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

mean for art, and this is a major issue for Japanese art which will be carried into the twenty-first century. The cities of Japan have undergone a dynamic cultural transformation and, while other cities in Asia will undergo this same kind of transformation, the processes by which they get there will differ from that of Japan's. However, the changes described above, which might seem superficial, are actually fundamental and pose many significant problems which Japan and the other countries of Asia will have to address in the coming years. Furnia Nanjo, Independent Curator,Tokyo Japan Takashi Murakami. Yasumasa Morimura, Cai Guo Oiang, Yukinori Yanagi,Kimio Tsuchiya and Emiko Kasaharaarerepresented in the SecondAsia-Pacific Triennial. Tatsuo Miyajima Time landscape 1993 Pencil and synthetic polymer paint on 19th century Korean painting 101x29.7cm Collection: Queensland Art Gallery 38 I cu RATO RI A L E ss A vs : EA s T A s I A Japan: Post-modern Paradox Caroline Turner Introduction 'Keep Changing, Connect with everything, Continue forever' Tatsuo Miyajima 1 There is a sense in which this has been the Japanese century in that Japan, more than any other country, has forced the West to come to terms with Asia. Yet in intellectual and artistic terms, Japanese art of the twentieth century is not fully understood in the West. It is at once totally eclectic and unequivo– ally distinctive. It draws on its historical identity while at the same time challenging our understanding of contemporary art in a post-modern world. The Queensland Art Gallery's institutional links with Japan go back to 1982. In that year a major exhibition of historical Japanese art from the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, arranged with the generous cooperation of Mr Shosuke Idemitsu, was the highlight of the opening celebrations for the new Queensland Art Gallery building. There have been two further exhibitions from the Idemitsu Museum-'Sengai the Zen Master' in 1985 and an exhibition of historical masterpieces of Japanese ceramics organised by the Queensland Art Gallery for Australia's bicentenary year in 1988 and World Expo 88 in Brisbane. 2 In 1982 Ivisited the Museum of Modern Art in Saitama, Queensland's sister prefecture, and began a connection that in 1987 and 1989 resulted in the first Australian and Japanese museum-based exchanges of contemporary Australian and Japanese art featuring eighty-seven artists. 3 The Gallery has also developed a strong relationship with the Hara Museum of Art and its Director, Toshio Hara 4 and the Fukuoka Art Museum, the first art museum in Japan to focus on contemporary South-East Asian art. Through the ARCO Gallery of Asian Art, with its centrepiece ceramic collection the Six Old Kilns of Japan, and The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Collection of Contemporary Asian Art, the Queensland Art Gallery has purchased a number of significant works of historical and contemporary Japanese art. 5 TheAsia-PacificTriennial selections The Japanese selections for the Second Asia– Pacific Triennial were made by a curatorial team consisting of highly respected Japanese art curator, Fumio Nanjo; Clare Williamson, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne; and myself, representing the Queensland Art Gallery. There were two selection visits. On the first visit I travelled widely in Japan, renewing contacts and seeking advice on themes and artists. At the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, its Director, Yukito Tanaka and Curators, including Hidekazu lzui, who had worked with us on the earlier exchanges, were most helpful. At the Hara Museum,Toshio Hara provided outstanding assistance in developing the intellectual ideas for the Triennial. I met with many Japanese curators, art critics and artists, including staff at the new Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (MOT), the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, the Osaka City Museum of Modern Art, the Kyoto Museum of Modern Art, and the Fukuoka Art Museum, where Director Mikio Soejima and Curator Masahiro Ushiroshoji (who represented Japan at our first international forum) provided important insights. Working with Fumio Nanjo, our purpose in the selections for the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial was to examine Japanese art of the present; what had changed since the last Triennial and what was in the process of changing. We took as our starting point, the Triennial's overriding theme of 'present encounters', and, more specifically, the urban environment of Japan.This ran counter to the theme of nature and identity through materials which had proved so strong in our 1993 show. Our considerations spanned over fifty artists. As Fumio Nanjo indicates in his essay in this catalogue, ancient ways and futuristic developments provide new tensions and possibilities within today's Japan. He discusses the focus by younger artists on the urban environment. There is also, I believe, among young Japanese artists, a new sense of reaching outside Japan, as well as the need by some to confront issues of Japanese history, as in the work of Yukinori Yanagi. Our starting point for the selections for this exhi– bition was the work of two artists also represented in our Saitama exhibition of contemporary Japanese art in 1989-Yasumasa Morimura and Kimio Tsuchiya.The changes in Tsuchiya's approach since the 1989 exhibition have resulted in a greater focus on urban materials. In his latest work, which links the natural and urban environment with history and universal human concerns, he nevertheless also raises questions about recent Japanese approaches to life and art. Morimura was represented in our 1989 exhibition and in curator Judy Annear's show of 1992, 'Zones of Love' at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Subsuming images from Western art history through elaborate masquerades he produces a series of self-portraits which are also portraits of contemporary Japan. Morimura's brilliant and highly original response to the 1980s and 1990s consumer culture of Japan is seen in Blinded by the light, pur– chased for the Queensland Art Gallery Collection. His manipulation of 'high art' images opens the way to a more informed consideration of the work of younger artists such as Takashi Murakami who, despite his training in traditional Japanese ni-honga painting, takes his starting point from Japanese popular culture. In Emiko Kasahara, also represented in 'Zones of Love', we see an artist whose recent work now questions sexual identity and gender in a way which goes beyond issues of purely femin ine concern.