Ocula Report Art Taipei 2018 10 November 201810 Nov 2018 : Diana d’Arenberg for Ocula 'There is nothing more boring than the story of decline,' a journalist remarked at an art criticism panel I attended the evening before making the trip to see Art Taipei (26–29 October 2018). As I attended the opening night of Asia's oldest art fair, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, those words rang in my head. Wandering up and down...
Ocula Conversation Charwei Tsai Taiwanese artist Charwei Tsai's memorising and compulsive writing of the Heart Sutra—a Buddhist scripture that distills the wisdom of impermanence—is at the heart of her practice. Over the past ten years, Tsai has moved from writing to drawing, photography, and film—a selection of which is being presented at the Centre for Chinese...
Ocula Report Crush at Para Site: What if you couldn’t have it? 10 November 201810 Nov 2018 : Hera Chan for Ocula Drawn on paper by Oscar Chan Yik Long in gestural black ink strokes, Cupid (2015) greets visitors with a sinister toothy smile as they enter Para Site. The strikingly fearsome figure is positioned on the wall of the gallery's entrance, near one of Chen Dandizi's vertical neon tube lights, part of the series 'Tick Away' (2015), along which a...
Sriwhana Spong is a contemporary artist of New Zealand and Indonesian descent whose works explore her Balinese heritage and what it means to exist between two cultures and places. Spong's practice encompasses film, performance, installation, sculpture, and mixed media.
Sriwhana SpongCostume for a Mourner, 2010 high-definition digital video on DVD
Sriwhana SpongUntitled, 2012 Double sided tape, variable dimensions
Sriwhana SpongFold on Fold, 2012 Wood, stain, book page, blu-tac
Sriwhana SpongMarch 1968 #1, 2012 Magazine pages, frame
Sriwhana SpongMayan Sun, Powdered Frost, 2012 Book pages, coloured filter, lighting gel, frame
Sriwhana SpongThe Purple Blotter #6, 2012 Cardboard packagin, book pages, paint, string
Sriwhana SpongLacuna Fig.D, 2010 book pages, collage
Sriwhana SpongField Figures, 2010 steel, cyan colour filters, silver chain, lacquer
Ocula Report The Melbourne Lowdown: Institutional art shows to see 27 July 201827 Jul 2018 : Carol Que for Ocula Melbourne Art Week returns to much fanfare this year, taking place between 30 July and 5 August 2018 with the biennial Melbourne Art Fair holding centre stage after its hiatus in 2016 (2–5 August 2018). Situated across two venues within the Southbank Arts Precinct and presenting 40 new and established galleries from Australia, New Zealand and...
Ocula Conversation Sriwhana Spong Artist Sriwhana Spong's first solo museum exhibition in New Zealand, a hook but no fish, at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (12 May–22 July 2018) explores a unique language—the Lingua Ignota (Latin for 'unknown language')—used by a medieval female German mystic, abbess, composer, and writer Hildegard von Bingen. Since its first showing earlier...
Related Press Mind on the past: Kiwi artist Sriwhana Spong Noted : 27 January 2017 hen Sriwhana Spong was shortlisted for the 2012 Walters Prize, no one in the art world was particularly taken aback.For several years, she had been making some of the country’s best video art: lush, elegant films, which often drew on her dual New Zealand and Balinese heritage, as well as her training as a ballet dancer.Things were going well. But...
Related Press Review: 'Oceanic feeling', Sriwhana Spong and Maria Taniguchi at ICA, Singapore ArtAsiaPacific : 2 November 2016 Oceanic Feeling was the first major survey of the decade-long practices of New Zealand artist Sriwhana Spong and Filipina artist Maria Taniguchi, whose marked oeuvres both consider the temporality of material, and intersect in the way that they each focus on the act of making, creating awareness of artistic processes and intentions, which...
Related Press 'Oceanic Feeling': Sriwhana Spong and Maria Taniguchi at ICA Singapore Art Radar Journal : 20 September 2016 Launched on 20 August 2016, Oceanic Feeling, features sculpture, painting, film and video, and performance by the two artists, reflecting their concerns with material, technological and natural processes.For many exhibitions, it is not uncommon for there to be a prescribed path of sorts, a predictably linear order in which you are expected...
