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

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS - BIOGRAPHIES Montien BOONMA 1953 – 2000, Thailand Montien Boonma, Black altar Through his sculptures and installations, Montien Boonma looked to internal, local and philosophical sources as a means of exploring the significance of the transcendental. As a devout Buddhist, his work engaged profoundly with his meditations on the relationship between the material and non-material aspects of life. Montien Boonma was born in 1953 in Bangkok, Thailand, where he died in 2000. His interest in the sensual was made manifest in his diverse use of materials including clay, metal and traditional Thai herbs, which suggested scent, touch, shadow, and silence. His resonant work proposes illusiveness and lightness as compelling responses to modernity. Montien Boonma is one of the most significant artists to emerge from South-East Asia in the late twentieth century. Eugene CARCHESIO b. 1960, Australia Eugene Carchesio, 187 works for the People’s Republic of Spiritual Revolution (detail) Eugene Carchesio is a Brisbane-based artist who works with constructions, collage, drawing, watercolour and sound. Carchesio’s materials are usually modest and collected from everyday life. His work is intimate and diaristic, and he often works with serialised miniature components in both small-scale constructions and larger wall works. Carchesio is also an exceptional painter in watercolours; he deploys the transparent qualities of the medium to great effect, emphasising the mutable and transient aspects of existence. Carchesio’s quiet and contemplative works are redolent of the artist’s personal memories and historical and cultural references, but they also urge the viewer to bring personal associations to their reading of the works. Heri DONO b. 1960, Indonesia Heri Dono, Ceremony of the soul Heri Dono is an artist who has been attentive to the low tech end of multimedia art, working with performance, shadow puppets, text, music and sound to explore the potentials of kinetic environments activated by video, electricity, animation and projections. Heri Dono draws on the traditions of Indonesian wayang puppetry and the formality of the gamalan orchestra as he addresses philosophical concerns inherent in animism. His sources of inspiration are wide and include the concerns and techniques of modernist European artists and contemporary media culture. Heri Dono uses these multiple influences in his work as a way of connecting his art with contemporary society. Through an expressive personal style, he often uses elements of the grotesque to comment upon the comic and tragic aspects of the current human condition. Heri Dono lives and works in Yogyakarta. 25