APT 2002 Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia : Report

CURATORIAL INTENTION Yayoi Kusama, Soul under the moon Nam June Paik, TV cello Lee U-fan, APT 2002 installation view The practice of three artists were central to the APT 2002 exhibition. Unlike any of the previous three APTs, this fourth was developed to consider how this grouping might shift the perception and understanding about contemporary Asian and Pacific art. The principle of using a select group of key artists as a starting point in the developing of large exhibitions is not new. The radical nature of APT 2002 is that by placing these three artists at the core, together they may challenge some aspects of the assumed cannons of modernism and internationalism as they have grown over the late 20th century. Essential to all the APTs has been the assertion that contemporary Asian and Pacific art has affected change in the direction of art in its regions and that this practice continues to be vibrant and challenging. APT 2002 celebrated this influence as being both global as well as local, by bringing together three significant post-war artists - Nam June Paik, Yayoi Kusama and Lee U-fan - to frame this authority. None of these artists have been seen in previous Triennials. All have a long practice that extends to the early 1960s. Each provided specific horizons in the developing of ideas that included releasing, to some degree, the complex relationship to geography that is set out by APT. Together they interrogated the relationship between modernity and contemporary practice while affirming that contemporary art continues to be attached to political and social agendas. They prepares a space that, in terms of the APT project, had not been attempted before. APT 2002 featured the works of seventeen major artists. The exhibition explored the careers of these artists in considerable depth over a period of time. Works from the late 1960s through to 2001 were selected to emphasise significant experimental developments in contemporary art from the Asia-Pacific over the last three to four decades. Crucially, the artists selected for APT 2002 have made profound contributions to modern culture. In their hands ‘modernity’ is a condition that is resisted, but at the same time is a constant source for invention. Montien Boonma and Lee U-fan, for instance, have made the continuing traditions of Buddhism fully contemporary, working through the inherited languages of Asian art and architectural forms to directly address modern life. Nam June Paik, on the other hand, is one of the most distinguished modern artists working in video and multimedia. His Korean inheritance has always informed his practice, and has subtly but surely influenced the work of younger artists from around the world. The persistence of performance as a crucial form of cultural expression in Asia and the Pacific is once again registered in APT 2002, as in previous years. As the new cultural forms of Asia and the Pacific are quite specific to the region, the Gallery once again engaged with artists who work across several media, including Heri Dono from Indonesia, and the artist collective that formed the ‘Pasifika Divas’. Others such as Nalini Malani work with transitions between performance and a range of cinematic modes, exploring new ways in which the perceptions of the individual body and the social group are developing. Finally, APT 2002 embraced the sense that many modern artists participate in a desire to reach beyond material phenomena towards that which is transcendental, and that the power of contemporary art lies in helping us understand the importance of the immanent as well as the explicit world. 13