Ocula Conversation Artist Taloi Havini and Ruth McDougall, curator of Pacific art at Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, discuss Havini's first Australian solo exhibition, Reclamation .
Latest Ocula Report Sydney Biennale Connects Here with Everywhere By Soo-Min Shim, Sydney 'This year's Biennale of Sydney seems like a corrective,' writes Soo-Min Shim, 'prioritising autonomy in an international exhibition format that has all too often omitted or sidelined First Nations artists.'
Ocula Insight Hell is a Place on Earth: P·P·O·W Looks to History in Context of Covid-19 By Stephanie Bailey, London In the United States, parallels have been drawn between the HIV/AIDS crisis and what is unfolding with Covid-19. These connections feed into P·P·O·W's online exhibition, Hell is a Place on Earth. Heaven is a Place in Your Head .
The bustling city of Taipei has an equally lively art scene, made up of tremendous museums, galleries and non-profit spaces. The National Palace Museum sits at the helm with over 600,000 artefacts spanning 5,000 years of history. Originally founded in Beijing in 1925, the Museum was relocated to Taipei during the Chinese Civil War in 1948 to safeguard its collection, which includes the famous jade cabbage—a detailed reproduction of a Chinese cabbage head reputed to have been part of the dowry of the Guangxu Emperor's consort Jin Fei in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911)—along with ancient objects that include Song dynasty paintings and calligraphy, ritual bronzes, ceramics, early printed books and more.
Read MoreFounded in 1983, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum showcases artwork by Taiwanese and international artists from the 19th century to today, and acts as the host for one of the region's best-loved biennials: the Taipei Biennial. The Biennial was borne from two exhibition projects conceived by the Museum to celebrate contemporary art: Contemporary Art trends in the ROC and An Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Sculpture in the Republic of China, held on alternating years between 1984 and 1991 until they were merged in 1992 to form the Biennial.
With a solid institutional backbone, the city is also home to over 30 galleries. These spaces move between supporting contemporary artists and showcasing modern masters, such as Asia Art Center, which represents Li Chen, Chu Weibor and Yang Chihung, among others. The artful balance between modern and contemporary is a defining characteristic of many of the city's galleries, including Tina Keng Gallery, which has been instrumental in forging the careers of many Asian masters, including Zao Wou-Ki, Sanyu, Lin Fengmian and Yun Gee. TKG+—the gallery's experimental sister space—continues this legacy by working with emerging artists and providing a platform for experimentation across different media.
Taipei's galleries and art spaces are spread across the city. Those looking to avoid travel can spend time in Huashan 1914 Creative Park, which possesses a similar structure to Beijing's 798 Art Zone. The complex originated in 1914 as a wine factory and camphor refinery. It was vacated in 1987 and artists advocated for it to be used as an art space in 1997. The red brick buildings now host a number of exhibitions throughout the year, interspersed with cafés and knick-knack shops.
The city's more experimental spaces include TheCube Project Space, located in an alleyway in the southern part of the city. Founded by independent curator Amy Cheng and music critic Jeph Lo, TheCube takes pride in being one of few art spaces in the city that has the capacity to organise 'quality international exhibitions on a non-profit basis'. As such, TheCube has become a site of lively cultural exchange—a position that has been harnessed by the city as a whole.
Ocula Insight At the freshly opened Winsing Art Place in Taipei, works by Vietnamese-Danish artist Danh Vo are being presented in Taiwan for the first time. In this video, the founder of Winsing Arts Foundation, Jenny Yeh, introduces Vo's exhibition.
Ocula Report Taipei Lowdown: Shows to See By Tessa Moldan, Taipei As Taipei Dangdai returns for its second edition between 17 and 19 January 2020 at the Nangang Exhibition Center, a selection of exhibitions across the city confirm Taipei as one of the region's most exciting art hubs.
Ocula Report At Art Taipei, Galleries Adapt to Regional Politics By Sam Gaskin, Tapiei In Taipei , the artwork that said most about the contemporary art market's fraught situation in East Asia was not at the 26th Art Taipei (18–21 October 2019), but across town at the Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, a publicly funded art park established in Taiwan's former Air Force Command Headquarters in 2018. Chin Cheng-Te's Tender Soul –...
Ocula Conversation Charwei Tsai By Tiffany Leung, Manchester 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...
