Beyond the Future: Papers from the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Questions and Comments Susan Cochrane Thank you to the APT for all the support that you have given to Pacific artists in this APT and many others . However, I note that there is no representative of the Pacific on your panel, and no comments have been made about the Pacific contribution . Rhana Devenport Obviously yesterday the Pacific lunch was a very important event, and I wondered whether I could call on perhaps the chair to give a brief outl ine Margo Neale The Pacific Lunch was framed in a 'Pacific' kind of way. It was called 'Salt Water/Fresh Water' which is acknowledgment of people from the sea and people from the land. The framing of the session I think reflected very much the kind of insertion of indigenous values, intentionally so. We had a fair b it of time spent with protocol and consultation, that's why we had the Indigenous Consultative Committee wh ich works with the Ind igenous Australian Art Department at the Queensland Art Gallery. They introduced themselves one by one and pointed out that their role is to provide support to ind igenous involvement which is invariably a minority with in a wh ite institution , and to do a lot of collaborative resource processing. So consultation was emphasised and it is very h igh on the agenda actually in everything we do at the Queensland Art Gallery. Lilla Watson, who is the Aboriginal member of the Board of the Queensland Art Gallery, spent some time re-emphasising the importance of country and therefore when everyone introduced themselves after that on the consultative comm ittee they referred to their country as well. Neil Manton, who has been associated with the APT for a long time now, outl ined a few of the basic facts of the Pacific - we talk about a lot of issues and we know the Pacific covers half of the world's surface as it was pointed out, and so there were some very interesting insights into what that means in terms of transcultural ism and so on . The final th ing that was really important was we decided to get a glimpse of that little island called N iue and that was really important because this is probably the smallest populated island - a very small island in the Pacific with a population of about 2000. It was really important to give the N iueans a voice and we had a video that showed their place . UNSW Student I was wondering why, with the Pacific being a major part of the APT, it wasn 't part of the main speaking program? David Williams I would have thought the remarks made by our previous speaker would have brought that back into focus. I don't think there's any intention that it shouldn't be that way, but I hope that you feel those issues have been brought to the fore this morning. Michael Mel also made a major contribution to our Conference yesterday. Carol Bryan I 'm from Melbourne but formerly Papua New Guinea. I am distressed that the issue of closure of the art school in Papua New Guinea, our nearest neighbour, has not been raised . No student between the age of 19 and 21 has the opportunity to exercise any creative expression unless they align with the Teachers' College at Goroka and I prompt you to take part in the discussion at lunch time where hopefully, along with the issue of Timar, that can be discussed and maybe a formal letter sent to PNG. Astri Wright I teach in Western Canada. My area of expertise is contemporary and modern Southeast Asian Art, particularly Indonesia, and I have been very excited to be here and very impressed with all the successful organisation that's gone on over this decade which has changed the world's perception of modern art and will continue to do so. However we always also look for 1 45