The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

projects such as the Asia Pacific Triennial possible. This significance is reflected in the strong presence of Aboriginal artists in APT7, with works that consider, each in very different ways, history and tradition, and their place in the present. They range from the paintings and Pukumani poles of Timothy Cook, with their designs relating to Tiwi Kulama ceremony, to Lorraine Connelly-Northey’s metal sculptures that rework traditional narbongs (string bags), to Shirley Macnamara’s installation based on Aboriginal shelters, with her signature spinifex woven through an upturned turpentine shrub. Early encounters between Aboriginal people and Europeans have been an important reference point for many contemporary Aboriginal artists. Michael Cook’s photographs from the series ‘Civilised’ 2012 depict ethereal figures on a beach. Their costumes identify the four European imperial powers that reached Australian shores during the Enlightenment age of exploration — the Dutch, the Spanish, the English and the French — yet all figures are Aboriginal. Here, the ‘fatal impact’ of colonial encounter is reimagined as scenarios in which knowledge systems may be mutual, suggesting new readings of history and the possibilities these may offer in the present. This era has also been evoked in the subject matter of Daniel Boyd’s recent paintings, yet here differences are not effaced but made abundantly clear. His images are coated in a layer of black paint, which are only visible through a screen of transparent dots, which work as tiny lenses. This partial view echoes the role of dots in Central Desert art, which protect sacred knowledge by obscuring it, but also the dabs of colour in Impressionist and Pointillist painting, which emulate the effects of light. One of Boyd’s paintings in APT7 features the image of a Marshall Islands stick navigation chart from the British Museum. These elegant objects trace the directions of ocean swells; they were not taken on voyages, but memorised along with star courses and cloud shapes to create a performative, individualised knowledge, like that of Polynesian navigators who were ‘concerned not with accurate calculation of position but with what to do in particular circumstances’. 11 This stands in contrast to the attempts at standardised, representational maps of the Pacific developed by European cartographers on voyages such as Cook’s, which were not able to indicate mutable conditions and constantly shifting co-ordinates. Boyd’s painting extracts the Pacific stick chart from its anthropological frame, presenting it instead as a lacuna in Western understanding. The work seems to suggest that our place in the cosmos is never fixed: and it is only when we are able to acknowledge the vulnerability of our own knowledge systems, and value what may be offered by others, that a real conversation can begin. ROSLISHAM ISMAIL (aka ISE) Malaysia b.1972 The Langkasuka Cookbook (process images) 2012 Commissioned for APT7 / Images courtesy: The artist / Photographs: Magnus Caleb OPPOSITE TERRY PAIKIEY Papua New Guinea b.1974 Kwoma people Towergiha mayi (small shooting star) (detail from Kwoma Arts Koromb ( Spirit house )) 2012 Synthetic polymer paint on plywood / 120 x 42cm / Commissioned for APT7 and the Queensland Art Gallery Collection / Purchased 2012. Queensland Art Gallery / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery 36