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

Ian Howard The 'Role ' of the Artist and Present Institutional Encounters As artists of the reg ion , we are struggl ing with issues of style, content, meani ng , commerce and aud ience. At the same time, our sports entrepreneurs and media magnates a re shaping up to domi nate the hearts and minds of all citizens of the 2 1 st century . In t he absence o f 'pai ntbrush cam' and being wary of, or unable t o achieve, instant gratification, artists will need to be creative well beyond their primary role as makers if they are to succeed in the highly competitive global market place of selling ideas and val ues. This brief paper has given me, in my role as a curatorial co-ordinator [Vietnam] , the opportunity to look at artists' practice within the i nstitutional setting of the Queensland Art Gal lery . I have found it to be a h ighly rewarding relationsh i p which should be developed and capital ised on, of course, in the future, but specifically during the progress of this exhi bition and conference. I expect we would all ag ree that the role of the contemporary artist, as is so well demonstrated by the works within the APT, is i n the more formal sense the creation and communication of an extraord inary range of ideas and values. We should never underestimate how the ideas and i nsights put forwa rd by artists, and the values they espouse, help us in understanding, manag ing and hopefully enjoying our individual and global lives within an ever increasingly pressured and at the same time depleted world . We recogn ise that artists' working processes are typically explorative , often i ntuitive, usually personal, sometimes intimate, always complex, regularly controversial, occasionally uncertain and obtuse and invariably guided by an individual mind or formed by a closely knit cultura l g roup. This description can apply equally to either the creation of radical work or the interpretation of evolving traditional forms as we have seen, for instance, in works from the Pacific region. Slides of Vu Dan Tan's work Let me briefly comment upon the ideas and values that emerge from one of the Vietnamese artist in the exhibition , Vu Dan Tan. Tan works from the comer of his studio, close to a large window which looks directly onto the street in the old congested quarter of Hanoi. He sits almost up aga inst the window pane itself, but is j ust separate from the thousands of people that pass by each hour of every day, a million people every couple of months. Tan's cigarette box masks are worked on unceasingly, and predictably represent the passing parade of characters. Like the millions on the street, an infinite variety of personalities and dispositions are descri bed by the cut and constructed boxes. To quote Tan , 'th is is an interesting pastime and unending to me in my search to discover something new 1 '. When questioned further he becomes more specific and talks of the types of people he feels for each day: child ren and the very poor, who sel l the cigarettes on street corners and in parks, the d isabled and unemployable; characters by the thousand simila r but always d ifferent to the astute observer who feels for the life of the street. These are fragile works of art about sometimes tough, but often frail people. Containing a strained humour, they are made from old cigarette boxes, the litter and consumption of even more frag ile liveli hoods. As a supporting framework, the Queensland Art Gallery's APT has enabled these works to be communicated to what I am sure will be a very large audience over the coming months. The APT cu ratorial model and the responsiveness of the Gallery to the work and ideas of the artists, has created a very productive and perhaps exemplary relationship between the individual, sensitive artist or group of artists and the seriously powerful i nstitution . 56 .