Looking through the windows that front Indonesian artist Aditya Novali 's wall installation The Wall: Asian (Un)Real Estate Project (2011), a series of miniature apartments come into view: private interiors that are sometimes bland, strange or garish (Hello Kitty decor characterises one space, for example, while multiple Duchamp-like toilets...
On the occasion of Patricia Piccinini 's multisensory and epic retrospective, Curious Affection at Brisbane 's Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA, 24 March–5 August 2018), this interview covers Piccinini's meticulous and collaborative studio practice, and the role of narrative in her work. Curated by Peter McKay, the exhibition occupies the ground...
It is 16 years since I last visited an Asia Pacific Triennial and it is heartening to see that although APT8 is a very different beast from the ground-breaking APTs of the 1990s, this edition has stayed true to the triennial’s philosophy of interacting with the region’s artists in a sustained and very localised way. When the APT was...
Having held the dual role of co-directors of Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art (IMA) for almost two years, Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh have shaken up the city’s contemporary art landscape. The unprecedented formulation of a joint vocation of director and curator shared between two people saw two outsiders hailing from Canada and...
This month the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in Brisbane, Australia, plays host to the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8). Renowned as a platform for surveying the vast geographic expanse of Asian and Pacific contemporary art, the triennial continues to uphold a long-term commitment to the region....
The pioneering video works of Wang Gongxin heralded the rise of the video art movement in China, and he remains a force in Chinese contemporary art today. Born in Beijing in 1960, he belonged to the first generation of art students after the Cultural Revolution and trained as an oil painter in the Socialist-Realist style. In 1987 he was...
Bruce McLean is Curator of Indigenous Australian Art at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. His latest exhibition My Country: I Still Call Australia Home is a collection of recent works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists that explore the divergent social and political voices of ‘Black’ Australia. While not all...
Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China. He was a child during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution and strongly influenced by society's vision for social utopia. Cai trained in stage design at the Shanghai Theatre Acadmey. He left China in 1986, spending almost 9 years as a young artist in...
‘For me, one of the most political acts of the 21st Century is to be vulnerable. It’s not to take a single position or write a manifesto of democracy, it’s to actually make yourself vulnerable to being wrong. If you can do this then you can create a different space of risk for others to come in and create encounters.’...
In literary criticism, the term Bildungsroman refers to a coming of age novel. The protagonist learns a lesson, undergoes a transformation and grows up. They are stories where sentiment conflicts with authority, and we love them because they question our foundations and because we were all kids, once. ‘Emerging’ is the art...
At the close of Sydney Contemporary 13 the general consensus amongst gallerists was that Sydney’s first art fair has been a resounding success. The response to the timing and venue was positive and consistent crowds meant that the Carriageworks site was continually filled with collectors and art lovers for the entire three days of the...
After the swift success of ART HK and the launch of Art13 London in March of this year Tim Etchells (Founder of SCAF) is now turning his hand to the Australian art market with the inaugural Sydney Contemporary, Sydney’s first premium art fair. Etchells’ company, Australian Art Events has also taken over the management of the...
13 Rooms marks the 27th program Australia's Kaldor Public Art Projects has produced. It's fitting for Kaldor and international curators Hans Ulrich Obrist and Klaus Biensenbach to collaborate, as each figure is identified by their longstanding attention to large-scale projects, working with international artists.
This year the Asia Pacific Triennial celebrates its twentieth year - a fact emphasised many times over across promotional material and in conversation amongst visitors, and reason alone for many visitors from other cities and countries during the exhibition’s opening weekend.
The 7th Asia Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art marks the 20th anniversary of the flagship exhibition series committed to an investigation of Asian, Pacific and Australian contemporary practices.