The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

65 APT6 features the works of many artists born in the 1970s and 1980s, many of whom have studied overseas, and may still live there; their points of reference are fluid and multifarious. Collaboration’s complication of the singular artistic identity and ‘signature’ provides an important critical current running through APT6, which, with its focus on the contemporary art of a specific region, takes on the contestations that such a geographical framework brings. This understanding cuts across the regional bounds of the Asia Pacific Triennial, and offers up a range of possible readings of art works. These are subject to the equally diverse experiences and histories that we, as audiences, bring to them; and by opening their studio doors to the world, artists are inviting us in. Endnotes 1 Chu Chu Yuan, ‘Wah Nu’s and Tun Win Aung’s art’, Artstream Myanmar, <http://www.hirvikatu10.net/ artstreammyanmar/index.php?page=feature-wah-nu-s-and-tun-win-aung-s-art>, viewed 15 October 2009. 2 See Angelika Nollert, ‘Art is life, and life is art’, in Collective Creativity [exhibition catalogue], Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, and Revolver Books, Frankfurt, 2005, pp.25–9. For a historical overview of conceptualism across the world, including numerous collaborations, see Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s–1980s [exhibition catalogue], Queens Museum of Art, New York, 1999. 3 Charles Green, The Third Hand: Collaboration in Art from Conceptualism to Post-Modernism , University of NSW Press, Sydney, 2001, p.x. 4 John Roberts, ‘Collaboration as a problem of art’s cultural form’, Third Text , vol.18, no.6, 2004, p.557. 5 Russell Storer, interview with the artists, Queensland Art Gallery, 3 June 2009, QAG Research Library artist file. 6 Pamela M Lee, ‘How to be a collective in the age of the consumer sovereign’, Artforum , vol.XLVIII, no.2, October 2009, p.185. 7 Claire Bishop, ‘The social turn: Collaboration and its discontents’, Artforum , vol.XLIV, no.6, February 2006, pp.178–9. 8 Daniel Birnbaum, ‘We are many’, in Making Worlds [exhibition catalogue], 53rd Biennale of Venice, Marsilio, Venice, p.191.