The Eighth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

My mother cooking ‘ginataan’, a Philippine dessert made of coconut milk and tropical fruit, and the movement of clouds over Manila Bay near where I was born, inspired me to create a work of art that would express and embody the motion of clouds . 4 While performance, the body and its relationship to politics and society may provide thematic underpinnings to this APT, we must also consider the broader role that projects such as these have in bringing artists together and generating knowledge and understanding within and beyond the Gallery. We have seen how artists coming to meet and discuss their work have had lasting impact. The earliest APTs in the 1990s, which brought many artists, art historians and critics together for the first time, are widely recognised as catalysts for the increased exchange and deepened understanding of contemporary art from the region. Through its successive editions, the APT has allowed the Gallery to take stock of the impact of globalisation on the region, to look at the models of artistic exchange and networking, and to consider the agency of artists within these frameworks. It has registered the relationship between national frameworks that are being affected by shifting global connectivity and new forms of artistic subjectivity, and has sought to provide a critical framework for artists. This, in turn, prompts larger conversations about the multiplicity of art worlds and allows for the unpacking of the different kinds of contemporary art produced from various cultural situations. Senior artists like David Medalla, Morimura Yasumasa and Len Lye punctuate APT8, who were working in London, Osaka and New York during periods of great political and cultural innovation. Their work points to earlier periods of artistic and social confluence and engagement. Both then and now, aesthetic discourses are modulated by the back-and-forth between the very local and the global, to include alternate positions on politics, economics, heritage, gender and sexuality, and material exploration, which decentres and disrupts the conventional arenas of cultural authority. We see this in very real terms in this edition of the APT, which includes bodies, both individual and cultured; which respond, react and initiate transformation and which seek to be seen and heard. Wherever we are working, we are doing so at a time of cultural and social transformation. The title of this essay, ‘How far can you run when the world is behind you?’, is taken from a work of the same title by David Medalla. FRANCIS UPRITCHARD Aotearoa New Zealand/UK b.1976 Action (detail) 2015 Polymer plastic, fabric and shell buttons over steel wire, on steel base / Two parts: 178 x 92 x 36cm (overall); 82 x 92 x 25cm (figure); 96 x 90 x 36cm (plinth) / Purchased 2015 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AC , through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery