The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue (APT2)

them, voicing a candid despair with an art world that reduces the objects in its catchment to politically correct wallpaper. Multi-culti, Robinson knows, is the current name of the curatorial game, and many another sprawlingly ambitious art bazaar has been impaled on the stake of its own good intentions. A risky business, travel. There are reefs, there are storms, there is the risk of losing one's way. As the art world staggers towards the millennium, bewildered travellers scan the horizon for the sight of new landmarks. Those of us who are unsure of our bearings could do worse, finally, than fix our sights on the long, clunkily elegant aeroplane that flies across the tarry surface of Peter Robinson's Untitled, 3.125% 1996. Like the men's waka of which it forms a part, this painting is an image of passage between countries, between cultures and between traditions. Most of all, it's an image of the dangers and pleasures of that transit. Where are we going? Well, even if we knew where, it would be hard to say when or even if arrival will occur. Harder yet to say whether art will show the way. No matter. In an art world glutted with pronouncements of dead-ends and failed quests, to be embarking on that journey with wide eyes, high hopes, and a trace of apprehension is no small thing. Justin Paton is afreelance writer and art critic who lecturesin Art History at the Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand Top Yuk King Tan The sea is calm. Splash! 1995 Detail from 'WOW!' exhibition at Test Strip Gallery, Auckland 1995 Blue and yellow Tom Thumb fireworks lit and unlit 126 I ART I s T s: PA c I FI c Middle Ben Webb Study 17-Xl-96 1996 Oil encaustic on canvas 210x150cm Bottom John Pule Noto akoe, Fano aau 1996 Oil on canvas 180x230cm Collection:Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland My grandmother was born on a boat. Her widowed mother had left Yorkshire with her six young children, pregnant, seeking a new life in an unknown place, courageous, desperate, I don't know ... Bronwynne Cornish We all-or our forebears-came to this place from somewhere else. In each one of our histories, voyaging is embedded; even our national airline proclaims itself to be 'the airline of the world's greatest travellers'. For us, water has always been both a barrier and a highway. Our ocean-locked state has meant that, even now, we' re obsessed with our islandness, our distance from anywhere and with our connections to other places and other cultures. New Zealand is a place surrounded by water ... It is a destination for a journey. The distance to, or away from these shores has become a part of our psyche. New Zealand's past is littered with stories of going-away-from or coming-to-this-land ... Yuk King Tan Whichever way we look at it, mobility, instability and upheaval characterise the physical beginnings of this land. Maori legend has it that Maui-Tikitiki-a– Taranga, trickster, explorer and hunterextraordinaire, is responsible for the configuration of Aotearoa. The South Island is his brothers' canoe (or waka), Stewart Island its anchor stone, while the mighty fish which he hooked and dragged to the surface of the ocean became the North Island. When Maui's back was turned, his brothers hacked pieces from the fish, to eat. These gouges, along with the fish's thrashing response, formed the island's aggressive terrain. According to Western science, New Zealand split from Gondwanaland and drifted to its present position on the map. Both before and after its journey, the land sank many times beneath the waves and rose again and, even now, our coastline continues to be reshaped-slowly by erosion, drastically by volcanic upheaval. From the tale of Maui emerges the idea that land and waka can be conceptually one and the same. The women who travel in this waka toi from New Zealand to Queensland, Australia bear this out. Throughout their journey they had land in view; plans for their arrival; ideas for responding to, reshaping and transforming their landing place, albeit briefly. Their project is as much about destination as it is about voyaging. Bronwynne Cornish and Judy Millar (both Pakeha) bring food staples, potatoes and rice, both of which are exotic to New Zealand and serve as indices for the movement of cultures to these shores. Ani O'Neill (Rarotongan) mantles the Gallery's structural Western-style columns in Polynesian-