Present Encounters : Papers from the conference of the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, 1996

moment of hearing . It is in these labyrinthine cl usters of meaning where listening , discourse and the possibility of change may occur. The second phase of the Triennial involves the process of multiple curatorship. Fifteen curatorial teams were formed, comprising forty-two curators from the region. Each team i nvolved a locally-based international curator in consultation with at least one Australian cu rator. The Australian curators included Gallery staff as well as fourteen non-QAG professionals. The Gallery extended the geograph ical scope of the Triennial - cu ratorial teams for I ndia and Taiwan were establ ished and, guided by the pri ncipally I ndigenous curatorial team for the Pacific, a strong coll ective of artists (from Aotearoa/New Zealand , Van uatu , New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea and in this context, the Torres Strait Islands a nd I ndigenous Australia) negotiated and collaborated to engage with the space and the project both metaphorically and site specifically. Cu ratorial teams visited approximately 1 ,000 artists, studios, galleries, curators, writers and art schools in the reg ion as they worked collaboratively towards a proposed selection of artists. The similarity of shared realms and the enormity of new contexts are always surprising. As one of the artists within the Aotearoa/New Zealand waka collective says, 'Your time and your space are not necessarily my space or my time'. 2 Artists and Cultural Zones The t h i rd phase involved the artists and cultu ral zones. The curatorial teams proposed artists and works to the Gallery and the National Advisory Committee in December 1 995. After confi rmation of the participating artists, the project widened to involve many more Gallery staff i n the passage to practical real isation . An intensive program of negotiation with artists, involving the assistance of curatorial teams, was embarked upon as details of the 1 44 works were defined . Collective works featu re strongly in this exhi bition, and the initial sixty-seven participating artists actually transposed as hundreds, with the inclusion of the five artists i nvolved in the Filipino mural group, 'Sanggawa'; the collaborative work involvi ng twenty­ eight artists coordinated by Jose Tence Ruiz (Bogie) ; the fourteen Papua New Guinean and twenty Brisbane dancers in Wendi Choulai's performance; the fou r artists in the Meis' perfo rmance; the eleven from Aotearoa/New Zealand involved in the waka collective; and the h u nd reds participating in Campfire Group's, All Stock Must Go!. The Gallery has extended the physical spaces, with Campfire Group positioning themselves on the Gallery's forecourt, stridently 'outside' the concrete institutional walls. Denise Tiavouane and Michael and Anna Mel have planted the earth in the Gallery's lower gardens. Ellen Pau strategically located her video installation in a discrete, darkened walkway, while Judy M illar literally swept away her ephemeral rice pi ece from the internal water pool 's edge before the exhi bition opened to the public. The decision to site the greater proportion of the exhibition within the Gallery posed high ly challenging logistical hurdles for those involved with its practical realisation. The exh ibition cla imed over 70% o f a l l available space. The scale and scope of t he work varied from Yupha's exqu isite miniature etchings, to the gigantism of Cai Guo Qiang's gunpowder drawi ngs. The intri cate and lively negotiations between the artists and Gallery staff were further activated by the arrival of fifty-five artists brought to Brisbane to i nstall their works and partici pate in the opening events. The exhibition begins, however, when the first artist arrives, so from early August, 1 996 the Gallery became a studio, a laboratory for change, a space for new actions. One remarkable featu re over the past month has been the painstaking and i nsistent nature of the artists' processes: the clarity of the concepts being realised through astonishingly meticulous articulation. The detailed planning for Cai Guo Qiang's (as yet unrealised) gunpowder event i nvolved more than fifteen government and official authorities. The beautifu lly articulated wal l d rawings of Nalini Malani involved hours of layered over-drawing; 'Bogie' worked for weeks binding and wrapping his bamboo Pabatin structure , while Wang Luyan's laborious factory of conversion transformed innocent bicycles i nto red, paradoxical machines. As Nalini Malani reminded us in her artist's talk, 'The content is much larger than the art'. 3 Perhaps this is one reason for the labour-intensive and absorbing procedures of some art-making. 37