The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

THE ASIA-PACIFIC TRIENNIAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART 2002 AN INTRODUCTION Suhanya Raffel In 1990, when the Queensland Art Gallery decided to embark on a series of exhibitions featuring contemporary artists from the diverse cultures and countries of the Asia-Pacific region, the project was consciously innovatory. It was premised on the belief that vibrant, energetic and distinctive forms of contemporary art were flourishing across the region, but had so far not been sufficiently acknowledged or appreciated in the exhibitions, collections and forums of the international art world . Today it is widely recognised that Asian and Pacific artists are making critical contributions to international art, bringing with them fresh idioms and insights. New exhibition projects, especially in Fukuoka, Singapore, Kwangju, Taipei, Yokohama, Noumea and Auckland, have greatly expanded the forums for contemporary art; and important established exhibitions, whether in Venice, New York or Sao Paulo, now regularly feature artists from the region . These developments represent a remarkable sea change in which the Queensland Art Gallery's Asia-Pacific Triennials have played a demonstrable part. This is the fourth Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art and, in a radical departure from the format of the earlier exhibitions, APT 2002 focuses closely on the work of a smaller group of key contemporary artists. Though the exhibition is still being mounted on a grand scale (70 per cent of Gallery spaces are again given over to its display), in 2002 the Gallery has chosen to explore the careers of fewer artists in depth, rather than present artists country by country in an exposition-like event. The artists selected for APT 2002 have made, and continue to make, profound contributions to modern culture. In their hands modernity is both a condition that is resisted and a constant source for experiment and invention. Contemporary artists in all the countries of the region follow in the wake of several generations of pioneering modernists. But it has only been since World War Two that certain Asian and Pacific artists have fully achieved the recognition of international status - a recognition that embraces the specific cultural frameworks in which the practices of these artists evolved. This is the development that is celebrated in APT 2002, and it has been over 50 years in the making. 8 APT2002 Nam June Paik and Lee U-fan, Milan 1994 Courtesy: Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo The curatorial selections for APT 2002 have been largely inspired by the preoccupations of three key international avant– garde figures - Nam June Paik, Yayoi Kusama and Lee U-fan - and by the contributions they have made over several decades and indeed into the twenty-first century. Each of them has been involved in art-making that celebrates, appraises and radically reinterprets the contemporary moment. In addition the exhibition features the work of Ralph Hotere and Howard Taylor, senior artists from Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia respectively, w ho established practices within the canons of international Modernism in order to make important local interventions. From another generation, Nalini Malani, Heri Dono and Montien Boonma have built serious individual careers that draw deeply on their heritages to shape the contemporary art of South and South-East Asia. APT 2002 revisits the work of these artists and the ways in which they reflect the central concerns of the exhibition: the influence of the cinematic; the relationships between performance and contemporaneity; and the search for meaning within both the explicit and the implicit world. Cai Guo Oiang China b.1957 Blue dragon and bridge crossing - Project for the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial 1999 Installation The Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery Collection:The artist Photograph: Richard Stringer