Arts Review

8th Annual Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art @ QAGOMA

In the corner of the Fairfax Gallery hang nine small sheets. On all nine sheets there are only two images: a grainy, Soviet-era, unsmiling man and a grainy, Soviet-era, unsmiling woman. The man and woman are duplicated; arranged in uniform grids, arabesques and concentric circles, and drawn upon. But their faces never change; the forced neutrality required for any identification photo never wavers and yet, as I walk past the final sheet, they feel human. Unlike in a large group photo where persons we know become abstracted to a quantifiable row and place number, this duplication and arrangement of the man and woman (the Vorobyevs), made me feel I knew them. The photos were no longer simulacra of an impersonal and often-brutal Soviet bureaucracy but suggestive of growth and the power of the individual.

Yelena Vorobyeva and Viktor Vorobyev’s ‘Necessary Additions: Home Archive’ is one in hundreds of works created by over eighty artists at the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8). The exhibition, like its forerunners, arises out of the complex web of social, political, religious, cultural and aesthetic considerations facing Australian, Asian and Pacific artists. APT8 retains the ability to personalise and resuscitate issues such as the framing of national identity in post-Soviet states or the economic challenges facing developing nations that we are too often distanced from.

Unlike its forerunners, such overt social issues no longer dominate APT8; as the exhibition has grown and matured so too have its works become more conceptual, intimate and subtle. ‘Necessary Additions’ sits at the centre of the spectrum that spans the deeply political (such as Khvay Samnag’s ‘Rubber Man’ -- a kinetic protest piece echoing Ai Weiwei’s ‘Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn’) to the wholly conceptual: Maria Taniguchi paints one small brick at a time until the large grid is completed and yet despite the regimented repetition the result is not uniform but shimmering and dynamic. This diversity in the very purpose of art, together with the diversity of mediums used to convey said purpose, makes for a refreshingly eclectic exhibition.

Of these mediums, performance is central to APT8. The human form, with all its limitations, strengths and beauty, becomes the vehicle through which these artists explore ideas. Many of these performances explore the vitality of indigenous cultures throughout the Pacific. A particularly mesmerising work is Shigeyuki Kihara’s ‘Siva in Motion’ which sees Shigeyuki dance the ancient Samoan taualanga whilst clad in a restrictive, Victorian mourning dress.

Melati Suryodarmo's performance of ‘I'm a Ghost in My Own House’ is a work that seems to have given up any notion of her Indonesian heritage. Suryodarmo stands amongst a floor of charcoal briquettes; the only objects accompanying her are a small table and a rolling pin. Over the course of twelve hours she rolls out this charcoal, piece by piece, until it is a fine powder. There are no politics or cultural commentary here. But there is something cerebral. It would be a mistake to take the elements of the performance – the charcoal, the dirtying of her white dress, and its extended duration – as symbolising something other. Rather, the performance works to synthesise the process of time and entropy.

Suryodarmo’s slow, methodical actions eventually appear not as performance but as work; and indeed, she is working upon the space around her. She leaves the gallery having changed its display from rocks to dust, having made the white dress grey, and having covered the tools in a thick black film. Suryodarmo destroys her own material artwork, but in doing so creates a new conceptual one; standing now as an empty installation of dust and dress, the residue of her labour becomes the ghost in her own house.

The performance pieces of APT8 will show again on the 21st of February, 20th of March and the 9th and 10th of April. The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art will run (with free entry) until April.

-  Damian Maher and Sophie Rose

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