MEDIA KIT - Queensland Art Gallery - Queensland Government

MANSUDAE ART STUDIO
est.1959 Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Co-organised By Nicholas Bonner (China/UK) and Suhanya Raffel (Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific art,
Queensland Art Gallery)
The Mansudae Art Studio is an official artist studio (changjaksa) in Pyongyang, DPRK (North Korea), which employs
over 1000 artists across the disciplines of painting, drawing, embroidery and mosaics. There is a rich cultural heritage
associated with artistic production in DPRK, and ink painting in particular is a revered practice. Artistic themes vary
and may be revolutionary, social, political and historical in content, or purely aesthetic, and are expressed in different
media such as sculpture, poster art, ceramics and painting. Installed in streets, schools, cinemas and official buildings,
they function as a form of public art. These works are created with virtuosic technical skill by groups of artists,
reflecting the state’s collective ethos. This new body of work, created specifically for APT6, addresses the nature of
work and collectivism, the process of collaboration and the fundamental role played by the studio in artistic practice in
DPRK. This important project, developed in collaboration with Nicholas Bonner, will be the first presentation in
Australia of contemporary art from DPRK.
Nicholas Bonner is a British-born filmmaker and landscape architect based in Beijing. He first visited DPRK in 1992
and soon after established Koryo Tours (with Josh Green), to organise trips to DPRK and promote cultural exchange.
Bonner’s award-winning documentary films include The Game of Their Lives (2002), which traces the North Korean
soccer team that qualified for the 1966 World Cup quarter-finals; A State of Mind (2004); which follows the daily lives of
gymnasts training for the Mass Games in Pyongyang; and Crossing the Line (2008) which looks at American military
defectors. www.mansudaeartstudio.com
RUDI MANTOFANI
b. 1973 Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia
Lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Rudi Mantofani is a sculptor and painter whose work takes ordinary objects and landscapes and transforms them into
strange or absurd ‘visual parables’. With a meticulous technique and a high level of finish, Mantofani’s works are
associative and thought-provoking meditations on human experience and behaviour. His electric guitar sculptures,
featured in APT6, are inspired by the artist’s viewing of a benefit concert in New York. The gap between American
philanthropic rhetoric and the harsh effects of its foreign policies in the Muslim world led the artist to create a series of
distorted guitars, as a means to express such ethical contradictions. In 1993, Mantofani helped form the Jendela Art
Group, a collective of five West Sumatran artists who studied together in Yogyakarta and continue to exhibit together
today. The work of these artists is in contrast to the largely figurative and stridently political work of much Indonesian
contemporary art that emerged during the 1990s. With a focus on the mundane and everyday, Mantofani and the
Jendela artists avoid ideological positions, preferring a more ambivalent and metaphorical approach to art and politics.
Exhibitions (solo): CP Artspace, Jakarta, Indonesia, 2006. Exhibitions (group): Jakarta Biennale, Indonesia, 2009;
‘Jendela: A Play of the Ordinary’, NUS Museum, Singapore, 2009; CP Open Biennale, National Gallery, Jakarta,
Indonesia, 2003.