2009 AAANZ Conference Abstracts - The Art Association of Australia ...

16. SHIFTING CARTOGRAPHIES:
ASIA / AUSTRALIA / ART
Over the past two decades there has been an increased interest and recognition of developments in contemporary ‘Asian’ art practice in Asia
and Australia. This has coincided with the emergence of a critical awareness of the limits of Euro-American discourses of art, the rethinking of the
coordinates of Asian and Australian art histories, and a growing recognition of the transnational connections, networks and linkages between Asia
and Australia. This session calls for papers that explore the shifting geographies of contemporary Asian art, and that reflect critically on the artistic
interface between Asia and Australia.
Convenors: Dr Michelle Antoinette Dr Francis Maravillas
and coherence that continues to inform the conventional histories of
modern and contemporary Asian art.
In this context, I want to argue that the work of the Asian artistic
diasporas in Australia represent new constellations of the
contemporary that foreground the multiple, overlapping as well
as disjunctive temporalities and spatialities of both ‘Australia’ and
‘Asia’. In particular, I want to suggest that critical and geographical
trope of the ‘South’ – understood as both a mode of location and an
epistemic category – not only offers a framework for understanding
the constellation of differences and multiplicity that inflect the
category of the contemporary in Australian art, it also enables one
to rethink the spatial and temporal assumptions that underlie the
history of this art.
Francis Maravillas completed his PhD in the Faculty of Arts and
Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney, where he
lectures in cultural studies. His current research interests include
contemporary art and visual culture in Asia and Australia, curatorial
practice and international art exhibitions. His work on Asian art
in Australia appears in various journals as well as recent edited
collections including Crossing cultures: conflict, migration and
convergence (2009), Cosmopatriots: On Distant Belongings and
Close Encounters (2007) and In the Eye of the Beholder Reception
and Audience for Modern Asian Art (2006). He was previously a
board member of the Asia Australia Art Centre (Gallery 4a) Sydney
(2003-2006).
3. Shifting Selves: Recent Self Portraits from Indonesia and
India
Christine Clark
(The Australian National University)
Over the past two decades, the use and manipulation of the self
image has become increasingly prevalent in the practice of artists
from various Asian countries. Over this period in Indonesia and India,
many prominent mid-career artists have explored and re-explored
their self-personae. Often disclosing an unstable, shifting identity,
the investigation of self has been, and continues to be, employed by
many artists to question historical and/or national representations
(University of Technology, Sydney)
– existing tropes of Colonial and ‘Oriental’ representations and
endorsed nationalist mantras and ideas. The paper examines this
shared focus on the self image by a diverse grouping of artists,
some of whom further share an interest in using culturally-specific
objects to personify one’s identity. It will focus on the work of key
artists who locate their practices within the local, yet are largely
speaking to a national and international audience.
Christine Clark holds a Master of Business Administration with
dissertations in Cultural Policy and Asian-Australian relations. She
has worked in the museum sector for the past twenty years, with
the majority of her experience in Asia-Pacific contemporary visual
art projects. She was extensively involved in the first three Asia-
Pacific Triennial projects (Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1993,
1996, 1999), has curated a number of exhibitions focusing on the
Asian-Pacific region and Asian Australian visual art practice and
has conducted art management workshops throughout Indonesia.
Christine joined the National Portrait Gallery in 2004 where she holds
the position of Exhibitions Manager but is currently Acting Deputy
Director.
4. Oral Fibre: A Notional Fabric of Contact and Exchange
Lucy Bleach
In June 2009, installation artist Lucy Bleach commenced a 3-month
Asialink supported residency in Toyoda village, a rice farming
community of 153 people, in the Echigo region of northwest Japan.
The project involved the artist’s close engagement with local
residents to create Oral Fibre, a site responsive installation within a
170-year-old dilapidated farmhouse, Australia House, as part of the
Echigo-Tsumari Triennial.
The Echigo-Tsumari Triennial incorporates over 300 Japanese and
international artists working within a 760 square km area. Conceived
as a vehicle to regenerate a depleting rural community, the
Triennial fosters connections between local traditional, cultural and
agricultural practices, with the poetic and expansive approaches
of contemporary art disciplines, to generate renewed contact, new
horizons and optimism for the future of the region and its people.
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