Queensland Art Gallery - Queensland Government

publication. The discrete projects — such as The Mekong, Pacific Reggae: Roots Beyond the
Reef, the works from North Korea (DPRK), and the thematic film programs — each concentrate
on particular regions to present more in-depth perspectives on art history and contemporary
ideas. For example, The Mekong uses the river as metaphor for the movement and exchange
of knowledge. As Rich Streitmatter-Tran, co-curator of The Mekong states:
The Mekong region is often referred to through a variety of organisational frameworks including
historic–cultural areas, sociolinguistic zones, and by the borders of the nations themselves. It has
always been a shifting territory — an ebb and flow of conflict and cooperation, modernisation
and preservation, exploitation and conservation. Each struggle can be found documented in
the arts, whether in historical artefact or in the contemporary work featured in APT6. 6
There is always more to be said about contemporary art and art-making in Asia and the
Pacific and, as we approach the second decade of this century, the economic, social, political
and cultural dynamics of the region — and its relationships with the rest of the world — are
more intense than ever. Every three years, the APT revisits this territory. Within Brisbane and
internationally, this exhibition marks a point of concentration and deliberation valued by many.
To return to Storr’s apt observation, ‘a good exhibition is never the last word on its subject’.
The general term ‘space’ replaced the word gallery (alternate spaces followed after
experimental galleries and laboratories) and was used precisely because it was supposed to
avoid the connotations of an institutional or commercial environment, where a hierarchical,
formal arrangement might determine audience behaviour in pre-set ways. ‘Space’ usefully
removed the immediate connotations of commodity.
If artists already had any ‘space’ it was because they had studios. And the connotations of
studio activity had long passed from associations of the model and the arranged tableau to
a less structured, process-oriented concept of the creative site. The new spaces in the early
seventies were thus much less the laboratories of technological or participatory experiment
than a self-consciously chaotic milieu (of which Warhol’s space of the Factory is a precursor),
where gesture and incident could be prominent and pre-eminent. 5
Endnotes
1 I would like to acknowledge Runa Islam for her wonderful work The Restless Subject 2008, which effortlessly
captures the complexities involved in the act of ‘seeing’.
2 Robert Storr, ‘Show and tell’, in Paula Marincola (ed.), What Makes a Great Exhibition?, Philadelphia Exhibitions
Initiative, Philadelphia, 2006, p.14.
3 Hou Hanru, interviewed by Robert Leonard, ‘The biennale makers’, Art & Australia [APT6 special issue], December
2009 [forthcoming].
4 Sharmini Pereira, ‘The Asia Pacific Triennial: A forum’, in ‘21st century art history’, The Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Art, vol.9, no.1/2, 2008–09, p.210.
5 Sandy Nairne, ‘The institutionalization of dissent’, in Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W Ferguson and Sandy Nairne,
Thinking about Exhibitions, Routledge, London, 1996, p.396.
6 Rich Streitmatter-Tran, ‘Mapping the Mekong’, The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art [exhibition
catalogue], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2009, p.128.
I include this quote by way of arguing that, indirectly, the APT has had a similar influence on
the art museum in which it takes place. The nature of art-making across the region is incredibly
diverse and includes places with highly developed art infrastructures, as well as others with very
limited foundations.
Over the last two decades, the APT has shown the work of over 300 artists. In this context, it
has introduced the work of little-known artists to Australia while also profiling artists with major
international reputations, whose work is generally known through art publications rather than
exhibitions staged in Brisbane. While APT6 presents work from places not previously included,
the exhibition is built around artists from East Asia, South Asia, South-East Asia, Australia,
the Pacific, as well as the diaspora, as it has from its inception. Thematic ideas — such as the
significance of collaborative practice and the perspectives offered in the inclusion of the two
major film programs, Promised Lands and The Cypress and the Crow: 50 Years of Iranian
Animation — are integral to the APT, and are discussed in the other overview essays in this
Simeon Simix
Vanuatu b.1981
Paw paw/coconut (from ‘Bebellic’ portfolio) 2007
Screenprint on magnani paper ed. 1/45 / 76 x 56cm /
Purchased 2008. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation /
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Vandy Rattana
Cambodia b.1980
Fire of the year 5 2008
Digital print / 105.5 x 63.5cm / Image courtesy:
The artist
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