The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia, 1996 : Report

Jakapan Vilasineekul is an installation artist trained in Thailand and Germany. H i s works often combine mundane objects, such as brooms and spades, with crutches and plaster limbs suggestive of the injured and maimed . The sculptural assemblages Hope seller, Cleaner and Sandal, doormat reflect the artist's perception of contemporary Thai society in an intimate, but still critical way. Their minimalist and enigmatic qualities are enriched with symbols from everyday Thai life and culture . When describing Hope seller the artist says: The idea comes . . . to me as I see a man with an artificial leg on the street selling lotteries. There are many of them in the Bangkok Metropolitan area. To buy a lottery is a kind of gambling. One can win or lose. It is an unreliable activity. Should there be a hope for the seller, 'The handicaps'? This issue has raised a question of hope to me. In this particular work, I set up a stand as a real selling stand. The cement-cast legs hanging down are like pieces of meat that are ready for sale in the Thai fresh market and the top of those legs that appear through the top of the stand look as if they are meaningless souvenirs. VIETNAM Born into a family of Confucian scholars, Dang Thi Khue is an art historian as well as an artist. She is also an important figure in the artists' movement in Vietnam that during the 1 980s established an environment of artistic freedom and supported individual styles. The three paintings in this exhibition are variations on the theme of 'space and hands' and reflect the artist's engagement with the art of indigenous Vietnamese people as well as ethnic and folk traditions. The two-dimensional space and use of the void as an allusion to the chimerical are elements in Dang Thi Khue's work that relate to the traditional art of northern Vietnam. Her work raises questions about the role of women and indigenous people within a Vietnamese context. 22