1996
1996
Vibration: Works by Three Contemporary Australian Women Artists Presented for the Asialink program: Bright Sparks
Presented for the Asialink program: Bright Sparks
Vibration was the first exhibition created in partnership between Asialink and the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and a fourth in the Bright Sparks series. It’s inclusion of the work of three women artists dovetailed well into its Beijing showing at the conclusion of the 4th United Nations World Conference on Women.
Curators: Seva Frangos, Margaret Moore
Artists: Louise Forthun, Michele Sharpe, Kim Westcott
Partner: The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
Tour: Beijing, Hanoi, Seoul, Melbourne (1995-1996)
Aurora: Australian Wood Metal Glass Fibre Ceramics
Presented for the Asialink program: Messages: Art from Australia
Curator: Suzanne Davies, Grant Hannan, Ray Stebbins, Rachel Young
Artists: Bruce Armstrong, Mari Funaki, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Elizabeth Kelly, Bom- Jun Kim, Junji Konishi, Andrew Last, Carlier Makigawa, Sally Marshland, Richard Morell, Mark Pascal, Gloria Petyarre and the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Prue Venables, Vixen Australia, Kevin White
Dates and venue:Seoul, Karachi, Islamabad, Dhaka, Singapore, Kathmandu, Colombo, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Melbourne (1996-1998)
Partner: RMIT Gallery, Melbourne
The third part of Messages, Aurora presented a range of craft/design by leading practitioners across the five media noted in the title, and continued the Asialink partnership with RMIT Gallery that began with the tour of Australia Gold (1993). The exhibition underscored the high quality of work made by these Australian artists in these specialist fields. After being shown in Seoul, the exhibition was requested by a further nine cities.
Fire and life
Five Australian artists from Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Perth traveled to India in September 1996 to spend four weeks working with a partnered Indian colleague in New Delhi, Mumbai, Madras, Calcutta and Bangalore, preparing an exhibition in each city. These opened in October 1996 as part of the Australia India New Horizons celebration. Reciprocal residencies and exhibitions took place in the partners’ five Australian cities in 1997.
Curators: Alison Carroll, Julie Ewington, Victoria Lynn, Chaitanya Sambrani
Artists: Australia: Jon Cattapan, David Jensz, Joan Grounds, Derek Kreckler, Judith Wright India: N.S. Harsha, Surendran Nair, Jayashree Chakravarty, N.N. Rimzon, Pushpamala
Tour: India: Bangalore, Baroda, Calcutta, Delhi, Mumbai (1996); Australia: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth (1997)
Fire and Life was a complex and ambitious enterprise that involved two partners from India, curator Chaitanya Sambrani and associate Shireen Gandhy, touring Australia and meeting with curatorial colleagues at various times, working together to select artists whose work would resonate in each country, who would work positively with a colleague from another culture, and who could create exhibitions of merit in very short time frames. This demanding itinerary was skillfully managed by Suhanya Raffel and other partners (galleries in each city, hosting organizations and funders) all contributed, with the results being wonderful, insightful exhibitions of new work and new understandings. Working together across cultures and with artists of significant personal achievement is challenging, but to do so with the pressures of creating work with a certain period additionally pressing. Two catalogues and 10 exhibitions later, this project is remembered as ground breaking in both countries.
Rapport: Eight Artists from Singapore and Australia
Rapport was a very early joint exhibition created by leading young curators in Australia and Singapore, inviting four artists from each place to exhibit in a major exhibition to tour to both countries. The curators stated: ‘Rapportis a cultural project marking a new partnership between international institutions, artists and cultural workers. The exhibition consists predominantly of art works by younger artists who are working across media from photography to found objects, inflatables to sculpture. The resulting installations negotiate personal issues such as childhood, coupling, materiality and spirituality that are pertinent to each artist's own cultural background.’ The Australian artists traveled to Singapore to install their work, noting the value of such an experience. Nicola Loder memorably said that being in Singapore ‘opened a new wing of the library’ for her. After being seen by 20,000 viewers in Singapore, the exhibition then traveled to three cities in Australia, the first major showing of contemporary Singaporean work to be seen in these places.
Curators: Natalie King (Australia), Tay Swee-Lin (Singapore)
Artists: Australia: Hany Armanious, Carolyn Eskdale, Christopher Langton, Nicola Loder Singapore: Amanda Heng, Salleh Japar, Baet Yeok Kuan, Matthew Ngui
Partners: Monash University Gallery, Melbourne / Singapore Art Museum, Singapore
Tour: Singapore, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane (1996-1997)
Voices of the Earth
Presented for the Asialink program: Messages: Art from Australia
A second part of the Messages series was a collection put together by Gabrielle Pizzi including major works by many of Australia’s leading Indigenous artists. Gloria Petyarre paintings contrasted with Leah King Smith’s installation to bring alive the richness of this important aspect of Australian art for the first time in such a major way in Korea.
Curator: Gabrielle Pizzi
Artists: Jimmy Bungurru, Stephen Kawulkku, Gladdy Kemerre, Leah King Smith, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Narputta Nangala, Peggy Poulson Napurrurla, Gloria Petyarre, William Sandy, Alan Winderoo Tjakamarra, Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, Fred Ward Tjungurrayi, Gideon Tjupurrula Jack
Partner: Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne
Tour: Seoul (1996)
Australia: Familiar and Strange
Presented for the Asialink program: Messages: Art from Australia
Messages: Art from Australia was the title given to a group of Asialink exhibitions held simultaneously in Seoul in 1996 at the major venue the Seoul Arts Centre. Using three large exhibition spaces, the shows recorded 9,092 visitors, with 874 on the first day. The opening was reported by the Australian Embassy as being the ‘biggest and best attended’ of any Australian cultural event in Korea.
Curator: Timothy Morrell
Artists: Howard Arkley, Eugene Carchesio, Dale Frank, Tim Johnson, Maria Kozic, John Nelson, Madonna Staunton, Kathy Temin, Judy Watson, Judith Wright
Tour: Seoul (1996)
Neil Taylor and Doh Heung-Rok
The agreement with POSCO Gallery was part of Asialink’s focus on Korea in the mid 1990s, with the additional link to this space through the giant steelmaker POSCO being the key partner for Australia’s BHP, hence the focus on two artists working with metal. Bahk Young Taik, curator at POSCO Gallery explains: ‘These two artists broaden the range of our visual perception with their metallic media and at the same time pursue the realm where people and sculptural works can interact with each other in a living space.’
Curator: Chung Mie-Young (Korea)
Artists: Australia: Neil Taylor Korea: Doh Heung-Rok
Partner: POSCO Gallery, Korea
Tour: Seoul (1996)
Body and Soul: Prints by Vera Zulumovski & Phillip Doggett-Williams
Presented for the Asialink program: Bright Sparks
Body and Soul was part of a program of smaller exhibitions, entitled Bright Sparks, designed to travel to a diverse range of venues outside of the larger museum network, in this case to venues in southern Thailand and to new countries for Asialink: Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Curator Roger Butler invited two printmakers to be involved, exploring social themes of diversity and belonging.
Curator: Roger Butler
Artists:Phillip Doggett-Williams, Vera Zulumovski
Partner: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Tour: Dhaka, Bangkok, Khon Kaen, Chiang Mai, Pattani, Songkhla, Satul, Colombo, Kathmandu (1995-1997)
Alternative Realities: Australian Artists Working with Technology
Alternative Realities was the longest running Bright Sparks exhibition. Focusing on artists working with new media was in these early days, the mid 1990s, considered groundbreaking. Mark Napier of the Australian Consulate General in Shanghai reporting ‘the exhibition left a particularly deep impression as there has not previously been anything like this in here before.’ The words of curator Rachel Kent found resonance throughout the region. She wrote ‘these artists explore in different ways the possibilities, as well as the limitations, of technology in their work. The impact of technology upon the body, the urban landscape and the shaping of history is considered, while a critical look is cast at the darker side of technological progress.’
Presented for the Asialink program: Bright Sparks
Curator: Rachel Kent
Artists: Peter Callas, Moira Corby, Ross Harley, Rosemary Laing, Patricia Piccinini
Partner: The University of Melbourne Museum of Art, Melbourne
Tour: Hong Kong, Melbourne, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Taipei, Tamsui, Kaohsiung, Bangalore,