The Eighth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

In Edging and seaming 2013 Angela Tiatia juxtaposes the repeated actions of workers in a sewing factory in Guangzhou with those of her mother Lusi Tiatia undertaking similar labour in Auckland. Lusi’s grandmother was a Chinese immigrant to Samoa, and Lusi herself was part of a generation of Pacific peoples who were encouraged to migrate to New Zealand in the 1950s and 60s to bolster a growing economy. Tiatia’s video shows her mother completing a final order before the company she works for outsources the labour, highlighting the ramifications for local communities of globalisation. In Heels 2014 Tiatia uses her own body to confront the stereotypes placed on the Pacific female body. Wearing heels and a body suit, and revealing her Samoan familial tattoo on her upper thigh, she enacts an endurance exercise that also repeats the specific movement a dancer adopts in Siva Samoa. FRANCIS UPRITCHARD Born 1976, New Plymouth, New Zealand Lives and works in London, UK Francis Upritchard’s five spectacular figurative sculptural works shown in APT8 reference a variety of cultural and temporal influences that capture the movements of a theatrical war dance. Upritchard draws on street performance traditions dating from the time of court actors and jester troupes, as well as Renaissance sculpture and a group of combatants in the Bayeux tapestry. The figures deliberately tread a line between reality and fantasy: less than life-size, captured in elaborate poses with ungainly limbs and half-closed eyes, and standing on carefully designed plinths, they resemble marionettes absorbed in their own world. Upritchard’s aesthetic is one of the hand- made, reclaimed and recycled. Her figures, made from polymer modelling clay pressed over wire armatures, wear billowing white shirts and grey knitted chain mail. Enigmatic and detached, they act in an undisclosed play or masquerade. UURIINTUYA DAGVASAMBUU Born 1979, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia Lives and works in Ulaanbaatar Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu creates dreamlike works characterised by fine brushwork, innovative composition and an elegant use of colour. Drawing on traditional patterned designs to reflect the experiences of Mongolian women, Uuriintuya’s paintings incorporate both poetic and everyday imagery, creating subtle contrasts between the manufactured and the natural or organic, and between intense, massed detail and flat planes of colour. Her paintings frequently include recognisable motifs from traditional Buddhist painting and East and Central Asian aesthetics, as well as psychologically charged imagery of contemporary life. Tumbash model XQ 2014 centres on the four harmonious animals of Buddhist mythology (bird, hare, monkey and elephant) forming a pyramid beneath a fruit tree and accompanied by a tangled mass of human figures and kitchen utensils. The massed figures and out-of-scale household objects reappear in Path to wealth 2013 and Unnamed energy 2014. YELENA VOROBYEVA Born 1959, Nebit-Dag, Turkmenistan VIKTOR VOROBYEV Born 1959, Pavlodar, Kazakhstan Live and work in Almaty, Kazakhstan Yelena Vorobyeva and Viktor Vorobyev are conceptual artists whose practice is rooted in the archival photography of the everyday, with a perspective unique to Central Asia. The artists have worked collaboratively since the 1990s and many of their photographic works portray an accumulation of everyday objects and subtle humour to reflect on social developments in the post-Soviet era. ‘Necessary Additions: Home Archive’ 2010 series, shown in APT8, is a series of intimate digital prints on paper with amendments in whitewash and pencil. While Kazakhstan was under Soviet rule, the Vorobyevs were obliged to use these photographs on official documents, a reminder of the impersonality of bureaucracy and its reduction of individuals to a quantifiable unit. Using these portraits, the artists insert small, subtle and humorous subversions on the official photographs — hinting at growth beyond carefully designated identities and borders. Transforming these objects of authority through humour and whimsical disruption, the Vorobyevs reassert the presence of the individual within an oppressive history and society. ASIMWAQIF Born 1978, Hyderabad, India Lives and works in Delhi, India AsimWaqif creates large-scale installations built from detritus and found objects, which are informed by principles of architecture, urban planning and interactivity. For APT8, Waqif has created a site-specific work entitled All we leave behind are the memories 2015 in GOMA that expands through gallery spaces and limits. In the lead-up to the exhibition, Waqif visited Brisbane to explore the history of building and demolition in the city. His installation is constructed from the worn and aged timbers typical of vernacular south-east Queensland architecture. Embedded with lights and sound sensors to be triggered by the viewer, this precarious- seeming structure is designed to be entered and explored. Waqif’s production technique is intentionally unplanned and labour-intensive. Many of his early works were site-specific, creating interventions in abandoned, decaying or neglected urban spaces. Concepts of waste, sustainability, heritage and the contrast between the industrial and the handcrafted are important to his work. MINGWONG Born 1971, Singapore Lives and works in Berlin, Germany Ming Wong works with cinema and popular culture to consider how culture and gender are constructed, reproduced and circulated. Through imperfect translations and re- enactments, Wong uncovers the slippages that haunt ideas of ‘authenticity’ and ‘originality’. Wong’s video installations often remake classic films, with the artist playing all of the characters, regardless of gender or ethnicity. Recent projects have become more interdisciplinary, incorporating performance and installation to flesh out his exploration of cultural artefacts from