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

I n the case of the Singapore Art Museum, the building encapsulates educational history from the colon ial to the post-colonial period , social transformations and memories. This is an appropriate frame for exh ibiting modern and contemporary art. It gives art a local contextual isation and grounding . The next frame of art exhibition is exhibition type and cu ratorship. It has often been observed that exhibition remains the dominant channel for the meeting of art production and reception . I ronically, for t he great diversity of artistic expressions, there is only a handful of un iversal exh i bition types. Furthermore, exhibitions, especially those on extra national art, work within the tight framework of international art networks or systems. Within the cultural framework of a given community, exhibition as a medium or channel remains the key doorway i nto art. Enlarging this doorway entails a different set of mechanisms beyond the i nternal organisation of an exh ibition . One such mechanism is the architectural frame. For as long as art is experienced as a material presence, exhibitions will remain largely venue-specific. Take the Asia-Pacific Triennial: we would imagine that the majority of the audience remains the residents of the Brisbane area. Beyond Brisbane, the exhibition is only distributed within an existing international art network. If the exhibition reaches the place of the origination of the art works at all, it will probably be distributed in highly limited scope. This situation , of course , should not undermine the importance of the Triennial ; however it is important to map out the d istribution . I n Jean-Marc Poinsot's study of exhibition typology, he proposes that there are three main types: Natural History, Historicism and Formalist History. Like zero-degree presentation , Natural H istory exhibitions group art works by a 'soft' arrangement of more or less thematic or chronological frameworks. The aim is for the art works to transcend traditional cu ratorial packaging, thus extending into a less mediated receptive domain. What is i nteresting here is that need for a curatorial arrangement, however minimal. We say that this is because for any exh ibition there must be a corresponding receptive framework in the social context of the exhibition venue. This is an important point to note in discussing exhibiti ng South-East Asian works. The power of the language of exhibition may be such that instead of moving towards the erasing of the language, art production may be taking the fact of exh ibition and by extension , international art systems, into consideration . The second exhi bition type, Historicism , involves a much heavier curatorial touch . An exhibition is organ ised against an acknowledged or preliminary historical or thematic framework. The art works are then transformed into historical or social documents to encourage a contextual read ing of the works on the part of the viewers. The third exhibition type , Formalist History, is conventional museological presentation . Art works are presented as heroic moments, masterpieces, stars in acknowledged movements. To what extent an h istorical-type exhibition leans towards H istoricism or Formalist H istory is the combined factor of the internal structure of the exhibition and the context of reception which may i nclude canonical knowledge of art history. In exhibiting South-East Asian art, we are faced with a receptive environment with the following characteristics. There is a general scarcity in knowledge of South-East Asian modern and contemporary art. The issue of an art historical canon with its system of acknowledged moments and stars takes on a very different shape. Wh ile the potential of contempora ry art as an expressive and communicative medium is realised by some, these art forms have a very limited audience base. The exh ibiting of South-East Asian art has a crucial role in the expansion of the audience base, knowledge building and helping artists to reconcile a productive space in thei r own social and cultural environment. For these reasons, the Historicism mode was the preferred model for 'Modernity and Beyond' 1 . Wh ile the 'Themes in South-East Asian Art' component utilised thematics as the organising structu re , 'A Century of Art in Singapore' utilised temporality as the organ ising structure. Examples of histories or genealogies - which are important to exhibiting South-East 93