"Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) is the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art's flagship exhibition focussed on the work of Asia, the Pacific and Australia. This eighth edition emphasises the role of performance in recent art, with live actions, video, kinetic art, figurative painting and sculpture exploring the use of the human form to express cultural, social and political ideas, and the central role of artists in articulating experiences specific to their localities. APT8 includes more than 80 artists and groups, an ongoing program of artist performances and projects; a conference as part of the opening program; extensive cinema programs; publications; and activities for kids and families."
I visited APT8 on 23rd Nov, just 2 days after its opening, for the first time. Only managed to tour around the Queensland Art Gallery. |
| Haegue Yang's Sol LeWitt Upside Down - Open Modular Cubes (Small), Expanded 958 Times 2015 |
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| Located at the Queensland Art Gallery Watermall |
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| Choi Jeong Hwa's The Mandala of Flowers 2015 |
APT8: Choi Jeong Hwa (Born 1961, Seoul, South Korea) is known for his inflatable sculptures and large-scale, riotously coloured installations of everyday objects. For APT8, the beaded strands of his Cosmos 2015 are suspended above his mandala project created for QAGOMA's Children's Art Centre. The Mandala of Flowers 2015 involves a high level of audience participation and interaction, inviting children to create their own mandalas from colourful plastic bottle lids. The form of the work contradicts the content, since plastic is often regarded as a waste-product, inorganic, non bio-degradable, cheaply made and mass-produced — unlike the mandalas which are highly labour-intensive, transient, sacred and return immediately to the earth.
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| Asim Waqif's All we leave behind are the memories 2015 |
APT8: Asim Waqif creates large-scale installations built from detritus and found objects, which are informed by principles of architecture, urban planning and interactivity. For APT8, Waqif has created a site-specific work entitled All we leave behind are the memories 2015 in GOMA that expands through gallery spaces and limits. In the lead-up to the exhibition, Waqif visited Brisbane to explore the history of building and demolition in the city. His installation is constructed from the worn and aged timbers typical of vernacular south-east Queensland architecture. Embedded with lights and sound sensors to be triggered by the viewer, this precarious seeming structure is designed to be entered and explored. Waqif's production technique is intentionally unplanned and labour-intensive.
I visited APT8 at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) again this afternoon for the second time, though this time I went without planning ahead (perks of being alone most of the time hehe). I did not bring my camera with me and only have a few unworthy iPhone shots so I'll just post some of them up here.
APT8: Yumi Danis (We Dance) is co-curated with Ni-Vanuatu songwriter, musician and author Marcel Meltherorong (Mars Melto), and brings together dancers and musicians from Papua, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. It is staged as an immersive multimedia installation, animated by contemporary dance and consciously addresses the issues involved in translating and contextualising performance from these regions for a broader audience. The installation They look at you 2015 is by Kanak artist Nicolas Molé in response to discussions with Meltherorong and 15 dancers from across the region who attended a workshop in Vanuatu in 2014. Visitors enter through the tangled roots of a banyan tree, into a cleared open space found in many of the region's villages. The surrounds are animated with Mole's immersive animated video projections of a forest inhabited by various beings. A large dwelling holds 11 videos, presenting the diversity of performance found throughout Melanesia.
This piece here, which is one of the biggest highlight of APT8, was quite an emotional one for me. Nothing personal to relate to, but just the nature of this piece here. Can't tell you how awe-inspiring this piece is. Definitely an eye-opener to the Pacific cultures.
After those heavy load of "injecting" knowledge, I spent some quiet time at the kids section (family fun to be exact, well you don't have to be a kid to get involved!) and these beautiful patterns caught my attention.
APT8 Kids: Play with Your Birds , by Rosanna Raymond, invites young visitors to explore the tiputa, a type of garment originally created in Tahiti and widely used throughout the Pacific. Children can make their own Tiputa using specially design templates that can be embellished with rubbings of patterns carved into various surfaces of the space.
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| Spent close to 1 hour for some quiet contemplating time. Calmed myself a little with the emotions all around from the previous art pieces. Photographed by one of the wardens. |
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Just to share some thoughts about all these artsy-fartsy stuffs with you:
Visiting art galleries may sound boring to you, especially when you are not an arts person or when you have little or no knowledge of visual arts like me, but I don't think that ever has to be the excuse of why we ought to turn ourselves away from these wonderful creations.
I am so blessed (can't mention this any lesser!) to be in Queensland where arts and cultures are hugely celebrated by the many peoples in this beautiful place. Arts and cultures are ever-so-accessible (free art exhibitions including this one!) to members of the public, regardless of age and the depth of knowledge you have about arts. Back in my hometown, I had close to zero exposure to any of these experiences. Opportunities are plenty here in Queensland, so why should I turn them down then? :)
I was never a visual arts person, well I do not possess the talent to produce any artsy outputs but I love looking at good-looking stuffs. Even so, I have one of the most emotionally challenging and yet awe-inspiring experience at a contemporary art exhibition today. It has nothing to do with my personal feelings but I just felt the immense emotions while looking and studying each pieces. Today, I saw the world though the eyes of the artists.
But also maybe because whenever I encounter a field that I wasn't familiar with, and in this case - visual arts, I tend learn with an empty and open mind. I've always agree to the theory of tabula rasa, translated as blank slate, as defined in Wikipedia, which refers to "the epistemological idea that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception". And that explains my eagerness of grasping knowledge wherever I go and whatever I see.
