The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

1 Conclusions regarding audiences visiting APTs as a result of word- of-mouth referrals have been drawn from the results of APT visitor surveys; for APT6, word-of-mouth referrals accounted for 31 per cent of visitors. The total attendance for each Triennial is as follows: 60 000 (APT1, 1993); 120 000 (APT2, 1996); 155 000 (APT3, 1999); 220 000 (APT4, 2002); 700 000 (APT5, 2006); 530 000 (APT6, 2009). The last two figures represent the APTs held in both QAG and GOMA, following the opening of GOMA in 2006. 2 Selwyn Muru, quoted in The First Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art: Volume 2 [exhibition report], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1994, unpaginated. 3 Virginia Baxter, ‘Small worlds’ [exhibition review], in the special APT issue of RealTime, @ MAAP and the Asia Pacific Triennial, suppl.2, 1999, p.3. 4 Michel Tuffery, quoted in The Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art [exhibition report], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2000, p.39. 5 The term fa’afafine is Samoan for ‘like a woman’. 6 Brent Clough, ‘Pacific reggae: Roots beyond the reef’, in The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2009, p.155. 7 This work was a site-specific installation for Kids’ APT by Kusolwong titled Ruen pae (During the moments of the day – Have a nice day Brisbane) 1999–2000. 8 Cai Guo-Qiang, email to the authors, 27 September 2012. 9 Ho Tzu Nyen, quoted in Kids’ APT – A Collaboration [sponsor report], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2010, p.25. to accomplish. They were not biased by these concepts, which is why they could express the aesthetics or spirits of a bridge even more freely . . . The success of the project was not part of my plan; during the early stages, I never dreamt for it to have such a great turn out. This had everything to do with the excellent team at the Gallery, and the energy and potential embedded in children. In my opinion, the Queensland Art Gallery produces the best children’s educational programs in the world. 8 The Gallery presented its first two exhibitions specifically for children in 1998 — ‘Portraits are People Pictures’ and ‘Scary Monsters’. Both exhibitions involved developing creative ways to help children relate to works in the permanent Collection. However, Kids’ APT provided an opportunity to commission exhibiting artists to make new works specifically for young viewers. Combined with a range of interpretive materials addressing ideas and themes from the exhibition as a whole, these commissioned art works addressed an audience often overlooked in the field of contemporary art. Encouragingly, APT artists have embraced the concept of creating works for children. APT6 artist Ho Tzu Nyen stated that: As an audience, I believe children are as valid as any adult. I hope my art work [in Kids’ APT6] gave children sensations that may not be well defined, but might be intense . . . like poetry, or music. 9 From the handful of artists who made art works or presented workshops for kids as part of APT3, Kids’ APT has grown substantially in both scope and ambition; visitor responses have also been overwhelmingly positive. For APT6, 17 artist projects were presented as part of Kids’ APT, while children represented almost a quarter of the exhibition’s attendance of more than 530 000 people. For APT4, 5 and 6, Kids’ APT also featured a major children’s festival. Each around ten days long, the festivals — like Kids’ APT generally — have been driven by the involvement of exhibiting artists, through workshops, performances and interactions with young audiences. It is the Gallery’s belief that children possess an inherent curiosity, openness and enthusiasm that makes them ideal candidates to become ‘aficionados’ of contemporary art. Kids’ APT and subsequent children’s programs have provided a welcoming environment in which children and families have felt encouraged to embrace both the APT and the Gallery as their own. Of the many achievements of the Triennial, it could be argued that the most substantial has been the ‘bricks- and-mortar’ construction of the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA). The critical and popular success of the APT contributed significantly to the lobbying of successive Queensland governments and the achievement of the long-held ambition to ensure the future of the Queensland Art Gallery through its expansion to a second site. Appropriately, GOMA opened in 2006 with ‘The 5th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ as its inaugural exhibition. The unique features of the new building — including the Children’s Art Centre and the Australian Cinémathèque — also had their roots in the innovative children’s and film programs developed in association with the APT over many years. It is difficult to imagine some of GOMA’s success stories without the audience- and Collection-building work undertaken over more than a decade of Asia Pacific Triennials. One of the finest examples of this was the 2010–11 exhibition ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’, which surpassed daily attendance records by attracting an average of nearly 4800 visitors per day to the Gallery. This was made all the more remarkable for the fact that it was not a visiting exhibition of ‘known’ artists from a renowned international institution, rather, it was an exhibition of cutting-edge contemporary works from the Gallery’s own Collection, the majority of which were acquired during the past 10 years. Now, the Gallery and its audiences enter the next chapter of the life of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, with all its accompanying joy, complexity and enlightenment. 53