#4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

[shapethings]

[secretaryoftheinvisible]

It’s not that I am afraid to die

[sunlit-music]

Past article in 2017 on Vietnamese Australian sculptor and refugee Dacchi Dang. From the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian art.

Dacchi was born in Saigon and fled Vietnam during the Vietnam war for safety.

He took photos of Vietnam's city and countryside when there were trade restrictions between America and Vietnam after the Vietnam war ended in 1975.

His artworks are about post traumatic stress, grief and loss of leaving his birth country, and trying to find somewhere to belong.

Dacchi graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 1991 from the College of Fine Arts, and a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of New South Wales.

His temporary art sculpture Upstairs / Downstairs was portrayed at the Sydney Art School in 1994.

He's completed research on experiences of Vietnamese Australians and other Australian war veterans' life experiences (from the Vietnam war period) for the Australian war memorials Gillespie Bequest. This helped him create a new art exhibition on the Vietnam war, for 2018.

Dacchi's artworks have been displayed in Australia - in Melbourne, Sydney and Campbelltown, as well as overseas in France and Japan.

His artworks are held in public and private collections in Australia, France and China.

[pleaseusethisbag]

A couple of panels from a new piece for 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art’s 4A Digital. You can read the whole thing now, along with some wonderful work and writing by Dr Dacchi Dang, Hyun Lee, Humyara Mahbub, Garry Trinh, Rachel Ang and Elyas Alavi, on the 4A website. ⠀ ⠀ Ty for having me 4a and Con Gerakaris :)⠀

[randian]

Xiao Lu, last year, at 4A Center for Contemporary Asian Art— Xiao Lu: Impossible Dialogue 肖鲁:语嘿 is the first retrospective of leading contemporary Chinese artist Xiao Lu. The exhibition is anchored by Xiao Lu’s performance work Dialogue from the landmark China/Avant-Garde exhibition at the National Art Gallery, Beijing, in February 1989. This work, in which the artist fires a gun at her own art installation, is a milestone in the development of contemporary art in China. It has also has been read as a critical turning point in China’s recent history. While Dialogue remains an iconic work of that era, it is also one of the most misunderstood pieces of contemporary Chinese art. Xiao Lu: Impossible Dialogue 肖鲁:语嘿 examines Xiao Lu’s creative interest in deep emotion, extreme action, and chance. Spanning a period of 30 years, the exhibition presents significant performance works by Xiao Lu including a new commission that explores the artist’s ongoing connection to Australia. Xiao Lu (born 1962, Hangzhou) works with performance and installation. She is a graduate of the Subsidiary School of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing and Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (China Academy of Art), Hangzhou. Her graduation work Dialogue was included in the China/Avant-Garde exhibition in Beijing in 1989 and became famous after she fired a gun at it, which led to her temporary arrest and an extended period of residence in Sydney. Xiao Lu’s fictional memoir Dialogue《对话》, published in Chinese and English in 2010, exposed powerful forces affecting women artists in contemporary China. Xiao Lu’s work has been included in important international exhibitions, most recently Performer and Participant, Tate, London (2018) and Art and China After 1989: Theatre of the World, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2017), and been collected by public and private institutions including the Tate, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Taikang Insurance Group Art Collection, Beijing; and White Rabbit Collection, Sydney. Xiao Lu lives and works in Beijing and Australia. Xiao Lu: Impossible Dialogue is produced and presented by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. This exhibition and associated programmi (at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/CIScrgXlDMp/?igshid=127ewj1wtyca2

[andymullens]

Dacchi Dang, Et in Arcadia Ego, 2017, installation with wax, photographs, bamboo leaves, commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. An Omen Near and Far.

—

SYDNEY. 9 JUNE – 30 JULY 2017.

Dacchi Dang: An Omen Near and Far is the first survey exhibition of one of the preeminent Vietnamese-Australian artists working today. Presenting a selection of works spanning three decades by a founding artist member of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Dacchi Dang is principally concerned with articulating the complex nature of diasporic experience and an ongoing redefinition of ideas of place and of home. With a focus on the artist’s work across photography, printmaking, video and installation, An Omen Near and Far signals the central importance of art in coming to terms with the contingencies of the past and of the present.Born in Saigon and having experienced the latter years of the Vietnam War before fleeing his homeland on a boat to be eventually accepted as a refugee in Australia, Dacchi Dang’s life and art is deeply informed by this trauma, loss and an ongoing search for belonging. An Omen Near and Far unveils a new installation work commissioned by 4A that employs photography and wax that burns and melts over the duration of the exhibition. Informed by a recent 2017 trip to Vietnam, this new work is conceptually connected to an earlier, ephemeral sculpture and performance originally staged as Upstairs/downstairs at Sydney’s National Art School in 1994. This latter work – ghostly documentation of which is included in the survey – saw Dang burn a wax sculpture imprinted with photographic imagery recorded by the artist in Vietnam in that same year, his first visit to his country of birth since arriving in Australia in 1982.Dacchi Dang’s dislocating experience of returning to Cholon, Saigon’s Chinese district and where he grew up, and extended family members in Bến Tre province in the Mekong Delta, prompted him to photograph the people and landscapes of Vietnam voraciously. Having shot over 100 rolls of black-and-white film on his Hasselblad, Dang’s photographic archive of daily life in urban and rural Vietnam documents a time concurrent with the momentous historic occasion of the lifting of the trade embargo between the U.S. and the Republic of Vietnam that had been in place since the end of military conflict in 1975. Dang’s source imagery – now a time capsule of the developing nation in flux– resulted in a highly productive period of experimentation. Spectacle I (1996) and Spectacle II (1996), a suite of monochromatic photogravure prints and their corresponding gold plates, present intimate portraits of ordinary Vietnamese and montaged street scenes tempered by an uneasy balance between empathy and distance.In addition to series of works over the past decades that explore landscapes as colonised and contested forms of cultural memory, from Paris to Peel Island in Queensland’s Moreton Bay, An Omen Near and Far offers a selection of historical material from the archives of both the artist and 4A: photographic proof sheets, exhibition ephemera, reviews, interviews and critical texts. This includes documentation of Dang’s seminal solo exhibition, The Boat, presented at 4A in 2001, a milestone in the development of wider public reception and understanding of art from Asian-Australian perspectives. The Boat garnered strong community responses, opening up dialogue by addressing the profound perils of seeking asylum while prompting a critical consideration of Australia’s changing treatment of refugees.Accompanying the exhibition, 4A will host a panel discussion that will offer insights into the historical research and creative development currently being undertaken by Dacchi Dang for the Australian War Memorial’s Gillespie Bequest commission of a new body of work due for completion over 2017–2018. Exploring the experiences of Australian and Vietnamese–Australians military veterans of the Vietnam War, and engaging with the Memorial’s extensive collection and archives, Dang’s commission represents the first such instance to form part of the national institution’s art collection.

—

Dacchi Dang (b. Saigon, Vietnam, 1966) is an artist who lives and works in Sydney. He is a founding artist member of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Dang was born to a Chinese father and Vietnamese mother, and at the age of sixteen fled Vietnam with his brother and sister on a fishing boat. After a traumatic sea voyage the boat arrived on Malaysian shores where Dang was transported to the refugee camp of Pulau Bidong. Following nine months at the camp, he was transported to Kuala Lumpur where he was accepted as a Vietnamese refugee by Australia in late 1982.

Dacchi Dang works primarily with photography and printmaking, in various forms and processes, and also video and installation. His work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally since the early 1990s. Solo exhibitions include Full Circle (2009), Metro Arts Gallery, Brisbane; Liminal (2006-2008), Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Victoria; Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne; and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney; Spectacle I (1996), Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney; Spectacle II, Stills Gallery, Sydney. Group exhibitions include DDESSIN [14] (2014), Paris Contemporary Drawing Fair, Atelier Richelieu; Crossing Boundaries (2014), Sydney Town Hall; Edge of Elsewhere (2010-2012), 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney; Planet Ueno (2008); Taito Community Museum, Tokyo; Re-StArt (2008), 733 Art Factory, Chengdu; and News From Islands (2007), Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (1991) and a Master of Arts (1996) from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney; Graduate Diploma in Archives and Records Management (2000) and Graduate Certificate of Applied Science in Cultural Heritage Studies specialising in Photography (2003) from University of Canberra; and a Doctor of Philosophy (Fine Arts) from Queensland College of the Arts, Griffith University, Brisbane (2013). Dang has undertaken numerous artist in residence programs including at Bundanon Trust (2001), Hill End (2001); Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2003) and Tokyo University of the Arts Geidai (2008). His work is held in public and private collections in Australia, France, China and Hong Kong. Over 2015-2018 Dang is producing new works commissioned by the Australian War Memorial Gillespie Bequest that explore the wartime experience of Vietnamese–Australians and its legacy today.

[ashsunlesshu]

Digestion

I recorded spaces sound in the Australian Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Sydney, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, and USYD library.

It's interesting that most galleries have heavy echoes. It reminds me of the documentary How We Got to Now, episode 6: Sound. It is believed people reserved their culture and civilization in heavy echoes places in caves on ancient. " more echo more painting. "

Besides, I try to capture recognizable sounds in public spaces. So we can hear the artists' video background music, footsteps, drawing with pencils, people whispers, etc.

As for the part of digestion sounds recorded at home were really hard to capture. Because as soon as I pick up Zoom H6 and was ready to record, my stomach stopped working at all. However, there're tons of private weird sounds.

In this project, the most significant point is exploring the boundary between public and private spaces. It's exciting to combine and listen to them. Hope you enjoy it!

[chinaheightsgallery]

@otishopecarey for @4A_aus 'NO FALSE IDOLS' - curated by @c.gerakaris, featuring: @luyangasia @jazzmoney_______ @rams_deep69 @nabnordin @feedingback @kawitavv. On show until 02.10.22. #4ACentreForContemporaryAsianArt #OtisHopeCarey #ChinaHeights #ChinaHeightsGallery (at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChZMlVfviNm/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[brooksadad2018]

Galleries and Artspaces

Here’s a list of some interesting gallery spaces in Sydney (this is by no means a complete list, there are many more). This list is a mixture of artist run spaces, commercial galleries and public institutions. It’s well worth making the time to visit some of these places and looking at how artists and curators put works together. Seeing shows is a super important part of developing your practice. It will really help you imagine how to move from the studio phase to the presentation phase as well. 

Artspace (Wolloomooloo)

http://www.artspace.org.au/

MCA (Circular Quay)

https://www.mca.com.au

Carriageworks (Redfern)

http://carriageworks.com.au/

AGNSW (Domain)

https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/

55 Sydenham Rd (Marrickville/Sydenham)

http://www.55sydenhamrd.com/

Firstdraft (Woolloomooloo)

http://firstdraft.org.au/

The Commercial (Redfern)

https://thecommercialgallery.com

Knulp (Camperdown)

https://www.facebook.com/knulpknulpknulp

MOP and PomPom (Chippendale)

http://www.mop.org.au/

Wellington St Projects

https://wellingtonstprojects.com/

Verge Gallery (Darlington)

https://verge-gallery.net

Alaska Projects (Kings Cross)

http://home.alaskaprojects.com/

UTS Art (Ultimo)

http://art.uts.edu.au/

Frontyard (Marrickville)

http://www.frontyardprojects.org/

Sillivan and Strumpf (Zetland)

https://www.sullivanstrumpf.com/

4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Haymarket)

http://www.4a.com.au/

Sarah Cottier Gallery (Paddington)

http://www.sarahcottiergallery.com/

[aliencrybby]

Hours of precious time are wasted whenever an interviewer asks the question: “how do the personal and the political fit into your art?” My artist friends and I have agonised over the persistence of the question and the ignorance that belies it. For people of colour, the personal is the political. As a Filipina immigrant and a woman of colour, I don’t have the privilege of tuning out of discourses that affect my life—the converging issues of systemic racism, class inequality, and racialised sexuality are part of my everyday reality.

The question presupposes that I can fracture my whole experience into multiple selves in order to function in different spaces. But it is my whole self—Filipina, immigrant, settler, survivor of violence—that I carry to the page when I write, teach, and organise. As people of colour, we should not have to simplify our identities and our art for others. Nor should we be expected to endlessly explain our arts practice so others can comprehend the complex sociopolitical worlds we navigate. But what we come up against are spaces that do not accommodate this complexity. That which deviates from the mainstream understandings of nation, race, and gender is mangled in its translation into the framework of the elite. For example, in the Philippines, Tagalog-centric institutions either ignore the work of artists beyond Luzon or disregard the cultural specificity of artwork produced further south of the capital. In Australia, media outlets have presented me as an Australian or Filipino-Australian—both terms I reject. (1) My Ilonggo identity is rebranded by others as Filipino, followed by Filipino-Australian, then Asian-Australian, and then Australian. As a woman of colour, my art and identity are filtered and refracted through a colonial gaze to arrive at a distorted, palatable version.

[jesse12deng]

Known as the "Father of Performance Art" in South Korea, many people did not think that Lee Kun Yong was such a dynamic and interesting artist. He has performed this kind of performance countless times in the past few decades, and each time the audience and scene are different, it also brings him different feelings.

In this concise and vivid performance like a "Zen", the demonstrative pronouns in the artist's mouth both respond to  philosophical contemplation Merleau-Ponty: There must be a'here' before there will be a'there.  It also responds to the dialectical thinking of the East since like Zhuangzi: He comes from right, and he is because of him.. At the same time, with the aggressive gestures and shouts of the artist, the audience was also forcibly involved in this performance. The purely watching behavior that was originally outside the incident was destroyed by the indisputable fact of "simultaneous presence". In the end, In the respective time and space and experience dimensions of the performer and the audience, the relationship between the world and the body will be perceived and confirmed again.

With the help of the traces left by the paint on the surface of the wooden board, Li creates “figurative” action paintings in his own way. In the subsequent works, the artist leaned back on the canvas, extended his arms as far as possible, and painted ray-like lines on the canvas behind him along his own contour; or used the shoulder as the axis to record the natural swing of his arms. . In a certain sense, when Li  selects the body to create, the body becomes the key to solving all mysteries. As he said before, it is the body as the medium that connects the internal experience of life with the external world. Under various conditions or restrictions set by him intentionally, the body explores its own scale through the most basic actions, and draws a "self-portrait" of the body in the action.

[spicyonionandchicken]

V signs and contemplating about my Vietnamese history

13 August 2020

Ashley, Gilmore, and Peters’s (1994) understanding of autobiography as a trace found in performative gestures and fashions had me thinking about what stood out specifically across my Vietnamese heritage and East Asian cultures: The V sign. Originally interpreted as an insult in 20th century Western culture (The two-finger salute with the palm inward), it was adapted and popularised as a victory sign during World War II. Its iconographic representation as a peace gesture emerged through the mid-1950s in the United States when anti-war protestors flash the V sign outwards, coupled with the phrase “peace”.

Fig. 1: Peace sign demonstrated from personal family archive photo.

The V sign has been adopted as a photographic gesture of happiness in Japan, and is likely influenced by anti-Vietnam war activists in late-1960s. Guan Wei references both V sign symbolism in his series “Two finger exercise” (1989), showcasing simplified identities gesturing the V sign within a dark environment. Wei provides a subtext on the political power of the peace gesture, referencing the Tiananmen Square 1989 student protests and anti-Vietnam war activist events.

Figure 2: Two figures expressing the victory sign in response to the Tiananmen Square protests (Wei 1989).

I recall Vietnam was ruled under France since 1884 until 1954 when Ho Chi Minh communist forces divided the country into communist and anti-communist regions. I am allured in exploring Vietnam’s social history and reimagining folk tales through 3D environmental imaging. My scope will aim to examine the Vietnamese Western experience today and parallel with my culture’s historical events. Though I have not once travelled to my homeland nor realised my heritage’s significance upon my Western upbringing, I hope I can establish an intersection between my colonised identity and cultural background.

Figure 3: Installation of “Dacchi Dang: An omen near and afar” (2017).

I went to Dacchi Dang’s art installation three years ago at contemporary Asian art gallery 4A: The installation featured a wax sculpture with photographic imprints melting throughout the exhibition. A metaphor for the assimilative refugee perspective in Western culture, Dang express nuanced themes of trauma and diasporic belonging in Australia. With photographs of Vietnamese portraits and streets, the Vietnamese artist treads sensitively towards cultural memory and his colonised identity.

References

Dang, D. 2017, Dacchi Dang: An omen near and afar, installation, Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney.

Wei, G. 1989, Two finger exercise no. 29, artwork, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

[vanessadavissketchbook4]

Tradition to Improvisation into Aisa

Title: Earth Wind, Water, Fire I (A Fish & Two Turtles)

Artist:  Phaptawan Suwannakudt

Date: 2000

Medium: Acrylic painting on a canvas

“My works had largely been involved with Buddhist themes such as the Life of the Buddha or the Narratives of Buddha’s Previous Lives. They involve more of my own experience and personal life” (1),  Phaptawan Suwannakudt.

This painting is about the vibrant lives of Buddha’s teachings of knowledge, wisdom, and enlightenment on a six-panel board. The four natural elements of Earth, fire, wind, and water depicted his first impression and transition to Australia. This sacred spiritual fish has an extraordinary life span with freedom of movement in the water and control over its mind and body. This image encourages others to become reconnect with nature's natural balances to unite their mind and body with spiritual elements. The significance of the bright and dull contrast of color is that it resembles the light and dark that exists within us all. The structure of this painting is a vision of tranquility that exists in a kingdom of praise and worship. Buddha encourages others to realize how important your principles are in your daily lives and stresses the importance of one's self-awareness and health.  

                                                 Works cited

“Phaptawan Suwannakudt: Turtles, a Fish, and Ghosts...” 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, 19 Dec. 2019, www.4a.com.au/phaptawan-suwannakudt-turtles-fish-ghosts/.

[fasttrackwithmatthiasarndt-blog]

The Southeast Asian Art World: From Periphery to New Global Art World Centre

Asia is undoubtedly the new centre of the art world, with Southeast Asia emerging as the next important art destination within its territory. It all started with Beijing and the rise of Hong Kong as a new central marketplace for Asian and international contemporary art. Then came the new private museums, successful new art fairs – such as ART021 and Westbund Art & Design in Shanghai – where every month a new museum, foundation or commercial gallery opened.

As the new Tate Director Maria Balshaw recently mentioned: "Asia and Southeast Asia is part of the world where we see incredible dynamism”. The Tate is among the few major international institutions that have invested in extremely intelligent and progressive infrastructure to acquire high calibre works from the region. This is due to their informed international and regional committees such as the “Asia-Pacific Acquisition Committee” that focuses exclusively on the Asia-Pacific region.

Installation view: “No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia”, Guggenheim Museum, Paris (Feb 22 - May 22, 2013)

Key global institutional players have featured content from Southeast Asia in their programs in recent years. For example, the Guggenheim Museum’s exhibition in New York “No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia” (Feb 22 - May 22, 2013), curated by June Yap, Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator, South and Southeast Asia. This project was part of the “Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative” which fosters cross-cultural interaction and expanding the Guggenheim’s collection with contemporary art from South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa.

The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has responded to the expansion of the art world into regions that have often been outside the field of vision of Western art museums with a series of projects that explore developing regions such as Southeast Asia. As part of this program in 2015, the Stedelijk presented the first European solo exhibition of Indonesian artists collective Tromarama. Similarly, the Centre Pompidou in Paris recently launched its series “Cosmopolis” that provides a new platform for the exploration of collaborative artistic practices and artist collectives in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Its first exhibition “Cosmopolis #1” (18 October - 18 December 2017) included work from Indonesia and Vietnam, among other regions. Additionally, French curator Hervé Mikaeloff produced the influential group exhibition of Indonesian art “Trans-Figurations — Mythologies indonésiennes” (24 June - 23 October 2011) that was staged at Espace culturel Louis Vuitton in Paris.

Installation view: “Cosmopolis #1”, Centre Pompidou, Paris (18 October - 18 December 2017)

Equally, within the Pacific region, awareness of and engagement with Asian art is growing. High quality work and well researched programs are consistently shown at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) in Singapore and at the Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in Brisbane, Australia, specifically during the Asia Pacific Triennial. Further within the Asia Pacific region, The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, is commencing the exhibition series “Contemporary Worlds”, dedicating its first edition in May 2019 to Indonesian contemporary art and culture, further reiterating the relevance in tracking trends within Southeast Asia’s creative spheres.

Arndt Fine Art published a range of key publications on contemporary Southeast Asian art, in addition to exhibiting Indonesian, Filipino, Thai and Cambodian contemporary art in Europe and abroad in a range of exhibition projects spanning the past ten years. These exhibitions have assisted in reporting on the tremendously vital creativity energy that is taking place in these regional art scenes and markets. Art from these booming markets and vibrant microcosms throughout Southeast Asia are now finally finding a strong reception as part of a larger international institutional audience and dialogue within the context of museum exhibitions, art fairs and significant art collections.

Writer, Jason Farago, described the rise of Southeast Asia’s art scene in an article he published in September this year published in the New York Times “Southeast Asia Stakes Its Claim in the Art World” upon the occasion of the exhibition “After Darkness: Southeast Asian Art in the Wake of History” that was presented at the Asia Society in New York (8 September 2017 - January 21 2018). I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, which was also echoed in Lisa Movius’ recent feature in November in The Art Newspaper “Indonesia's grassroots scene gains major private museum” which reported on the opening of the new major private art museum Museum Macan in Jakarta.

Film still: FX Harsono, “Writing in the Rain” (2011), DVD; 6 mins, colour, sound

A further marker of this increased attention is captured in a number of other institutional programs across Europe and the United States displaying thematic exhibitions or solo presentations by artists from Southeast Asia. The following key examples outline this trend: The Mori Art Museum’s exhibition in Tokyo “SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now” (5 July - 23 October 2017); the Bozar - Palais des beaux-arts de Bruxelles’ exhibition in Brussels “Power and other things: Indonesia & Art (1835-now)” (10 October - 21 January 2018) curated by Riksa Afiaty & Charles Esche; the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Asia Society’s innovative programming in New York; and the impressive curated presentations by artists Zai Kuning (representing Singapore) and Lani Maestro and Manuel Ocampo (representing The Philippines) at The 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia this year.

Installation view: Zai Kuning, Singapore Pavilion, The 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2017.

Due to lacking institutional infrastructures and the absence of public commitment for many of these art scenes across Southeast Asia, the resultant art environments are market-driven and often speculative in approach. Thus, we have recently seen a great multitude of private museums and art foundations on the rise throughout the region. The most prominent is Museum Macan – founded by Indonesian art collector alongside Director Aaron Seeto (formerly Director of 4A Gallery, Sydney and Curatorial Manager of Asian and Pacific Art QAGOMA, Brisbane) which recently opened. This museum will change the Indonesian art landscape in a similar way to that of David Walsh’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) which positioned a remote southern region of Australia on the global art map.

Museum MACAN, Jakarta

Opening of Museum MACAN: (left-right) Eugene Tan, Haryanto Adikoesoemo, Kirsten Paisley, Entang Wiharso, Matthias Arndt

Since 2006, the Akili Museum of Art has been presenting a very impressive in-depth collection of Indonesian art in Jakarta, assisting to educate local audiences. Additionally, there are a number of major private collections which will hopefully grow into similar examples of the above esteemed institutions.

Akili Museum of Art, Jakarta

Throughout Indonesia, the artist run initiatives, art spaces and residency programs such as SaRaNG art space and OFCA International and artist residency and Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta, and ambitious commercial galleries such as ROH projects, Ruci Art Space and Galeri Canna in Jakarta support their artists beyond the borders of the Indonesian and Southeast Asian art market.

In Malaysia, the ILHAM – a public art gallery in Kuala Lumpur – promotes Malaysian modern and contemporary art within a regional and global context through its program. In Singapore, The Parkview Museum recently opened. As the youngest private art museum in the city, having just recently opened, its program presents a collection of Asian and International Art under the Directorship of Wang Lei.

Installation view: Yeo Kaa, “Distressful Satisfaction”, OFCA International, Yogyakarta (19.5.-19.6.2017)

In Thailand, Jean-Michel Beurdeley & Eric Bunnag Booth’s MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai presents leading figures within Thai contemporary art from their collection. Furthermore, art collector  Lani Zimmermann is developing her plans to open a private museum to the public in early 2018 in a modern Guggenheim-style building in the mountains in Chiang Mai in order to present her collection of contemporary Thai and Southeast Asia and Australia art.

We also witness coordinated efforts between international art fairs to promote and present contemporary work from the region. While Art Basel in Hong Kong is touted as the “most international Asian art fair”, there are also many important regional fairs delivering a focused view and flavour from Southeast Asian Art. Art Stage Singapore has established their own satellite fair in Jakarta for example. Art Jakarta, formerly Bazaar Art Jakarta, is also a prominent event. Additionally, there is the highly successful, and from my perspective, currently the most vibrant fair in the region, Art Fair Philippines in Manila. Within Europe we are also observing the inclusion of more and more Asian art in high profile international art fairs such as at Frieze, London, Art Basel, Basel, and also FIAC and, of course ASIA NOW, Paris. ASIA NOW is an excellent boutique fair that was founded by Alexandra Fain in 2015.

Installation view: ASIA NOW, Paris (18.10 - 22.10.2017)

Within the realm of art biennales, both the Jakarta and Yogyakarta Biennales delivered excellent presentations this year. Accordingly with other similar events currently being planned, Southeast Asia is expected to have a strong presence at the 2018 Biennale of Sydney through the curatorial guidance of Artist Director Mami Kataoka.

It is also timely that contemporary art from the Australia and Pacific region is presented within Europe in the example of the major group exhibition “Indigenous Australia: Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Australia” which has just opened at ME Collectors Room in Berlin as part of the Australia Now 2017 cultural festival in Germany. As part of this broader cultural program Australian artist Del Kathryn Barton was invited to curate a group exhibition of some of Australia’s most significant artists entitled “mad love” that was staged at Arndt Art Agency, Berlin earlier this year.

Installation view: “Indigenous Australia: Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Australia”, ME Collectors Room in Berlin (17.11.2017 – 02.04.2018)

This shift in attention is just the beginning of a long anticipated process concerning international recognition of contemporary Asian and Southeast Asian art. Supported by their own histories and traditions, these lesser discovered art landscapes are challenging the international art world order making clear that the notion of “international contemporary art” is no longer reserved for western artists and institutions. Practitioners from central and Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore are firmly part of the global art world.

[lee-tran-lam-is-responsible]

(via 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art | WORKSHOP // Zine-making with Lee Tran Lam at the Chinese Garden of Friendship)

[curatorialandco]

We are excited to announce ANTONIA MRLJAK has been selected to take part in Installation Contemporary at @sydneycontemporary 2019 | Curated by Mikala Tai, Director of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, the exhibition presents site-specific and large-scale works that respond to the unique architecture of Carriageworks || Antonia will be live painting a 6m x 6m canvas over 5 days while up a scaffold and wearing noise-cancelling headphones, working in silence amongst the cacophony of the Fair atmosphere || We are thrilled to bring this installation experience to Sydney Contemporary 2019! . . . @mikalatai #art #installation #abstractart #installationcontemporary #painting #antoniamrljak #sydneycontemporary2019 (at Carriageworks) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0hafshg7Ll/?igshid=tryl2tbtb36o