 1888. Certainly their scale, richness and complexity places them in a class beyond the standard export examples of the Meiji period. They are the best examples of Meiji period metalwork in any Australian public collection – in fact, they are probably major examples of 19th century metalwork internationally.

A number of techniques were used in their production. Low relief chased gold inlay decorates the foot, shoulder and neck; and the phoenixes around the neck have a pin-head of raised gold to represent their eyes. The body of the vases is decorated with classic, Shijo-school-inspired Japanese birds and flowers applied in high relief. The branches of the cherry trees are made of shibuichi (an alloy of copper and silver), the blossoms of oxidised silver with a gold ball as their centre, the small stems of gold wire and the birds of silver, oxidised silver and shibuichi. Some of the shibuichi leaves are gold plated but most are left in their natural brown shade.

Kajima Ikkoku II was a member of the Ikkoku metalworking family whose work features in the Kahlili collection, the Kiyomizu Sannenzaka Museum and the Ashmolean Museum.

Daniel McOwan, Director, Hamilton Art Gallery

H A M I LTO N A R T G A L L e R Y

While the Art Gallery of Western Australia does not have a specialist collection of art from Asia, it collects works by Asian artists in the context of international contemporary art. The AGWA endeavours to collect artists in depth, and currently represents Nalini Malani with nine works. Her Thesacredandtheprofane1998 is a key work in a group of modern and

contemporary figurative works by artists such as Stanley Spencer, Lucian Freud, William Kentridge and Candice breitz.

For over two decades, bombay-based Malani has seen her work exhibited with accelerating frequency throughout the world, including at a number of Venice biennales and, in Australia, at Asia-Pacific Triennials in 2002 and 2008. Originally trained as a painter, in the early 1990s she shifted her practice to embrace installation, theatre and video.

Malani’s work is influenced by the trauma of the Partition of India and her keen observations of history and the excesses of nationalist beliefs. Her works continuously place cultural stereotypes in a pressurised crucible of an interconnected global world, challenging fundamentalist constrictions and provincial nationalisms. Thesacredandtheprofane is an illuminated group of four slowly rotating cylinders of painted mylar which project intermingled shadows. The drawings on the cylinders cite the good versus evil stories of the BhagavataPurana and use motifs reminiscent of the bengali Kalighat style of the 19th century. Viewers are enveloped in an ever-circulating conversation of moving shadows that are simultaneously sumptuous, political, irreverent and empowering.

Gary Dufour, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Art Gallery of Western

Australia

A R T G A L L e R Y O f W e S T e R N A u S T R A L I A

THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE BY NALINI MALANI, INDIA, 1998. SYNTHeTIC POLYMeR PAINT ON

MYLAR, STeeL, NYLON CORD, eLeCTRIC MOTORS AND LIGHTS, 3 x 5 x 11 M. STATe ART COLLeCTION,

ART GALLeRY Of WeSTeRN AuSTRALIA, © 1998 NALINI MALANI

pAIR of VASES, BY KAJIMA IKKOKu II MITSuTAKA, JAPAN C.1890. BRONZe, GOLD, SILVeR, OxIDISeD

SILVeR, SHIBUICHI, H.45 CM, D. 21 CM. COLLeCTION HAMILTON ART GALLeRY, ACQuIReD WITH

ASSISTANCe Of THe fRIeNDS Of HAMILTON ART GALLeRY, MR GeOff HANDBuRY AND THe SHIRe Of

SOuTHeRN GRAMPIANS


This carved finial is one of a pair, a recent major acquisition by the MAGNT where the Southeast Asian collection, consisting of over 4,500 objects, has a regional focus on eastern Indonesia and Timor-Leste. A collection of ceramics acquired in the early 1970s from Manatuto village, ‘Portuguese Timor’, forms the basis of an extensive collection of Timorese cultural material including ceramics, jewellery, textiles, carved doors and figures.

Such finials, known as uma kakuluk in the Tetun language, traditionally decorated the rooftop of ceremonial houses (umalulik) in the Los Palos region of Lautem, Timor-Leste. This pair has survived the vicissitudes of time and war to become the only known remaining pair from this era and region.

Originally, these the finials would originally have protruded and extended upward from the elongated thatched roof of such

a Lautem building. Carved with stylised stars and flowers, they have remnants of red and white pigment in crevices that were not exposed to the natural elements. The upper base of one finial features a serpent devouring a gecko.

The perched bird at the end of each finial is a representation of ancestral spirits associated with the upper world, from where they oversee the affairs of the mundane world. As part of a customary renewal ritual for the ceremonial house, water would be poured from the roof between bird finials which purified the water as it passed between them, cleansing both the house and the clan members gathered below.

Joanna Barrkman, Curator, Southeast Asian Art and Material Culture,

Museum and Gallery of the Northern Territory

Newcastle Art Gallery has an important collection of Sodeisha ceramics, in which Yagi’s DesignPlan(Face) is a central work. The collection was gifted to the Gallery by the Sodeisha Group after completing a national tour in 1979, and forms part of the most significant 20th century Japanese ceramic collection in Australia.

Yagi Kazuo (1918-1979), the son of a first generation potter who had come to Kyoto from Osaka, founded the Sodeisha group together with four other young ceramic artists in 1948. Under Yagi’s confident direction, the Sodeisha members worked steadily to develop a set of guiding principles, weaning their work step by step away from prevailing conventions of Japanese ceramic ‘taste’. The characters used in the name Sodeisha were found by Yagi’s calligraphy teacher in a lofty treatise on ceramics, and are literally translated as ‘crawling through mud’.

Yagi urged the other members of the group not to produce copies of historical wares, but to withdraw from the conventional vessel form – a container with a single opening at the top – and to experiment with ceramic forms unrelated to the usual notions of function. Sodeisha artists also began discarding the ceramic precedents of glazing. by the late 1950s, Yagi had begun to show works made of smoothly burnished clay, fired at earthenware temperatures and heavily reduced at the end of the firing (with smoke from damp pine needles) to coat the surface with carbon. This black pottery bore a colour integral to the surface of the clay that had no precedent within Japanese ceramics.

Ron Ramsey, Director, Newcastle Art Gallery

M u S e u M A N D G A L L e R Y O f T H e N O R T H e R N T e R R I TO R Y

N e W C A S T L e A R T G A L L e R Y

ARcHITEcTuRAL fInIAL, UMA KAKULUK, LAuTeM, TIMOR-LeSTe, PReSuMeD LATe 18TH CeNTuRY. WOOD AND NATuRAL PIGMeNTS, 220 x 30CMS. COLLeCTION MuSeuM AND ART GALLeRY

Of THe NORTHeRN TeRRITORY

DESIGN PLAN (FACE) 1977 BY KAZuO YAGI, JAPAN.

BLACK-fIReD eARTHeNWARe, 28.5 x 18.0 x 18.5 CM.

COLLeCTION NeWCASTLe ART GALLeRY, GIfT Of MeMBeRS Of

THe SODeISHA GROuP 1981


This striking figure of a woman, seated at her loom while she suckles her infant, is the rarest and most important bronze sculpture from Southeast Asia to enter the national collection. It survives as a fine example of an archaic Southeast Asian style still associated with animism in remote areas where Hinduism, buddhism and Islam have had surprisingly little influence on the arts. The sculpture was created through the lost wax (cireperdu) method of bronze casting, most likely in the late 6th century CE.

TheBronzeWeaver is extremely significant, not only for its rarity and aesthetic power, but also for the questions it poses about bronze technology and weaving traditions in the outer islands of Indonesia. While the sculpture survived as a family heirloom on the eastern Indonesian island, Flores, its origins are still speculative since little is known about the history of animist metalwork (as distinct from Hindu buddhist bronze sculpture) throughout the Indonesian archipelago.

While the foot-braced body-tension loom depicted has not been observed in Flores in historical times, local looms with the back beam braced by poles are closely related. Identical foot-braced looms have, however, survived in remote districts of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Taiwan, and Hainan.

The acquisition is especially fitting for an institution which holds one of the world’s finest collection of textiles from the Southeast Asian region, many of which were woven on similar looms, display comparable designs and were created for cultures whose beliefs were possibly very compatible with those of the creator of TheBronzeWeaver.

Robyn Maxwell, Senior Curator of Asian Art, National Gallery of Australia

N AT I O N A L G A L L e R Y O f A u S T R A L I A

THE BRONZE WEAVER, INDONeSIA (COLLeCTeD fLOReS),

6TH CeNTuRY. BRONZe, 25.8 x 22.8 x 15.2 CM. COLLeCTION

NATIONAL GALLeRY Of AuSTRALIA

Thresholds possess potent significance in Southeast Asia through defining spatial boundaries between outer and inner realms. Elaborately decorated doors are a feature of the region’s

architecture, although this art form is often overlooked in public art collections and the inevitable exposure of wood to the outdoor elements has meant few have survived intact today. Doors often contain a rich symbolic language that epitomises the aesthetic of the era in which they were made.

In recent years the Art Gallery of South Australia has actively sought to develop a representative collection of this art form. The most recent acquisition is the spectacular balinese Temple doors, whose ornate carved decoration exemplifies the sculptural style that flourished in the island’s north coast kingdom of buleleng. This pair of doorsis especially significant as it features two painted side panels, albeit much faded through weathering, depicting elegant courtly figures. This style of door, closely resembling the grand gebyog of old Javanese houses, is found only in buleleng and may trace its origins back to late Majapahit (15th-16th century) period wooden architecture. The florid baroque decoration resembles buleleng palace architecture, but these doors are likely to have originated from a temple in Tejakula dedicated to the metalsmith (pande) caste, whose jealously guarded secrets included the art of making of magically charged keris(daggers).

Temple doors marked the transition from profane to sacred space. Four majestic winged feline creatures, called Singa Ambara Raja (King Heavenly Lion), guard the portals and are a reminder that the modern-day name of the buleleng regency capital, Singaraja, means ‘Raja Lion’.

James Bennett, Curator, Asian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia

A R T G A L L e R Y O f S O u T H A u S T R A L I A

TEMPLE DOORS, INDONeSIA, BALI (TeJAKuLA, BuLeLeNG), 18TH-19TH CeNTuRY. WOOD, PIGMeNT,

GOLD LeAf, MeTAL, 259.08 x 265.0 x 119.38 CM. COLLeCTION ART GALLeRY Of SOuTH AuSTRALIA,

GIfT Of THe AGSA fOuNDATION 2011


An exemplary Chinese collection of some 86 pieces was gifted to the University of Queensland by former student Dr Natalis (Nat) Yuen between 1995 and 2006. Spanning more than 4500 years, the collection comprises Neolithic and Han Dynasty pottery, Warring States and Han Dynasty bronzeware, Tang Dynasty figures, Song Dynasty bowls, Longquan celadon and Ming to middle Qing Dynasty porcelain.

The ‘grape dish’, a prized piece among the collection, exemplifies one of the most significant and formative periods in porcelain production: it embodies the fine craftsmanship and sophisticated taste of the Yongle Emperor, who left a great legacy of cultural patronage. Although the establishment of the Imperial porcelain factory at Jingdezhen preceded his accession, it was during his reign that access to precious cobalt blue was acquired, and the skill and technical ability of potters could match Imperial ambitions in porcelain production. blue and white wares developed a quintessentially Chinese style that would be exported westwards through Asia.

Characteristically showing the popularity for restrained floral, fruit and vine motifs, the dish bears three bunches of grapes delicately surrounded by twirling tendrils and vine leaves – a common motif of the era, symbolising abundance of food and fertility. Embellished with controlled gradations of underglaze blue, the inner and outer walls display foliate scrolls with 12 seasonal flowers, and a stylised wave band encircles the rim. Typically unmarked, the dish embodies the pure beauty and refinement of a period responsible for major developments in Ming Dynasty ceramics.

Tarun Nagesh, Assistant Curator, Asian Art, Queensland Art Gallery/

Gallery of Modern Art (for the university of Queensland)

The fine detail, large scale and excellent condition of this scroll painting make it a significant example of esoteric South Asian art and an important addition to the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery, which is renowned for its holdings in Asian contemporary art. Tantrism entered Nepal around the sixth century CE, and has had a significant influence on Nepalese art and culture. Paintings such as this one express the complex intermingling of Hinduism and buddhism in the Himalayan region, developed through centuries of cultural interaction. The work features a large image of the Cosmic Man, a concept which first appeared in the Rigveda sacred texts of around the 15th century bCE. The figure is connected to both the earth and the sky, with a cone of flames from its head reaching to the clouds and its splayed feet balanced upon a sequence of avatars and consorts of the Hindu god Vishnu, who inhabit the cosmic ocean. The pale physical body of the yogin displays a corresponding subtle body of energy pathways, punctuated by lotus-shaped chakras up the central axis and a series of lingam-yoni (male-female) symbols running down the arms.

Such paintings illustrate metaphysical concepts to assist Hindu and buddhist yogic practitioners with visualisation and to enhance meditation. They were produced as folding manuscripts on paper, as well as fabric scrolls. This work is a rare example of this South Asian art form, and a fascinating combination of strictly determined iconography and contemporary styles.

Russell Storer, Curatorial Manager,

Asian and Pacific Art, Queensland

Art Gallery

T H e u N I V e R S I T Y O f Q u e e N S L A N D Q u e e N S L A N D A R T G A L L e R Y

gRApE dISH, CHINA, MING DYNASTY, YONGLe PeRIOD (1403-1424). PORCeLAIN, BLue AND

WHITe uNDeRGLAZe, DIA. 45.0 CM, HT 6.5 CM. COLLeCTION uNIVeRSITY Of QueeNSLAND,

GIfT Of DR NAT YueN THROuGH THe AuSTRALIAN GOVeRNMeNT’S CuLTuRAL GIfTS PROGRAM,

2005. PHOTO CARL WARNeR

unTITLEd (CHAKRAMAN), NePAL, 19TH

CeNTuRY. DISTeMPeR ON COTTON, 293 x

51.5 CM. COLLeCTION QueeNSLAND ART

GALLeRY, PuRCHASeD 2010 WITH fuNDS

fROM THe HeNRY AND AMANDA BARTLeTT

TRuST THROuGH THe QueeNSLAND ART

GALLeRY fOuNDATION


The Asian collection at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) was built on donations, and until the turn of the century consisted mainly of souvenirs and mementos. A more systematic representation of Asian decorative arts began in 2003, with a substantial donation of Chinese antiquities by Professor Shiu Hon and Mrs Nancy Wong. On the strength of that, Mrs Janet Gale offered her fine collection of Japanese netsuke (toggles) and sagemono(containers) to the TMAG in 2007.

This collection consists of 91netsuke, 16 of which are incorporated into sets with sagemono. The pieces, dating from the 17th to the early 20th century, are made from a diverse range of materials including wood, ivory, hornbill,metal and lacquer. Subjects fall into four broad categories: people, animals and plants, religious and mythological subjects, and everyday items. The six netsuke here are particularly fine examples and represent a diversity of subject and medium.

beautifully carved in ivory, the animated figure of the monk Hotei has various mon (crests) on his robe skilfully rendered in other materials. The Dutchman, one of the earliest pieces, represents the genre of comic representations of ‘foreigners’. The mask (probably an onior demon) is carved from rare hornbill, with the red-tinted material exploited to add theatrical drama. The boxwood rice stook, a karakurior trick netsuke, splits apart to reveal more detail within. The simplified, benign baku (a folkloric hybrid animal) is carved from red lacquer incised with rhythmic decorative detail. The three tortoises are outstanding for the animals’ characteristic demeanour and the virtuoso carving of shells and skin texture.

Peter Hughes, Senior Curator (Decorative Arts), Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

TA S M A N I A N M u S e u M A N D A R T G A L L e R Y

SIx cARVEd NETSUKE, JAPAN: THe MONK HOTEI, IVORY, HORN,

MOTHeR Of PeARL AND SOfT MeTAL, TOKYO SCHOOL, 19TH C, 2.9 x

3.4 x 2.4 CM; DUTCHMAN ROLLING A CHEESE, eBONY, 18TH C, 4.4 x

4.6 x 3 CM; MASK, HORNBILL, MeIJI PeRIOD C.1850, 5.3 x 4.7 x 2.2 CM;

TRICK MeCHANISM RICE STOOK, BOxWOOD AND IVORY, 19TH C, 3.6 x

3.7 x 3.1 CM; THe HYBRID CReATuRe BAKU, uNIDeNTIfIeD WOOD AND

LACQueR (CINNABAR), 19TH C, 2.7 x 3.7 x 2.9 CM; AND THREE TORTOISES,

BOxWOOD AND HORN, C.1870, 3.8 x 3.9 x 3.4 CM. COLLeCTION

TASMANIAN MuSeuM AND ART GALLeRY, GIfT Of JANeT GALe 2007

From its founding in 1880 to the present day, Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum has continued to strengthen its diverse Asian arts collections. These reflect the varied Asian cultures represented in the Australian community and, in a museum of design and

technology, evidence the dazzling aesthetics and superb skills of Asian artists and makers.

A significant example in the Museum collection is this apricot-yellow semi-formal Chinese dragon robe or jifu. In all societies, dress plays a significant role not only to protect the body but also to communicate the wearer’s social status and reflect cultural traditions and beliefs. The cut of the jifu and the choice of colours and motifs are design elements that inform us regarding different aspects of Chinese culture. The cut refers directly to a significant historical event: when the Manchu rulers seized control of China in 1644, they changed the design of court dress to the Manchu style, whose front and back slits and horse-shoe cuffs referenced their northern horse-riding culture, indicating both their identity and their supremacy.

Colour signifies the wearer’s status: apricot-yellow was reserved for the Crown Prince, while yellow was worn only by the Emperor himself. The dragon motif represents the dynamic force of the universe and symbolises the Emperor as `Son of Heaven’. In this jifu, nine five-clawed golden dragons within a highly decorative schema represent the Chinese cosmos. Since only the Emperor, Imperial princes and those awarded the privilege were permitted to wear five-clawed dragons, splendid robes such as this one clearly demonstrated the wearer’s rank.

Min-Jung Kim, Curator, Asian Arts and Design, Powerhouse Museum

Christina Sumner, Principal Curator, Design & Society, Powerhouse Museum

P O W e R H O u S e M u S e u M

JIFU oR dRAgon RobE, CHINA, 19TH CeNTuRY. SILK-AND GOLD-WRAPPeD THReAD eMBROIDeRY

ON GAuZe-WeAVe SILK, 138 x 212 CM. COLLeCTION POWeRHOuSe MuSeuM, PuRCHASeD WITH

fuNDS GIVeN BY KeN AND YASuKO MYeR, 1989


TAASA NSW

City images: a symposium on Indian cities – 20 AugustThis symposium, one in the ongoing TAASA series on Asian cities, attracted 85 participants for a day of fascinating information and most intriguing images. For this event, TAASA also trialled a new city venue, the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, which appears from the positive feedback we received to have contributed to the success of the day.

Dr Jim Masselos, the convenor of the symposium, had planned the event to convey a picture of India’s urban diversity: to show how its cities, through various kinds of activity, have developed their own special and particular characteristics which are reflected in imagery all their own. The six speakers’ diverse material united over the day to provide a sense of the interaction between the broad span of Indian city space and of particular city activities.

In some cases these activities are primarily religious, as in the temporary ‘’holding city’’ for over 30 million pilgrims at the 12-yearly Kumbh Mela (spectacular images illustrated this opening lecture from Dr Kama Maclean); or in the holy city of Varanasi described by Dr Assa Doron. Politics, on the other hand, created Delhi. First, Imperial Delhi, whose changing landscapes were brought to verbal life by Dr Narayani Gupta (herself brought from Delhi by TAASA for this occasion). Dr Nayantara Pothen was the narrator on New Delhi, a british planned city with its own particular social quirks related to politics and power, later to develop its own way of handling urban space as the national capital.

Trade, of course, activated bombay, and Jim Masselos illustrated the city’s 19th century development with fascinating early photographs. Last, Adrienne McKibbins discussed the hyperactive bombay film scene, bollywood films and the city in which the films were made. The exuberant extracts from the

black-and-white talkie HolidayBombay and other films made some of us wish we were there.

Ann Guild, convenor of TAASA’s Events Committee, who organised all the (considerable) practicalities of the day, deserves many, many thanks.SandraForbes

DRAMA and DELIGHT: TAASA Study Day – 27 August 2011This was a double-barrelled program with a morning viewing session of Japanese prints at the Art Gallery of New South Wales with Dr Khanh Trinh, curator of Japanese Art, and an afternoon one of balinese paintings at the Australian Museum with Professor Adrian Vickers, University of Sydney and Dr Stan Florek, Collections Officer, Australian Museum. Meeting TAASA committee member Matt Cox, AGNSW Study Room Co-ordinator, at the entrance, we went down to the Collection Study Room, where Dr Khanh had assembled a number of colour woodcut prints from the late 18th to early 20th centuries from the Gallery’s collection of Japanese art. Arising out of the urban culture of Edo, present day Tokyo, Ukiyo-e,or ‘pictures of the floating world,’ were scenes of fleeting beauty, of landscapes and the seasons, from the realms of entertainment such as kabuki actors and courtesans, and tales from history and literature.

One woodcut drawn from literature was particularly delightful: ’Garden in Snow,’ illustrating a chapter from ‘The Tale of Genji’, the most famous novel of Japanese literature. It is a triptych depicting Prince Genji and Lady Asagao watching three young girls making a snow rabbit on a moonlit winter’s night. A collaborative piece, Utagawa Kunisada was responsible for the elaborately dressed figures while AndoHiroshige the background landscape, a genre for which he is justly famous. Affordable for the rising class of merchants and artisans due to mass production, these woodcuts were produced in single sheets as posters and illustrations for books. by the 20th century, woodblock printing was less popular as photography had taken over, and it became a more specialised activity.

At the afternoon session in the Museum, we saw some balinese paintings on cloth, with a few on bark cloth, which were part

R E c E n T T A A S A A c T I V I T I E S

Check our new website for details of these tours and more at www.alumnitravel.com.au.

For a hard copy brochure, please email: [email protected]

phone: (02) 9290 3856 or 1300 799 887 (ex Sydney metrop.), or fax: (02)92903857

Organising study tours since 1989. Australia’s oldest independent study tour company.

During 2012 Alumni Travel is offering even more tours led by TAASA officers and members.

Christine Sumner has put together a special TAASA tour of Jordan and Lebanon. (She had planned to couple Jordan and Syria but security in the latter seems problematic for

some time yet.) Details of this tour will appear in the next TAASA journal.

Gay Spies will be taking her comprehensive annual tour, Laos: Textiles and other Treasures

(25 Nov-18 Dec 2012), which as usual, will include the That Luang Festival. The group size is limited to 8.

Terry Bisley will be taking a small group to Rajasthan to focus on Art, Architecture and Culture (16 Jan–01 Feb) and also,

her second comprehensive tour to Burma (6–23 Feb).

Rob Lovell will be exploring the NE, NW and southern highlands of Viet Nam (8-28 April) learning about some of the country’s 54 ethnic minorities. He will also be returning to the Caucasus for an exploration of Azerbaijan, Armenia and

Georgia (18 May-6 June), and will then be taking a group to Uzbekistan in September.

DURING THE YEAR WE ALSO HAVE TOURS TO:

Egypt (17 Jan-9 Feb), the standard tour but also including the Siwa Oasis and Akhnaten’s Sun City and sites around Minya

Ethiopia (14-27 Feb), including Aksum, Gonder, Lalibela and the Simien Mountains

Japan (2-20 April), from small traditional towns, to Samurai castles and 21st C. Megacities and the calm inland sea

Travels through the Taklamakan (21 Sep–14 Oct), the silk route through eastern China and into modern Kyrghzstan

Ladakh (9-25 July), Leh, the Manali Highway, Dharamsala and Amritsar

Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim, three nations squeezed between the great powers of China and India

Iran: Off the Beaten Track (5-28 Oct), with John Tidmarsh, including Mashad, Tabriz, Kerman, as well as Isfahan and Shiraz.

BHeNDI BAZAAL ST., RAJA DeeN DAYAL C 1890S.

COuRTeSY: PORTVALe COLLeCTION


of the collection of the late anthropologist, Professor Anthony Forge, put together during fieldwork in Kamasan, bali in 1972-3. Specially commissioned pieces were added, and there were later bequests. Extensively documented, it is an invaluable resource for scholars.

Cloth paintings have traditionally decorated royal pavilions for ceremonies and used in temples during festivities. Among the paintings described as ‘visual narratives,’ are auspicious calendars, depictions of balinese versions of the Hindu epics with their cast of characters as well as folk tales.

In the storage area, laid out on a table, were three spectacular paintings from the first half of the 20th century. There was a long ider-ider(strip painting)valance, for hanging under the eaves of buildings, depicting scenes from the wedding of Pan Brayut’s son, Ketut Subaya. Another depicted a scene from the Bharatayuda of the death of Abimanyu,painted by PanSeken with the addition of gold leaf and text, once displayed in his family temple. The third showed the more familiar story from the Ramayana,of Sita’s ordeal by fire. In one of the storage cases is a painting by MangkuMara with the marvellous title of‘The Churning of the Milky Ocean’ from the first part of the Mahabharata, the Adiparwa, depicting dramatic stories of the origin of the world and the first human kingdoms.JillSutanto

Southeast Asian Ceramics Symposium – 15 OctoberSome 50 enthusiasts turned out for TAASA’s symposium on Southeast Asian ceramics at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum. The symposium’s three expert speakers reviewed ceramic production and export trade in Thailand,

Cambodia and Vietnam. This was followed by a rare opportunity to view ceramics selected from the Powerhouse Museum’s collection. Dr Don Hein, an Adelaide-based archaeologist specialising in Thai kiln sites, surveyed the development of Thai ceramics in Sukhothai and Sawankhalok. He argued that the earliest wares made at Sawankhalok around the 10th century probably had indigenous northern Thai origins, perhaps with some influence from burmese potters. The kilns at Sukhothai started about 100 years later. Production was stimulated by a Chinese ban on overseas trade from the 15th century. After the ban was lifted, competition from more refined Chinese wares spurred the Sawankhalok potters to improve their product, for instance by introducing an innovative kiln furniture system to improve celadon glaze colour and eliminate unsightly stacking scars. Sukhothai kilns persevered with the production of cheap, utilitarian wares. but by the 16th century the competition from China began to tell and the Thai kilns ceased production.

Dr Li baoping of the University of Sydney, an archaeologist and art historian, told how analysis of Chinese ceramic sherds is being used in many ways to help chart the development of greater Angkor. Comparisons between ceramic finds at Koh Ker in the north of Cambodia with pieces found in the 9th century belitung shipwreck off Indonesia has led to a reassessment of the chronology of that site, while pieces found in Angkor provide evidence of a resident Chinese community in the 13th and 14th centuries. Other datable ceramics found on site inside Angkor Wat are evidence that the temple was not completely abandoned after the capital was moved from Angkor in the 15th century.

TAASA mEmbERS’ dIARy

DeCeMBeR 2011 – feBRuARY 2012

TAASA’s End-of-Year Event – 6 December 2011TAASA’s 20th anniversary party takes place on Tuesday 6 December, 6-8pm at Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, 16-20 Goodhope Street, Paddington 2021. Guest of Honour will be Edmund Capon, our first Honorary Patron. We will be launching the special anniversary issue of the TAASA Review, and awarding the TAASA Essay Prize to our two winners. Venue has been provided by kind permission of Dr Gene Sherman, Director of SCAF. Contribution: $15 for members, $20 non- members. Drinks and Asian canapés provided.RSVP to Dy Andreasen at (02) 9361 4586; email: [email protected]

Special Viewing of “Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond”, SLV, Melbourne – April 2012A special viewing of this exhibition guided by Susan Scollay, which will involve a trip to Melbourne for interstate based TAASA members, is planned to coincide with the State Library of Victoria’s exhibition “LoveandDevotion:FromPersiaandBeyond” (9 March -1 July 2012) and seminar “PersianCulturalCrossroads”(12-14April2012),presented in partnership with the bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. TAASA member Susan Scollay is co-curator of the exhibition and contributor to the magnificent catalogue. More details including costs will be advised at a later date. Indications of interest would be appreciated to: Ann Guild at [email protected].


Dr Ann Proctor linked past and present ceramic industries in Vietnam by examining three old kiln sites around Hanoi where ceramic production continues. At Chu Dau beautiful high-fired blue-and-white ceramics were produced for export to Indonesia and the Middle East and via the Dutch East India Company to Europe. Since 2001 a state-owned trading company carrying the Chu Dau brand has specialised in reproductions of the old export wares. The Que Quyen kilns produced storage jars for the local market and exported teawares to Japan. by the 16th century the teawares were sufficiently prestigious in Japan to be presented to the Tokugawa shogun. Recently a private potter has revived the production of unglazed teapots for local sale. bac Ninh’s ceramic industry has its origin in supplying reproductions of 19th century bleu de Hué wares for use in the restoration of the citadel at Hué.

Afterwards participants were able to closely examine significant ceramics from the PHM’s collection, assisted by extremely helpful staff members, Paul Donnelly and Ross Clendinning. These were supplemented by numerous pieces from the collections of the three speakers and TAASA Life Member Ian brookes. One of the speakers, Li baoping was especially excited by the extensive sherd collection brought by fellow speaker Don Hein: “The thing I like is that if you drop a whole piece, you have no piece; if you

drop a sherd and break it, you have more sherds.” Attendees went away equally stimulated by the presentations and the chance to get up close to actual examples of their subject.JohnMillbank

TAASA QUEENSLAND

Gamelan Concert – 2 SeptemberA small group of TAASA members attended a gamelan concert on 2 September at the Queensland Conservatorium. The music and dance performance featured Dr Joko Susilo, who directed the Conservatorium gamelan ensemble, and Yulitta Owen, a Javanese dancer from Melbourne, who performed three classical Central Javanese dances.

Asian Textiles Seminar – 1 October A number of members attended this seminar which explored contemporary Asian textiles in the exhibition ‘Threads:Contemporarytextilesandthe social fabric’on display in the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA). The seminar was jointly hosted by TAASA and ACAPA (the Australian Centre of Asia Pacific Art). It was addressed by two visiting speakers, Mary Jose and Liz Williamson, and a tour of the exhibition was conducted by Ruth McDougall, Associate Curator, Asia and Pacific Art.

Mary Jose is the Adelaide-based owner of the Fabric ofLife, a concern that provides for the care and presentation of a wide variety of antique and contemporary textile arts and serves museums, galleries and collectors.

Liz Williamson is a Sydney-based internationally respected textile artist who has designed for industry, produced unique works for major exhibitions and maintained on-going studio production, specialising in hand-woven scarves

and wraps. She has been involved with several development projects in Asia working with skilled weavers. Each presented details of her work illustrated by slides and samples. PhilipCourtenay

TAASA ASIAn ARTS ESSAy pRIZE 2011

TAASA is delighted to announce the joint winners of the 2011 TAASA Essay Prize - Hannah beasley and Matthew O’Farrell. both essays were considered worthy of the prize and as the judges were unable to decide between them, the prize of $2000 was split.

The two essays are published in the special supplement to the December 2011 TAASAReview.Their titles are: TheBirth of Nihonga in Japan: Potentials andPitfalls in Preserving Tradition (Hannah beasley, bA (Arts/Visual Arts, ANU) and “‘…muchthatisbarbarianandScythianincharacter…’: Orodos II between Cultures” (Matt O’Farrell, bA (Arts), ANU).

To mark its 20th anniversary, TAASA launched this competition as part of its ongoing role in supporting the study and appreciation of Asian arts in Australia. The competition was open to undergraduates, honours or masters candidates currently studying at an Australian University. Twelve essays in all were submitted from ANU, Universities of Sydney, Queensland and Melbourne and from the National Art School. This has been a very encouraging response and we congratulate all who entered.

SYMPOSIuM PARTICIPANTS VIeW PHM CeRAMIC DISH HeLD

BY ROSS CLeNDINNING. PHOTO: GILL GReeN

63TA A S A R E V I E W V O L U M E 2 0 N O . 4

inthestepsoftheBuddha

NGV International

17 December 2011 - June 2012

This exhibition of 80 Buddhist and HinduworksofartdrawnfromtheNGV’scollectionexploresthedevelopmentofBuddhistimageryacross Asia. From early Buddhist workscreated in India in the 2nd -4th centuriesCEtocontemporaryZenBuddhistinkandbrushpaintingsintheChinesetradition,InthestepsoftheBuddhaillustratesthechangingimageoftheBuddha, bodhisattvas and guardian deities,andtheconnectionbetweentantricHinduismand Buddhism. The wide range of Buddhistworks include: ritual items; pilgrimagesouvenirs;abiographicalpainting;manuscriptcovers;sculpturesoftheBuddha,bodhisattvasand Buddhist deities in bronze, wood, clayandlacquer.ItincludesworksfromGandhara,Burma,Thailand,Laos,Vietnam,Japan,China,Tibet,NepalandBhutan.

This is a free exhibition presented during the refurbishment of the Asian Galleries.

SoUtHaUStralia

Beneaththewinds:Masterpieces

of Southeast Asian Art

Art Gallery of South Australia

18 November - 29 January

Presentsaspectacularselectionofworksofartfrom the collection ofAGSA, includingmanynew acquisitions seen for the first time. Theexhibitionfeatures120worksofart,whichrangein diversity from prehistoric stone sculptureto present day ritual painting, and providesan exciting introduction into the astonishingaestheticheritageofSoutheastAsia.

AmongtherecentmajoracquisitionsexhibitedinBeneaththewindsisthemonumentalBurmeseTemplebell,uniqueforitsintactbracketdepictingPrinceSiddartha.VisitorswillalsobegiventheopportunitytoglimpsethevarietyoftextileartintheArtGallery’scollection.

TheexhibitioncoincideswiththereleaseofthelavishlyillustratedpublicationBeneaththewinds:MasterpiecesofSoutheastAsianArtfromAGSA’scollection,availablefromtheGalleryShop.

For a series of related guided tours and floor talks, go to: www.artgallery.sa.gov.au.

QUEENSlaNd

YayoiKusama:lookNow,SeeForever

Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA)

18 November 2011 – 11 March 2012

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is one of themostsignificantandinfluentialartistsworkingtoday. ‘Look Now, See Forever’ transformsthe dramatic spaces of GoMAwith a seriesof spectacular immersive rooms, featuringnew sculptures and paintings as well asfilm projection and installation. ShowcasingKusama’sinnovativeworkwithcolour,form,spaceandperception,thisexhibitionshowsaseniorartistatthepeakofherpowers.

aUStraliaNCaPitaltErritorY

theartofkabukiFree lunchtime talk on Thursday 16 February 12.45 pm

Lucie Folan, Curator, Asian Art, talks onJapanese woodblock prints and theatrecostumesinthenationalcollection.

TheNGA’sexhibitionStarsoftheTokyostage:NatoriShunsen’skabukiactorprintswilltourin2012

NEWSoUtHWalES

artsofasialectureseries-loVEArt Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Theuplifting, immersiveand transformativeexperience of love is the topic for the 2012Arts of Asia lecture series at the AGNSW.Drawing on the expertise of academics,curators and critics, the aim is to offer freshinsights intothe interpretationof love in thereligious, literary and artistic worlds. Areasof focus include romantic love, devotionallove, parental love, forbidden love, abusivelove and unrequited love. Topics as diverseas ‘kama’, the Indian concept of love andenjoyment, familial love inConfucianChinaand otherworldly love of Japanese Nohtheatre explore the ancient wisdom andliving traditions of love in the arts ofAsia.Tuesdays1-2pm.Term1beginninginMarch2012 focuses on the Near East, South andSoutheast Asia and Term 2 beginning inAugust focuses on EastAsia. For bookingswww.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/calendar/type/lectures/

W H a t ’ S o N i N a U S t r a l i a a N d o V E r S E a S : D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 1 - F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 2A S E L E C T I V E R O U N D U P O F E x H I B I T I O N S A N D E V E N T S

CompiledbyTinaBurge

the journal of the asian arts society of australia

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Transcript of the journal of the asian arts society of australia